Book Review: Cat Taylor’s Music Row Rejects (2026)

Despite the fact that there’s been a thriving Nashville rock scene for better than four decades, there’s still the widespread notion that the ‘Music City’ is more country music than not, an oversight not helped by the glut of country-flavored celebrity tourist-trap bars on Lower Broadway. It’s a bit of an illusion, actually, as the best country artists (i.e. ‘Americana’) are everywhere but in Nashville. The money-making genre’s corporate infrastructure of offices and studios in the mid-city enclave known as ‘Music Row’ is a sterile construct, cranking out assembly-line music that is homogenized by producers and record labels to appeal to the largest number of middle-aged, middle American housewives as possible.

Rock ‘n’ roll has always had a rough slog in Nashville, Elvis Presley’s adventures in RCA Studio B notwithstanding. There was little or no local rock scene in the city during the mid-‘70s apart from R. Stevie Moore and his friends, who altogether combined for something like 100 different bands. But Stevie split town for Jersey and D.I.Y infamy after releasing 1978’s Phonography album, and it would take another year or so before bands like David Olney & the X-Rays, Cloverbottom, File 13, and CPS (Committee For Public Safety) would pick up the torch and start lighting stages like Springwater or the long-gone Phranks ‘n’ Steins on fire.

If rock music received a less-than-friendly reception from the “powers that be” on Music Row, punk rock was disdained, if not overlooked altogether. Still, as writer Charles “Cat” Taylor documents in Music Row Rejects, his extensive discography and history of the city’s punk scene, punk has been an integral part of the city’s rock scene since the 1980 release of Cloverbottom’s Anarchy In The Music City 7” vinyl EP. A profusely-illustrated 104-page “bookazine” (not quite a book, not quite a zine), Music Row Rejects is a welcome guide to the city’s often overlooked punk scene, which has run not-so-quietly beneath the more mainstream rock ‘n’ roll currents for decades.

It took me six years of research and writing to put together my 600+ page doorstop of a book, The Other Side of Nashville, An Incomplete History & Discography of the Nashville Rock Underground 1976-2006, which was published in 2012, so I know all too well the risks of taking on a project like Music Row Rejects. Taylor took on an immense task and acquits himself nicely. His efforts were helped, no doubt, by his own participation in the city’s ever-evolving punk rock scene over the years as the lead singer for two popular punk outfits, Rednecks In Pain and Fun Girls From Mt. Pilot, as well as a contributor to the House O’ Pain zine and indie record label.

Cloverbottom

With Music Row Rejects, Taylor documents the scene with an impressive discography of close to 200 recordings by a 100 or so bands (I’m guessing), providing release info and track lists (when available) for a wealth of punk, hardcore, and punk-pop records, CDs, and cassette tapes that represent the scene as it existed from 1980 through 1997. In many instances, he has tracked down band members to provide their perspective, or at least share some rowdy stories of their rock ‘n’ roll daze. Taylor fills it out with cool graphics like show posters, band photos, and such. It’s a fun read, and I can’t imagine the book being much more comprehensive, as there are dozens of bands that I’ve never heard, and I was covering the scene at the time for numerous publications (including my own music zines).

The Nashville punk scene’s halcyon days can be assigned to the tenure of Lucy’s Record Store circa 1992-1998, where popular bands like Jack, Fun Girls, Java Christ, and Teen Idols were booked by Lucy’s owner Mary Mancini and House O’ Pain’s Donnie and April Kendall (who had been promoting “Migraine Matinee” all-ages shows at the local club Pantheon) alongside touring national acts like They Might Be Giants and Guided By Voices. But Taylor also digs back into the early ‘80s with entries for early punk outfits like the aforementioned Cloverbottom and CPS as well as like-minded bands such as the Resistors, Placid Fury, and the Ratz. 

By the late ‘80s, bands like the popular hardcore gang F.U.C.T., Rednecks In Pain, Caustic Solutions, Tommyrot, and Zero Hour, among others, were making exciting and adventuresome music and setting the stage for the Lucy’s Records era. Taylor ends Music Row Rejects right around the time that Lucy’s closed down, which did seem to be a sort of death knell for an independent punk scene at the time. Although other all-ages clubs would open and close throughout the 2000s and since, never again was the scene as much a community than it was at Lucy’s. Two Nashville punk/hardcore bands broke out from the local scene, Teen Idols and Today Is the Today making records for indie labels with significant distribution and worldwide reach.

Cat Taylor’s Music Row Rejects is more than a mere discography of the city’s punk scene, the author providing a narrative of the scene’s creative aspirations. Many of the bands listed in the book released but a lone single or cassette, but a surprising number of them managed to produce a small, albeit impressive catalog of music, often releasing it themselves on tape or seven-inchers that have since become pricey acquisitions for well-heeled punk collectors. More than a Discogs/eBay wish list for punk rock fans, Music Row Rejects is an invaluable reference and history of a Nashville punk scene that persevered despite the obstacles presented by the city’s staid music industry. (self-published, released January 2026)

Get yer own copy o’ Music Row Rejects, email Taylor at catidball@gmail.com or check out their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/musicrowrejectszine 

If you’re in Nashville, get you a copy at The Great Escape, Phonoluxe Records, Vinyl Tap, or Grimey’s Music...you’ll be glad that you did! 

 

Book Review: Richard Langston’s The Clean: In the Dreamlife You Need A Rubber Soul (2026)

In the antediluvian age of the 1970s, long before the Internet became radicalized and the Worldwide Web was merely a hastily scribbled note on some young British computer scientist’s “To Do” list, teenaged rockers across the “fruited plain” were somewhat limited in our knowledge of the music we loved. You couldn’t look up a band “online” and while publications like Creem, Circus, Rolling Stone, and Crawdaddy provided a glimpse behind the veil into the mysteries of rock ‘n’ roll, for those of us who were stuck stateside (or didn’t have access to the New Musical Express), it could take us months…or even years to hear about our “favorite” new band. Word of mouth was the currency of the decade, and we developed friendships with like-minded punters who got their groove on to the Stones, Bowie, Zeppelin, Uriah Heep, Deep Purple, Mott the Hoople, and Alice Cooper. 

Records were lent, swapped, and sometimes stolen and we each gradually built up a personal playlist (and absorbed knowledge) of the music we liked. When punk hit the U.K. it took a couple of years to bubble up across most of the U.S. but when records by the Clash, Sex Pistols, the Buzzcocks, and others eventually became available, we repeated the cycle of knowledge of our early teens. The 1980s expanded our knowledge even further with MTV, an abundance of diverse music zines, and the growth of something known as “college radio.” By the end of the century, file trading and the web removed any barriers to learning about and listen to just about any band. All of which is to say “mea culpa” and apologies for my ignorance of the existence of a thriving late ‘70s/early ‘80s rock scene in New Zealand, much less of such a groundbreaking and entertaining band as the Clean, until the early 2000s.

Richard Langston’s The Clean: In the Dreamlife You Need A Rubber Soul

New Zealand journalist Richard Langston is well-versed in the birth and evolution of his homeland’s rock music scene as he was involved with it at the time as a fan and zine publisher in the ‘80s. His recently-published tome, The Clean: In the Dreamlife You Need A Rubber Soul, provides a wonderful and comprehensive oral history of the Clean, from the band’s humble D.I.Y. beginnings until the modern day. It’s a deceptively quick read, and not just because there are a lot of photos and such, but because Langston gets out of his subject’s way and just lets the commentary flow. Save for a few sentences here or a paragraph there to stitch the narrative together, Langston’s brilliance is in getting people talking and then just faithfully recording their memories. The result is a fast-paced story of a rock ‘n’ roll band that doesn’t depend on tawdry debauchery or tall tales to faithfully capture the band’s story.

