The Heroin Diaries

The Heroin Diaries

A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star

By Nikki Sixx

As I get older, I've become much more discerning about the culture I digest. I'm 37 years