Formed by brothers David and Hamish Kilgour in 1978 in Dunedin, New Zealand’s second largest-city, the Clean formulated a sound based on ‘60s-era pop, garage, and psychedelic rock blended with then current U.K. punk. The Clean ran through a handful of members, including good friend of the band Peter Gutteridge, before settling on a three-piece lineup that featured David on guitar and vocals, Hamish on drums, and Robert Scott on bass. All three musicians also wrote songs, albeit some more prolifically than others, and they began playing to sparse crowds in Dunedin and Auckland before releasing their debut single, “Tally Ho!” b/w “Platypus” in 1981 on New Zealand’s fledgling Flying Nun Records label. The record was a hit and was quickly followed by a 12” EP titled Boodle Boodle Boodle. Other seven-inchers and EPs followed, the band’s commercial success boosting Flying Nun’s shoestring operations.

The Clean’s Break-Up & Reunion

After a few years of living in a van while touring Dunedin, Auckland, Christchurch and locations in between these major New Zealand metropolises, the Clean essentially broke up, its members going onto various other musical projects, most notably Scott’s outfit the Bats. But the band’s incendiary live performances and scattering of vinyl was enough to help kickstart the New Zealand rock scene during the ‘80s, eventually taking it worldwide as bands like the Bats, Tall Dwarfs, and the Verlaines found audiences in the U.S. and in Europe. The Clean reunited in 1988 for a show in London opening for the Bats, and began playing and writing together again, resulting in their first full-length album, 1990’s Vehicle.  

Tours of the United States, Great Britain, and across Europe followed, as would uniformly-excellent records like 1994’s Modern Rock,1996’s Unknown Country, and 2001’s Getaway. Building a stateside audience that included indie rock fans like Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo and Matt Swanson of Lambchop, the band wrote a successful second chapter to an already influential career. Finding a stateside home with Merge Records (home to the almighty Superchunk!), the label released the exceptionally-comprehensive, two-disc, 46-song Anthology in 2003, introducing stateside fans to the band’s out-of-print early material. Merge also released the band’s final studio album, Mister Pop, in 2009 and they’ve also worked extensively with David Kilgour, releasing several of his solo albums and those with his band the Heavy Eights during the new millennium.  

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

This is just a condensed version of the Clean’s story – you’ll have to pick up the book to get the fascinating details – but should it whet your thirst to find out more about this great, underrated band (or the New Zealand rock scene itself), you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of Langstons’ The Clean: In the Dreamlife You Need A Rubber Soul. As a journalist, Langston covers all the bases, speaking with the band members, various friends and family of the band, other New Zealand musicians like Martin Phillipps of the Chills and Alec Bathgate and Chris Knox of Tall Dwarfs, as well as music biz supporters like Geoff Travis of Rough Trade Records and my ol’ “buddy” Gerard Cosloy of Homestead and Matador Records. Langston fills in any empty corners with previously-published interviews, show and album reviews, as well as personal correspondence between the band members, friends and family.

A word, also, about the look of the book…it’s freakin’ gorgeous! The Clean had several photographer friends who documented the band over the years, and the band held onto memorabilia like artwork, posters, and such for decades. As a result, In the Dreamlife is profusely and beautifully illustrated with more cool graphics than a lot of books about better-known artists. Much like the Clean’s music, the book’s layout displays a certain intuitive genius, utilizing various type fonts and sizes to separate the underlying oral history with Langston’s commentary and other text. At its core, however, In the Dreamlife is a story of a rock band that dared to dream, and to do so on its own terms. The Clean were, at heart, a punk band but with a creatively unique sound that forever colored outside the lines and limitations of any genre or expectations. They inspired a generation of indie rockers to follow, and that’s a fine legacy, indeed… (Feral House, published April 7th, 2026)   

Buy the book direct from the publisher: Richard Langston’s The Clean: In the Dreamlife You Need A Rubber Soul 

Book Review: Dave Thompson’s London’s Burning (2009)

British music journalist Dave Thompson is a veteran author of rock ‘n’ roll biographies, penning dozens of books on folks like Iggy Pop, Kiss, Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, among many others over the past couple of decades. As frequently as he has turned his insight towards dissecting the life and art of others, however, this is the first time that Thompson has used his undeniable talent to look inward at his own life and experience.

Subtitled “True Adventures on the Front Lines of Punk 1976-1977,” Thompson’s excellent London’s Burning is, as he calls it, a “memoir” without “too much me” included. Ostensibly the story of a year in the life of British punk rock, the teenage Thompson had a front seat to the birth and evolution of punk from a provincial underground phenomenon to a worldwide cultural revolution.

Dave Thompson’s London’s Burning

To tell this tale, Thompson relies on his own memories, and those of the many musicians that he has interviewed through the years, as well as those he spoke with specifically for the book. Beginning with the death of the glam-rock era and the lingering descent of pub-rock into obsolescence, Thompson’s personalized history of the first stirrings of punk is developed from his youthful vinyl obsession and eager attendance at dozens of shows by early versions of bands like the Sex Pistols, the Adverts, the Stranglers, and the Damned, as well as his friendships with many of the music-makers.

Thompson marks the flashpoint of British punk rock with the first performance of American rocker Patti Smith, her powerful, primal sound launching a hundred bands. Although the story touches upon many of the aforementioned and better-known punk outfits, Thompson takes great care to include obscure (but no less talented or fondly remembered) bands like the Arrows, Radio Stars, and Heavy Metal Kids in his exploration of the music. Sometimes his stories are funny, sometimes poignant, and sometimes even harrowing as Thompson describes the racism present in mid-to-late-‘70s England, as well as the violence that would come to be leveled against anybody perceived as being a “punk rocker.”

Thompson is being only a little disingenuous when he calls London’s Burning a memoir without too much “me” because, in truth, it is the presence of his younger self, and that experience that is central to the book’s immense charm. In remembering his youthful love of the music, and unbridled enthusiasm for the changes wrought by punk’s ascendance, Thompson also reminds us of why the “Class of ‘77” was so important in the overall evolution of rock music. The stories and memories of the assembled musicians are vital to the story here, but it is Thompson’s interaction and role as a documentarian that drives the book.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

British punk rock circa 1977-79 has been covered in abundance, almost to the point of absurdity, by dozens of books and hundreds, if not thousands of magazine articles and even compilation albums. Few have the firsthand knowledge and experience of Dave Thompson, though, and the talent to express it so succinctly and in an entertaining manner. Nobody has the stories that Thompson has accumulated, making London’s Burning the final word in ‘70s British punk rock. If you’re an old-school punk fan, you should definitely check this one out… (Chicago Review Press, published May 1st, 2009)

Review originally published by the Trademark of Quality (TMQ) blog…

Buy the book from Amazon: Dave Thompson’s London’s Burning

Book Review: Stanley Booth's Rythm Oil (2000)

Writer Stanley Booth is best-known for his 1984 book, Dance With the Devil, a chronicle of his time touring with the Rolling Stones. A frustrated novelist with an eye for detail, a naturally florid use of language, and a classic literary slant to his work, Booth’s best work has been in the field of music, especially the incredible essays that he wrote for publications like Esquire, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and the Village Voice, among others during the 1960s and ‘70s.

Booth’s Rythm Oil, subtitled “A journey through the music of the American South,” collects twenty of the writer’s best music-related pieces, the ambitious scope of the work covering everything from country blues and early rock ‘n’ roll to Memphis soul and 1970s-era blues-rock. Named for “rythm oil” [sic], an alchemical modern voodoo potion sold in the Beale Street shops of Memphis, the book itself is some sort of magical tome that really does provide a literary journey through the music of the time.

While Booth’s “Standing At the Crossroads,” an imaginative fictional flight of fancy that recounts Robert Johnson’s legendary meeting with the Devil, falls flat in its ambition, it’s the only hiccup that the reader will find in Rythm Oil. “Furry’s Blues” does a fine job of illustrating the poverty and racism experienced by country blues great Furry Lewis, while “Been Here and Gone,” Booth’s account of the funeral of Mississippi John Hurt, is poignant in its description of the event. “Blues Boy” offers a look into the life and career of the great B.B. King, while other chapters cover such artists as Al Green, Janis Joplin, Gram Parsons, James Brown, ZZ Top, and Elvis Presley.

Written with an autobiographical bent – Booth is an important participant in these stories – the format allows him to provide personal insight and emotion into the essays. Tying the music pieces together are strong articles that touch upon the city of Memphis, racism, and the South itself. Booth writes beautifully, with a real sympathy for his subjects, and no little knowledge of both the music and the history. If you want an entertaining education on both the South and its music, a snapshot of a certain time and place in pop culture history, Rythm Oil is the book for you. Highly recommended. (Da Capo Press, published October 1, 2000)

Book Review: Richie Unterberger's Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll (1999)

Subtitled “Psychedelic Unknowns, Mad Geniuses, Punk Pioneers, Lo-Fi Mavericks & More,” Richie Unterberger sets the bar pretty high for himself with Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Luckily for we readers, Unterberger delivers the goods, providing an exhaustive, if not comprehensive history of the obscure and eccentric in rock ‘n’ roll. Delving into the netherworld of true cult artists, Unterberger offers informative profiles of over 60 singer/songwriters, touching upon dozens more in brief comments and sidebars.

Unterberger breaks Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll up into thirteen distinct sections, ranging from “Psychedelic Unknowns” and “Punk Pioneers” to “Out of the Garage” and “Mad Geniuses & Eccentric Recluses.” Some of the artists Unterberger profiles will be familiar to any hardcore music fan – talents like Roky Erickson, Arthur Lee of Love, Syd Barrett, or Can – although relatively unknown to the great unwashed mainstream are nonetheless frequent touchstones in any serious discussion of rock music. Others artists profiled here, such as Joe Meek, Lee Hazelwood, Ronnie Dawson, or the Avengers have experienced recent surges in popularity due to CD reissues and rediscovery via zines or the Internet.

It’s with the completely obscure performers that Unterberger really shines, his journalistic prowess allowing him to research these one-shot wonders and come up with a cohesive history of long-gone artists like the Deviants, the Monks, or the United States of America. In every section, Unterberger reveals some long-lost gem of a story, but the fattest sections – those on ‘60s-era garage bands, European artists, and “mad geniuses” – seem to be those most closely looked at and covered in detail. Inside many of the sections Unterberger includes a chapter or sidebar, touching upon other artists, legendary indie record labels and trends like cassette culture. Unterberger isn’t stingy with his sources, either, recommending records/CDs for every artist as well as providing a bibliography of books and magazines. Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll also comes with a twelve-track CD to whet your tastes with tracks by the Deviants, Penelope Houston of the Avengers, the Music Machine and Savage Rose, among others.

For any music fan who is fed up with today’s sales-oriented major label signing philosophy and cookie-cutter, carbon-copy, made-for-MTV rockers, Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll will feel like a fresh breath of air. Discover the future of rock music by delving into its past – the artists Unterberger reveals here may not have sold a lot of records and, to be honest, some of them really had little or no talent. The styles showcased by these artists run the gamut from rockabilly, psychedelica, and pop/rock to punk, folk, and electronic experimentation. The one thing that they all had in common, however, was a singular vision, a passion for what they were creating and a sincere need to follow their muse, commercial considerations be damned. For this alone they deserve to be remembered, rediscovered and cherished for the true artists that they were. (Miller Freeman Books, published 1999)

Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™ music zine...

Also on That Devil Music: Richie Unterberger's Urban Spacemen And Wayfaring Strangers book review

Buy the book from Amazon: Richie Unterberger's Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll

Book Review: Al Kooper’s Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards (1999)

Musician, songwriter, label executive, producer – Al Kooper has made a living out of being the “Forrest Gump” of rock music. For better than thirty years, whenever something momentous was about to occur in rock ‘n’ roll, Kooper was certain to be involved in it. From his haphazard entry as a keyboardist on Dylan’s classic “Like A Rolling Stone” and playing with Dylan onstage in Newport to producing Lynyrd Skynyrd’s first three albums, Al Kooper has a resume that’s every bit as long and impressive as anybody’s in rock music. With this revised and expanded edition of Kooper’s earlier memoir, Backstage Passes, Al brings the tales of his storied career full circle.

Al Kooper’s Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards

A lively writer with an easily read, conversational style and more than a few stories under his belt, Kooper documents with Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards a career that has seen its shares of ups and downs. Beginning with the earliest stirrings of his interest in music, playing in teen bands and sharpening his skills, Kooper takes the reader on a romp through his rock ‘n’ roll universe. High points of the book include Kooper’s early days as a musical hustler, a samurai of songs writing tunes on spec for producers in need of material. Here Al provides the reader with a lesson in the economics of songwriting and the real history of the Brill Building.

Kooper’s major league breakthrough as a session player begins with his hilarious story of the session for Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” and its aftermath. It’s as a session player that Kooper is best known, sitting in on recordings with notable artists like Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, Mike Bloomfield, and far too many others to list here. Although Kooper speaks of his own solo career in Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards, he tends to give it short shrift in light of his stories of superstar session work. He goes into some detail on the formation and careers of Blues Project and Blood, Sweat & Tears, both projects in which he was an integral part until egos got in the way and Kooper would move onto the next challenge. His discovery of Lynyrd Skynyrd is, perhaps, the real feather in his cap; Kooper producing and playing on that band’s first three albums, arguably among the most important Southern Rock records ever made.

By the end of Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards, circa 1998, Kooper has pretty much given up on the music biz, going into teaching at the noted Berklee School of Music in Boston. Some reviewers of this book have made much ado over Kooper’s distinctively sour grapes attitude during the book’s last few chapters, Kooper viewing with some bitterness the current atmosphere in the music industry. Given my own fringe involvement with the industry as a critic and journalist, I can’t say that I disagree with him. The industry turns its back on older artists who aren’t still cranking out hits (and, therefore, profits).

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

As an artist, musician and producer Kooper comes from a time when, perhaps, the music mattered more than the marketing and labels weren’t quite the greedy conglomerate bastards that they’ve become today. As such, Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards is a captivating document, the honest, heartfelt memoir of, as Kooper terms himself, “a rock ‘n’ roll survivor.” Anybody who loves music should have a copy of this book on his or her shelf, right beside their latest CD purchases. Kooper’s Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards will entertain you, inform you, and keep you honest. (Billboard Books, published 1999)

Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™ music zine...

Book Review: Michael T. Fournier’s Double Nickels On the Dime (2007)

Although San Pedro’s favorite sons the Minutemen are almost universally praised, they are too often overlooked in favor of lesser punk bands like the Misfits or the Germs. True, the band’s landmark Double Nickels On the Dime album is typically named as one of the genre’s standing classics, but methinks that, much like Rodney Dangerfield, the Minutemen never really get the respect they deserve. I’d be willing to bet that many young punk rockers these days are more familiar with Green Day, NoFX, Hot Water Music, or even the Misfits than with the Minutemen.

This is an oversight that author/professor Michael T. Fournier is trying to correct with his 33 1/3 series book on the Minutemen’s Double Nickels On the Dime album. A well-known music journalist that has been published by both online and print magazines like Pitchfork, Chunklet, and Perfect Sound Forever, Fournier also teaches students at Tufts University about the history of punk rock. Fournier often uses Double Nickels On the Dime in his classes, exposing a new generation of punk fans to this incredible album.

The Minutemen were originally formed as the Reactionaries in San Pedro in 1980 by guitarist/singer D. Boon, bassist Mike Watt and drummer Frank Tonche, along with a second guitarist. George Hurley would replace Tonche, the other guitarist would disappear, and the trio changed its name to the more familiar Minutemen – mostly because the bulk of the band’s songs didn’t extend beyond the 60-second mark. Signed to SST Records, the Minutemen released its Paranoid Time EP in 1981, following with a full-length album, The Punch Line, later that year.

The band built its reputation by touring anywhere somebody would book them, often traveling with Black Flag, and even playing with R.E.M. at one time. By the time that they recorded their fourth album, the two-record Double Nickels On the Dime, the Minutemen had created an eclectic trademark sound that mixed hardcore punk with free-form jazz and scraps of pop, folk, and rock music. Only one of the album’s 44 songs comes within spitting distance of 3-minutes in length, most falling comfortably in the one-and-a-half to two-minute range, each song a short, sharp shock like a poke from a high-voltage cattle prod.

Fournier dissects the album, side-by-side, song-by-song, supplementing his own substantial insight with comments and memories from the Minutemen’s Mike Watt, fellow musicians like Black Flag’s Chuck Dukowski, and other friends and followers of the band. Fournier tells how the album’s sequencing came to be, diving deep into each song and exploring the creative energy behind every tune. By covering the album as he does, the writer also provides plenty of back story, band history, and an overall glimpse into the early-to-mid-’80s west coast punk rock scene.

If Fournier’s classes are anything like this book, they’d be a lot of fun to sit in on. Fournier writes with an easy-going tone, combining the enthusiasm of the unabashed fanboy with the everything-but-the-kitchen sink style of the modern music journalist. It makes for a complete story, to be sure, but also provides the reader with new insight into and newfound appreciation of the band’s work.   

Although I don’t believe that the Minutemen get anywhere near the respect they deserve, the continued efforts of Mike Watt, combined with the support of fans like Michael T. Fournier, has kept the band’s flame burning bright. If not for frontman D. Boon’s tragic death in 1985, the Minutemen would certainly have made the jump to a major label and a larger audience along with friends like Husker Du and Sonic Youth. Still, the band’s legacy and influence is enormous, largely fueled by the excellence of Double Nickels On the Dime. (Continuum Books 33 1/3 series, published April 18th, 2007)

Review originally published by Trademark of Quality (TMQ) blog

Buy the book from Amazon: Michael T. Fournier’s Double Nickels On the Dime 

 

Book Review: Drew Daniel’s 20 Jazz Funk Greats (2007)

Just about any aging hipster or backwards-gazing youngster with an interest in ‘70s-era underground culture is familiar with the British band Throbbing Gristle, but few of ‘em have actually ever really heard the band. Part of the reason for this is that TG were, well, somewhat loud and noisy in the pursuit of their particular artistic vision. The progenitors of what would later become known as “industrial music,” the four muckrakers that made up Throbbing Gristle – Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Chris Carter, and Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson – spun the fledgling genre out of their genuine anger at English society, tempered with a sound that was pure aural terrorism.

Throbbing Gristle’s third album, 1979’s 20 Jazz Funk Greats, eschewed the band’s previous alchemical brew of clanky metallic factory noise, found vocals, tape loops, and aggressively distorted sound to go in an almost completely different creative direction. As explained by writer Drew Daniel in his 33 1/3 series book on the album, 20 Jazz Funk Greats was both a departure from the band’s standard modus operandi, as well as a grand artistic statement. Lyrically, the album strays … albeit not far … from TG’s poetic obsessions with death, mayhem, and the perverse, dancing coyly into the battleground of interpersonal relationships (including their own), adding their unsubtle social commentary on the era to the mix.

Daniel points out that 20 Jazz Funk Greats actually includes none, and plenty of both, the album representing TG’s unique tongue-in-cheek perspective on jazz music and funk, in addition to their normal industrial-strength Sturm und Drang. From the off-putting album cover, where the four members look like anything but the “wreckers of civilization” that they’d been referred to by the British tabloids, to the relatively accessible sounds created by the band for the album, 20 Jazz Funk Greats is admittedly the creative high point of Throbbing Gristle’s brief, but notorious career.

Unlike those aforementioned listeners, Daniel has delved deep into the album, and dissects it here, song-by-song, with acute insight, and with some thought in providing the context and meaning of each track. Daniel had access to all four band members for the book, garnering valuable information in his conversations with each, also drawing upon the band’s historical record as documented in print (much of it in the British press, some through the excellent RE/Search Industrial Culture book).

Although Daniel comes across as a fanboy one moment, and a dry academic the next, his commentary on the album fits well within the 33 1/3 series’ purview overall. Although Daniel readily admits that 20 Jazz Funk Greats is not widely considered a classic album, he treats it as such in his exploration of both the album, and the band’s lasting importance and influence. In the end, he convinces the reader that, perhaps, this little-heard work by an obscure band is nevertheless deserving of another spin on the turntable. (Continuum Books, published December 15th, 2007)

Review originally published by Blurt magazine

Buy the book from Amazon: Drew Daniel’s 20 Jazz Fun Greats
       

Book Review: Cary Baker’s Down On the Corner: Adventures In Busking & Street Music (2024)

‘Busking’ is defined as “the act or practice of entertaining by dancing, singing, juggling, etc., on the street or in a public place,” which is a fairly comprehensive list of…you know…the kind of stuff that buskers actually do for the few coins tossed their way by passersby. Although they’re usually found in high-traffic urban centers, it’s not unusual for buskers to show up in even the smallest of burgs.

Our rural WNY town boasts of a population of >16k but we have a guy that dresses up in black leather and death metal face paint and rips off chords on an electric guitar and portable amp while standing by the side of Main Street. When the mood hits him, he migrates down the road to the smaller (8k) village of Brockport, setting up shop in front of the Vinyl Record Revival store where he can perform for college kids from SUNY. Truth is, busking is a time-honored tradition that has been around almost as long as humans began smashing two rocks together in rhythm.     

Cary Baker’s Down On the Corner: Adventures In Busking & Street Music

With his first book, Down On the Corner: Adventures In Busking & Street Music, writer Cary Baker takes a fairly comprehensive look at the busking tradition. I say “fairly” comprehensive because Baker hints at a second volume (yes, please!), but even if that never comes to fruition, Down On the Corner provides a deep look at many talents behind the tradition. Baker is a music biz lifer, formerly one of the best publicists in the industry for a number of record labels, including I.R.S. and Capitol Records as well as his own hard-working firm, Conqueroo, working with talents like Bonnie Raitt, Bobby Rush, Willie Nile, and R.E.M. Before all that, however, Baker wrote about music for publications like the Chicago Reader, Creem, and Trouser Press.

I’ve known Cary since we were both in high school and contributing to the regional hippie rag Sunrise, where we were mentored by rockcrit legend Rick Johnson. As a writer, I worked with him for decades (sometimes to his aggravation) in his role as publicist and can vouch for his knowledge of musical matters (many of which he had a hand in). Although many of us thought that he’d pen his first book about his years in the biz, it’s not really surprising that he chose busking as the subject of his first tome – Baker has been enchanted by street musicians since he was a teen, seeing bluesman Blind Arvella Gray perform at the market on Maxwell Street in his Chicago hometown. Appropriately, Down On the Corner kicks off on that long gone section of the Windy City before traveling around the world.

Blind Arvella Gray

 

The stories told by Down On the Corner are as enchanting as they are insightful, covering a wide range of bluesmen-and-women, folkies, country artists, and one-man bands in environs like NYC, New Orleans, London, Los Angeles, and Nashville. Although some of the names are familiar – Billy Bragg’s pre-fame busking years are an integral part of his story, and artists like Ted Hawkins, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Moondog, and Wild Man Fischer are well-known to even a few casual music fans as rising from the street to the suites as they hammered out careers of one sort or another on major and minor record labels. However, I was surprised to see talents like Americana legend Lucinda Williams, 1980s-era college rock faves Violent Femmes, folk-rocker (and former power-popper) Peter Case, ‘90s-era alt-rocker Mary Lou Lord, and bluesman Fantastic Negrito as having launched their careers on the streets.

Down On the Corner also introduces the reader to regional artists that are definitely more obscure or never got a proper shot at the brass ring, folks like Oliver Smith, Nashville’s Cortelia Clark, George ‘Bongo Joe’ Coleman, and the duo of Satan & Adam, every one worthy of further research on Discogs. Most of the artists relate their story in their own words, which can make for a lively conversation – I particularly liked reading about the social activism of the duo of David & Roselyn, or Mary Lou Lord’s adventures in the subways of NYC. Baker does an admirable job of capturing that ‘something special’ about each performer, and has delivered an overall well-written and well-researched…although never dull…book on busking that digs into the lives of the buskers as well as the tradition.           

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Down On the Corner is a quick read, with each chapter sort of open-ended and dependent on the reader to do their own research by checking out the featured artists’ music, some of which you can find on YouTube and most of which can be dug up on vinyl and CD. Aside from the artists, Baker also includes the localized busking scenes of places like Chicago, New Orleans, and Venice Beach, California, which provides an invaluable backdrop to the artists’ stories. The book includes a 16-page insert of vintage color and B&W photos of people and places that also help add to the book’s historical import. Down On the Corner is mighty impressive first effort from Mr. Baker, and doubly so as it shines a light on a seldom-addressed but nevertheless rich niche of music history. (Jawbone Press U.K., published November 12th, 2024)

Buy the book from Amazon: Cary Baker’s Down On the Corner

Book Review: Roman Kozak's This Ain't No Disco: The Story of CBGB (2024)

During my first trip from Nashville to ‘The Big Apple’ circa 1983 or ‘84, there was just one thing that I wanted to – visit the world-renown CBGB club in the NYC Bowery. A dive bar in a seedy neighborhood, the club launched the American punk scene with bands like Television, The Ramones, Patti Smith, Blondie, and Talking Heads, among many others from 1975-78. It was ‘ground zero’ for enthusiastic young punk-rock fanboys like myself. My buddy Thom, who was paying for the trip (we were ostensibly attending a trade show on business) was lukewarm on CBGB, but instead wanted to visit the Cedar Tavern in Greenwich Village where painter Jackson Pollock used to drink (and was later barred from for tearing up the joint…).

I begrudgingly went along to the Cedar (free beer being free beer, after all!) and after a few pitchers of the establishment’s finest lager, Thom was easily convinced to go catch a show at CBGB. Long Island NY’s Dancing Hoods were headlining that weeknight, with a long-forgotten band featuring actress Laura Dean (from the movie Fame) on the microphone opening. Recognizing Dean from the film, Thom was psyched to talk to her after the show, and the club’s dank atmosphere and blaring sound system lived up to my expectations. That was my only visit to the infamous venue, but it still lives large in my memory, especially since I drunkenly left behind an umbrella I’d paid a Korean shopkeeper three bucks for earlier that day.

For rock ‘n’ roll fans of an accruing age, CBGB was the stuff of legend – opened in 1973, the club hit its stride by 1975 when owner Hilly Kristal allowed an unknown band by the name of Television play regularly on a weeknight. Others soon followed, and although the implications of the scene weren’t apparent at the time, the CBGB’s cohort forever changed the direction of rock music in the U.S. and abroad, and while only a handful of ‘original’ CBGB bands went on to fame and fortune, the best of the lot still managed to leave behind an enduring legacy that is forever tied to the club. The roster of bands who performed at CBGB reads like a literal ‘who’s who’ of rock music; aside from the aforementioned hall of famers, among those gracing the Bowery stage were Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Madonna, The Police, The Fleshtones, Misfits, The Cramps, Bad Brains, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, and The Beastie Boys.

Billboard magazine editor Roman Kozak was there from the launching of CBGB & OMFUG (Kristal’s acronym for “Country, Bluegrass, Blues, and Other Music For Uplifting Gourmandizers), and his 1988 book This Ain’t No Disco: The Story of CBGB documents much of the club’s first decade or so with an oral history provided by the artists who performed, club employees and hangers-on, and Kristal himself. Out-of-print for decades, the book was recently (and deservedly) republished by Ira Robbins’ Trouser Press Books with permission from Kozak’s family. Chris Frantz of Talking Heads provides a new foreword and Robbins’ coverage on the 2006 closing of the club from Spin magazine and New York Newsday provides a coda to Kozak’s book. Photos by NYC scenester Ebet Roberts capture the charms of CBGB with B&W portraits of bands like Blondie, The Ramones, The Jam, and Television as well as the club itself.

It’s a damn shame that Kozak passed away shortly after the publication of This Ain’t No Disco, his only book (he also co-wrote a screenplay titled The Bomb) because he’s quite a good writer. Although approaching the book from a journalist’s perspective, Kozak’s light, conversationalist prose style weaves a solid narrative from the disparate interviews used to tell the story, which makes for an easy and fascinating read. As a fan who experienced CBGB in its prime, Kozak offers a keen eye in describing the club and its environs, as well as the people involved, who almost all have stories to tell. Kozak describes the lead-up to the club’s ascendancy as a ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Mecca’, writing of the club’s difficulties and mishaps as well as its small triumphs.

Although Kozak goes into some depth on the all-important 1975-78 period that launched several bands into the stratosphere, he digs into the aftermath as well, digging into the CBGB’s tenure of bands like the loco Dead Boys, the equally-crazed Plasmatics, and a ‘80s NYC hardcore scene that yielded H/C leading lights like Agnostic Front, Murphy’s Law, and the Cro-Mags. Although most of those interviewed for the book waxed positive about the club and its owner – folks like Annie Golden (The Shirts), Lenny Kaye (of Patti Smith’s band), Handsome Dick Manitoba (The Dictators), and Jim Carroll among them, as well as members of several CBGB-associated bands – Kozak wasn’t afraid to include the voices of some less infatuated speakers; the late, great Willy DeVille didn’t seem to be much of a Hilly Kristal fan.

After a lengthy and ultimately-futile fight with its landlord, CBGB closed after 33 years in October 2006, with club owner Kristal passing away the following year. Some of the grime-encrusted décor of the club was preserved by the high-end John Varatos retail store that opened at the location, and the club’s intellectual properties were reported sold to a group of unknown investors (to hawk t-shirts and such…). Kozak’s This Ain’t No Disco cements the club’s history, warts and all, preserving its legacy for rock ‘n’ rollers too young to have ever visited the East Village. Well-written and insightful, This Ain’t No Disco was penned by somebody that was ‘on location’ rather than a well-meaning historian looking backwards. I’d heartily recommend the book to any music fan curious about the legendary New York City venue. (Trouser Press Books, published October 15th, 2024)

Buy the book direct from the publisher: Roman Kozak’s This Ain’t No Disco

Also on That Devil Music:
CBGB’s and the Birth of U.S. Punk CD review
Jim Higgins’ Sweet, Wild and Vicious book review

Book Review: Jim Higgins’ Sweet, Wild and Vicious (2024)

On the Mount Olympus of rock ‘n’ roll, Lou Reed may be Apollo, the Greek god of music and poetry…or maybe he was the Oracle of Delphi, Pythia, whose prophecies are said to have come from divine possession. More likely, though, Reed was Hermes, the messenger god, who was also known as a bit of a trickster along the line of Loki of Norse mythology, for what else could Metal Machine Music be considered other than a terribly cheeky prank?

Perhaps Reed was an amalgam of all of these mythological figures. Over the course of a lengthy career that spanned six decades, Reed released nearly three-dozen studio and live albums – both solo and with his influential group the Velvet Underground – with more than a few clunkers in the mix, but enough solid efforts to build an impressive legacy. More importantly, he spread the message of rock ‘n’ roll, a particular gospel fueled by Reed’s unique and unparalleled creative vision.

Jim Higgins’ Sweet, Wild and Vicious

There is an entire shelf of books available that deconstruct Reed’s life and career, some obviously written by fans like Will Hermes and Anthony DeCurtis, which present the artist in an honest light, warts and all, while others (Howard Sounes, I’m looking at you…) seem to be purposely salacious, designed to denigrate Reed’s reputation without the good sense to realize that you can’t really tarnish a god’s image. Have these scribes ever read the story of Leda & the Swan? An entirely different bookshelf covers the lightning bolt-brief albeit influential existence of the Velvet Underground.

Yes, Lou was a prickly, contentious, misanthropic figure who particularly disliked the music media, and his feuds with critics like Lester Bangs are legendary in and of themselves. Reed could sometimes be hateful in words and actions, but looking at the artist from an arm’s length, it seems that most of the damage caused by Lou was targeted at himself. What few of the aforementioned books do, however, is really cover the man’s music in depth. For that, we have Jim Higgins’ Sweet, Wild and Vicious.

Higgins is a former pop music and jazz critic for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper – back in the day when arts coverage was valued by the mainstream press – and Sweet, Wild and Vicious is an invaluable listener’s guide to Reed’s largish catalog of music. Published by Ira Robbins’ Trouser Press Books, a commercial imprint with a fan’s perspective and plenty of rock ‘n’ roll history behind it, unlike most of these currently trendy “album-by-album” books, Sweet, Wild and Vicious doesn’t lapse into the “song-by-song” orthodoxy that tends to hamstring acute criticism in favor of word count (and, as author of one of these books – Sonicbond’s Spirit…On Track – I have some familiarity with the form). 

Lou Reed, Montauk Studio 2002, photo by Julian Schnabel, courtesy Light In The Attic Records

Lou Reed Album-by Album

Instead, Higgins treats each recording individually and organically in its entirety, providing context and history while calling out the best (and sometimes worst) of the songs. Sweet, Wild and Vicious begins, logically, with the four Velvet Underground albums circa 1967-1970 and, after a quick and insightful aside into the song “Sweet Jame,” dives into Reed’s solo career with his self-titled 1972 debut album, which I hold in higher esteem than does Higgins. Over the course of 246 pages, Higgins smartly and concisely tackles each album in the Reed milieu, including late-period VU live discs, up through Reed’s mischievous swansong, Lulu, his 2011 collaboration with heavy metal legends Metallica.

Higgins’ appreciation for even Reed’s minor works is obvious, but never fawning, and he seems to be able to pluck a gem or two out of even lackluster albums like Mistrial or Rock and Roll Heart. Higgins’ enthusiasm is contagious, his insight as thought-provoking as the artist’s work he’s writing about. The last few chapters of Sweet, Wild and Vicious go beyond Reed to discuss legendary critic Robert Christgau’s estimation of the artist’s body of work and “Children of the Velvet Underground,” i.e. musicians influenced by Reed’s work including some of the usual suspects – folks like David Bowie, Dream Syndicate, and Jonathan Richman – as well as some you may not have thought of like Yo La Tengo, Joy Division, and the Feelies.

The final two chapters feature “Orphans and Rarities,” significant performances that Reed contributed to various tribute albums or movie soundtracks, and “Remake, remodel,” tackling covers of Reed’s songs by other artists. As Higgins writes, “many people can claim to be better singers than Lou Reed, with a greater range or more technical skill. But that doesn’t mean they can improve on or even credibly deliver a Reed song.” His criticisms of the performances he describes are a perfect illustration of Reed’s unique ability to infuse a song with magic that is impossible for even more talented other artists to capture.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Higgins’ Sweet, Wild and Vicious is a quick read (no pun intended!), well-written and intelligent and providing even the casual Lou Reed fan with motivation to track down some of those albums you may have overlooked or forgotten about. I’d highly recommend it for anybody with any interest in the artist, the book a welcome addition to the rapidly-growing Trouser Press catalog, which also includes Mitch Cohen’s Looking For the Magic, a fascinating account of his tenure with Arista Records, several collections of Robbins’ wonderful writing on music, and the essential Zip It Up! The Best of Trouser Press Magazine 1974-1984, all of which deserve space on your bookshelf. (Trouser Press Books, published April 19th, 2024)

Buy the book from Trouser Press: Jim Higgins’ Sweet, Wild and Vicious

This Mine Has Played Out: Goldmine Magazine In 2023

I have quite a few rockcrit colleagues who write for Goldmine magazine, so I apologize in advance for stepping on any toes with this rant. Receiving and reviewing the winter 2023 issue of the long-running collectors’ zine, however, I feel that as the publication approaches its 50th anniversary, that it may be time to retire Goldmine to the old magazine resting home.

Goldmine was launched by publisher Brian Bukantis in September 1974 in the Detroit suburb of Fraser, Michigan. Bukantis’ agenda for the bi-monthly newsprint tabloid was to service the growing rock ‘n’ roll record and memorabilia collectors’ market. Early issues of Goldmine covered rock, country, blues, and soul music with artist interviews, discographies, and album reviews. One of the main features, however, were the seller’s ads, which offered albums, 45s, zines, and books by mail order from what would become a regular group of trusted sellers.

By 1977, both the magazine and the collectors’ market had grown to the point where Bukantis could take the publication monthly. I met Brian at a record convention in Detroit in 1979 and stayed in touch with him and editor John Koenig through the years. I wrote for Goldmine occasionally during the 1980s and ‘90s, and also contributed artist interviews and album reviews to similar publications like DISCoveries and Record Auction Monthly during both publication’s brief lifespans. At some point, Bukantis sold Goldmine to Krause Publications, a specialty publisher of price guides and other materials for collectors and hobbyists; it was a good fit. Krause later bought DISCoveries and folded it into Goldmine.

During its tenure as Goldmine’s owner, Krause did away with the magazine’s tabloid format in favor of a standard 8.5” x 11” magazine format largely printed on newsprint with color covers. In 2002, Krause was purchased by F+W Media, the New York City-based publisher of Writer’s Digest and other magazines. Goldmine continued more or less as it ever had, until F+W was bought out by a private equity fund, which continued expanding via purchases of other publications until F+W was saddled with debt and bought by another equity fund. The end-of-the-line came for F+W when the company filed for bankruptcy in 2019. The publisher’s assets were sold at auction, and Goldmine was bought at a discount by something called Active Interest Media (AIM), an equity fund-owned publisher of “niche enthusiast magazines.”

A year later, however, AIM dumped a number of its publications before being sold off itself. Goldmine ended up in the hands of the Project M Group, LLC which was formed in 2016 by CEO Enrique Abeyta, an investor and entrepreneur, and COO James Welch. Project M has been on a buying spree since its founding, gobbling up publications like heavy metal magazines Metal Edge and Revolver; Alternative Press magazine; and the BrooklynVegan music website. The first thing the new owners did was move Goldmine from Wisconsin to Brooklyn, and change the publication to a glossy, full-color 9” x 11” square bound format with better paper quality and ostensibly more content. With the change in appearance came an increase in the cover price, which had held at roughly $6 per month for years. Still, at ten bucks for a better zine, it was worth it…

The changes didn’t stop there, however…while the cost of an annual subscription stayed the same at $29.95, the frequency of the magazine was slowly reduced. What was once a bargain has become much less so, as the number of issues published each year dropped from twelve to six to the current quarterly publication schedule. The mail order ads, which had already dwindled to a handful of longtime advertisers, were finally eliminated altogether in favor of advertising for Goldmine’s online store. Record and book reviews were moved online and axed from the print edition altogether. Issues started featuring multiple covers, a gimmick no doubt inspired by Marvel and DC Comics’ long-standing practice of separating fans from their cash. Photos of the covers are also available to purchase and, given the email pitches that hit my in-box at least once a week, Goldmine seems more interested in selling me anything but the magazine.              

Back to the winter of 2023, and the new issue of Goldmine hit my mailbox with a thud. This issue has almost nothing that I’m interested in reading…with feature stories on Night Ranger and Foghat, the publication is touting new projects by two bands that even a lot of avid fans stopped caring about 40 years ago. There’s something on a guy that took a lot of photos of Bruce Springsteen, an excerpt from Bernie Taupin’s autobiography, and the obligatory three articles on The Beatles ‘cause they released a new song or something…for years now, Goldmine has never missed an excuse to put the Fab Four on the cover to help move some copies to its aging boomer readership. If not for Dave Thompson’s regular and welcome “Grooves” column, there’d be nothing I’d want to read.

The previous issue was similarly-vacuous and light on copy, and I blame both the magazine’s editor and the parent company. The Project M Group seems less interested in publishing a good magazine than in creating a “lifestyle” company by luring readers to the web store where you can buy records, books, t-shirts, photographs, and even stereo equipment. In the meantime, they’ve left editor Patrick Prince to continue steering the Goldmine ship. I have no beef with the editor – my infrequent dealings with Prince have been pleasant through the years, but he’s been the editorial overseer for better than ten years (2010-12 and 2015 to now) and he doesn’t seem to realize that any new music has been made since 1979.

The magazine’s editorial focus is long-past stale, and focused on a ridiculously-narrow slate of classic rock artists from the 1960s and ‘70s. Yo, Patrick, do you know what young vinyl fiends are collecting these days? Punk, new wave, and heavy metal bands from the 1980s and ‘90s! You couldn’t tell it from the last couple years of the magazine. Whereas the original Goldmine offered diverse coverage of musical genres, the current incarnation offers little beyond the same old tune, which is as tired as my arthritic knees. I love classic rock and blues music, but I get deeper coverage of bands I know and those I don’t from zines like Ugly Things, Maggot Brain, The Big Takeover, and even British music rags like Vive le Rock.

Goldmine has some talented and insightful writers on its freelance staff, folks like the aforementioned Thompson, Martin Popoff, Lee Zimmerman, Gillian Gaar, and Bill Kopp, among others, but I don’t believe that they’re being used to their full capabilities – especially since the zine has axed Zimmerman’s indie release column (a source of new music for a lot of us) along with the review section that frequently hipped readers to new music. An editorial change of course is needed, or else I don’t see Goldmine making it far beyond its 50th birthday.

Tucked in the pages of the winter issue is the publication’s circulation statement, which to the experienced reader signifies a publication in dire straits. Goldmine prints and circulates less than 6,000 copies of each issue, most of them sent to subscribers. They seem to have all but given up on newsstand circulation, which represents just a few hundred copies of each issue. This, my friends, is not a recipe for a successful regional publication, much less a magazine with a national profile. The record collecting field is wide open right now, and opportunities abound. This “mine” has played out, though, and unless Project M Group discovers a better editorial blueprint (Yo, Enrique, pick up a copy of the U.K. zine Record Collector), Goldmine will too soon wander into the publishing graveyard…

 

Book Review: Mary Lou Sullivan’s Raisin’ Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter (2010)

When guitarist Johnny Winter burst onto the rock music scene in 1969, his arrival was accompanied by a then-unprecedented amount of hype. Signed to Columbia Records with what was reported as the largest advance in history, expectations were unrealistically high for the young albino bluesman from Texas.

Truth is, by the time that Winter was introduced to the record-buying public, he was already a decade-long veteran of local and regional Texas bands, first performing at the young age of fifteen years old. In the 40 years since Winter’s “discovery” and the release of his self-titled debut album, the talented guitarist has endured a fearsome roller-coaster of fame and famine, addiction and alcoholism, acclaim, and indifference…and along the way he has created some great music and influenced a couple generations of guitarists that followed.

Mary Lou Sullivan’s Raisin’ Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter

Writer Mary Lou Sullivan first met Winter a quarter-century ago, and has become a trusted confidant to the tight-lipped musical legend. Her biography of Winter, Raisin’ Cain is the result of seven years of work and hundreds of hours of recorded conversations with Winter; the artist’s family and friends; and with musicians like Billy Branch, Jerry Portnoy, Bob Margolin, and Tommy Shannon, among many others. Raisin’ Cain is an authorized biography, meaning that Winter oke-doked the book, and the man even dug up dozens of photos to help compliment Sullivan’s 386 pages of hard-hitting but easy-to-read prose.

Raisin’ Cain touches all the bases of Winter’s lengthy, wild, and raucous 40-years in the business, from his early days on the Texas music circuit to his signing by manager Steve Paul and subsequent performance at the Woodstock Festival; Winter’s short affair with fellow Texan Janis Joplin and the dozens of women that have crossed his path; Winter’s heroin addiction and alcoholism; his record label deals, mismanagement, and re-emergence in the 2000s as an elder statesman of the blues.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

More than anything, Raisin’ Cain does a great job of capturing the one everlasting love of Winter’s life: blues music. From his early efforts to hold onto a pure blues sound in the face of pressure to rock ‘n’ roll, to his joyful production of Muddy Water’s late-career albums, to the making of nearly all of his recordings through the years, Sullivan captures it all with humor, insight, and deference to her subject.

Writer Mary Lou Sullivan digs as deep into her subject’s life as such great music biographers as Peter Guralnick did with Elvis or Robert Gordon did with Muddy Waters, interviewing everybody from Winter and his equally famous brother Edgar to former bandmates, managers, producers, fellow blues musicians, and many others. Sullivan’s writing style is to simply get out of the way and let those she’s interviewing tell the story, and she has strung together the story of Winter’s life and career masterfully. As a result, Sullivan has delivered the ultimate bio of the enigmatic bluesman. Raisin’ Cain is highly recommended for any Johnny Winter fan, of course, or anybody interested in blues music. (Backbeat Books, published May 1st, 2010)

Buy a copy of the book from Amazon: Mary Lou Sullivan’s Raisin’ Cain

Book Review: Chuck Eddy's Rock and Roll Always Forgets (2011)

Over the past 15 or 20 years, music criticism has become both ubiquitous and mostly disposable. The evolution of this once-hallowed literary endeavor can arguably be traced to the criticism of classical composer George Handel by his contemporary Charles Avison in 1752, although it would be modern scribes like Dave Marsh, Lester Bangs, Paul Williams, and Greg Shaw, among others, that would define and develop the dubious art form known as “rock criticism” during the 1960s and ‘70s.

As writing about music evolved beyond the milieu of handmade zines and poorly-distributed magazines, it would eventually become known as “music journalism,” and album reviews and artist interviews could be read everywhere from syndicated columns and glossy mainstream publications to small-town newspapers. Until recently, many big city newspapers usually had one, if not two writers working the “entertainment beat,” talking about music and such. Not coincidently, the downfall of music criticism can be traced somewhat to the advent of the Worldwide Web, which allowed anybody to be a publisher, and everybody to be a critic, albeit without editors and whether or not they had writing chops, or even a faint knowledge of music history whatsoever.

Now the Reverend has a vested interest in this unfortunate evolution of music criticism, what with being an old-school rockcrit who teethed on Marsh and Bangs and Metzger, and who mentored under, perhaps, the greatest of the early rock ‘n’ roll wordsmiths – the one and only Rick Johnson. But the Rev is no aging Luddite blaming all the publishing industry’s ills on the gosh danged Internet. While the web has definitely upset the traditional applecart as far as music magazines go, it has also enabled low-budget, high-quality media outlets like Blurt to exist.  

But even among the glut of online music zines and personal blogs, a few intelligent voices have managed to rise to the top like cream, writers like Jim DeRogatis, Martin Popoff, Fred Mills, and Chuck Eddy managing to bring new insight and perspective to an increasingly noisy critical realm too often overwhelmed by static and poorly-formed opinions expressed in too-brief reviews. Eddy, in particular, has distinguished himself as a critic to be reckoned with, both as music editor at the Village Voice and as a contributor to such publications as Creem, Rolling Stone, and Spin, among others. Eddy has also penned a couple of highly-entertaining tomes of music criticism and theory – The Accidental Evolution of Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the controversial and often hilarious Stairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe, which made a strong argument for the inclusion of recordings by funk-soul diva Teena Marie.

Eddy’s latest book, Rock and Roll Always Forgets, is sub-titled “a quarter century of music criticism” and, as such, it collects essays and reviews chosen from throughout Eddy’s 25 years as one of America’s most entertaining and annoying music critics. While it suffers slightly from a lack of an overall concept as his previous books, Eddy has broken everything down to thematic chapters, such as “Predicting The Future,” in which he illustrates the futility of predicting where music is going by using his own past statements, and “Alternative To What,” where Eddy questions the often-mindless pigeonholing of music through reviews/essays on the Ramones, Big Black, SST Records, Nirvana, Marilyn Manson, and others.  

Much of Rock and Roll Always Forgets is entertaining and thought-provoking as only Eddy can achieve. Chapters tackle heavy metal (Metallica, AC/DC, Def Leppard); hip-hop (Sir Mix-A-Lot, Just-Ice, Spoonie Gee); and pop music (Debbie Gibson, Pet Shop Boys) as well as offering perspective on the racial aspects of soul and rap music with fascinating pieces on Eminem, Kid Rock, and the aforementioned Teena Marie. Most of this stuff is well-written and insightful, offering a unique perspective and personality that few music critics are wont to reveal these days. Eddy’s willingness to champion genres often ignored or outright disdained by the typical rock critic, such as metal and rap, is legendary, but he also displays a deft hand at writing about pop and even vintage music.  

Still, it’s easy to find evidence of middle-age dementia creeping into Eddy’s work. His complimentary reviews of contemporary Nashville floss like Mindy McCready, Toby Keith, and the horrible Big & Rich, among others, may read well, but they also provide cause to suspect Eddy’s critical credentials. Sure, Eddy has covered glossy pop like Michael Jackson and the Spice Girls before – and done so without a hint of irony or patronizing opinions – but his dismissal of “pseudo-traditionalist hypocrisy” as the “country party line toed by most rock critics” as an excuse to wax ecstatically about Montgomery Gentry is pure D bullshit.

Like whatever music that you wanna like, Chuck, but the Reverend is old enough to remember when Jon Rich was trying (in vein) to become a rock star in Nashville and Toby Keith was the punchline to a Music Row joke. Country music really was better back in the day of Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings and David Allen Coe, and its current persona as 1970s-era singer/songwriter lite-rock with twang is a slap in the face to those that came before. That’s not a party line to be drawn in the sand, that’s just reality. Coe might be one ugly sumbitch, but he can sing circles around today’s crop of country stars relying on Pro Tools and image consultants to get over with the suburban housewives that buy their records. Don’t try and sell us sour milk and claim that it’s aged whiskey…

Eddy’s critical flights of fancy notwithstanding, he’s a solid writer of no little wit and humor, and if we readers (such as yours truly) can agree to disagree on some of the dreck that he immortalizes in Rock and Roll Always Forgets, we can all find middle ground. As music critics go, Chuck Eddy has always been a bit of a provocateur, and his tendency to risk ridicule with absurdist or unpopular critical stances is what has always made him an engaging and intelligent writer. Rock and Roll Always Forgets certainly includes its share of those questionable moments, but it’s also an entertaining and informative look back at the past quarter-century of popular music. (Duke University Press, published August 10th, 2011)

Review originally published by Blurt magazine, 2011

Book Review: Jerome Blanes’ Outsiders by Insiders (1997/2009)

Unless you’re a 1960s rock aficionado, or a specific collector of the era’s freakbeat and garage rock vinyl, it’s unlikely that you’ve ever heard of the Outsiders. One of the fave mid-to-late ‘60s bands in the Netherlands, the Outsiders were rock ‘n’ roll pioneers, teen idols, studio innovators, and ready-for-primetime musicians who, sadly, never broke out of Amsterdam, much less made their way to London, Los Angeles, or New York City where they may have found a larger audience. After my review of garage-rock legend Greg Prevost’s recent book, On The Street I Met A Dog for the Rock and Roll Globe, his publisher Massimo del Pozzo sent me a copy of Jerome Blanes’ excellent tome Outsiders by Insiders from Misty Lane HQ in Italy.

Jerome Blanes’ Outsiders by Insiders

Originally published in Dutch in 1997 and later updated and translated for republishing in English in 2009 by Misty Lane Books, Outsiders by Insiders is a timeless look behind the scenes at one of the best bands to be shrouded in rock ‘n’ roll obscurity. The Outsiders basically existed from 1965-69, with the band’s earliest Dutch chart success experienced during their first couple of years. They released thirteen charting singles during this period, as well as three full-length albums – one a collection of their singles (Songbook) – and their self-titled 1967 LP featuring a studio side and a live side, which was perfect as the Outsiders were known across the Netherlands as a dynamic and electrifying live act.

The band’s de facto swansong was their third album, 1968’s C.Q., which initially sold little or nothing but has since garnered status as a classic psych-garage-rock album that deserves space in your collection. Whereas most European bands were falling over their amps in an attempt to mimic the Beatles, the Outsiders drew inspiration from the R&B-influenced bad-boys in the Pretty Things and the Rolling Stones, even opening for the Stones for one of their 1966 Dutch appearances. The best-known Outsiders line-up was comprised of singer/songwriter Wally Tax, guitarists Ronnie Splinter and Tom Krabbendam, bassist Appie Rammers, and drummer Leendert Busch, with Frank Beek taking Rammers’ place from 1968-69.

Blanes does a wonderful job with the book, Outsiders by Insiders providing an oral history of not only the band, but the Dutch rock ‘n’ roll scene altogether, going into exhaustive detail about the musical and cultural evolution experienced by the Netherlands during the 1960s (societal growing pains that were similar to those in both the U.K. and the U.S.). Years of interviews are compiled into a coherent and succinct narrative that crams a lot of life and energy into roughly 170 pages. Blanes conducted extensive interviews with the band members, friends and hangers-on, and managers and promoters, and has outlined a fantastic story about starry-eyed teens searching for fame and fortune.

Wally Tax of The Outsiders

 

Sadly, it was never meant to be for the Outsiders, whose most effective manager was also unable to take them to a higher level of success. Although the band made a few performances in France, they never received an opportunity to play in England, which may have been more receptive to their harder-edged R&B-tinged garage-rock sound. Blanes mentions but a little of the friction that occurred between the band members and, by all accounts, the original Outsiders stayed relatively tight throughout their lives, and many continued playing music well into the new millennium. Short-sighted management was slow to recognize changes in the musical currents that were occurring internationally circa 1968 or so, and a lone U.S. visit by the Outsiders did little to advance their careers while less creative Dutch contemporaries like Tee Set and Shocking Blue enjoyed massive late ‘60s U.S. radio hits.

Blanes work on Outsiders by Insiders is impressive, the book an easy read providing a comprehensive history of the band. Although I haven’t seen the original Dutch version of the book, Misty Lane’s edition is as swanky as the aforementioned Greg Prevost book, with heavy glossy paper and a wealth of B&W photos of the band, memorabilia, and other rock ‘n’ roll ephemera sure to please any hardcore collector. The final chapter includes sections on each band member and what they did after the Outsiders, while an extensive discography and session notes provide those with a love of minutiae with the cheap thrills they crave. Overall, Outsiders by Insiders is a solid rock biography that has flown under the radar for far too long, as have the Outsiders themselves. My curiosity piqued by the story told within these pages, I sought out the  Outsiders albums on CD and have not been disappointed.  

Misty Lane Magazine

Along with the Outsiders book, Misty Lane head man Massimo del Pozzo also sent the most recent copy of their Misty Lane magazine. Although the cover date on issue #21 is 2007, the music that del Pozzo and his contributors write about is timeless, so the zine offers a great read despite its vintage! Features in this issue cover 1960s and ‘70s-era artists like the Jefferson Airplane, Blues Magoos, The Choir/Raspberries, Blues Project, Crabby Appleton, and Leaf Hound, vinyl from all of which is heavily traded on the collectors’ market. The issue also includes coverage of some bona fide obscurities known only to the most dedicated of crate-diggers, bands like Rising Storm, Sir Lord Baltimore, Chosen Few, and Third World War.

The zine also includes an interview with Ugly Things publisher Mike Stax, currently of the band the Loons and previously of the Tell-Tale Hearts, which goes a long way towards outlining the artist’s musical obsessions. I’m a Neil Merryweather fan, but even I didn’t know about his early albums with the band Merryweather, a situation quickly fixed by a moderately-expensive sojourn to Discogs. The zine’s writing is enthusiastic and informative, and the contributors track down original band members when available to get their stories directly. There’s the usual bunch of record reviews and other pop culture material, presented in a somewhat old-school graphic format, on glossy paper with lots of color photos. The best thing is that Massimo has told me that he’ll be resurrecting the zine sometime later this year, which is good news, indeed! Check out the Misty Lane website for more details on all the books, zines, and groovy records they have available…

Wally Tax photo by A. Vente / A. & F. van Geelen - Beeld en Geluidwiki - Gallery: Fanclub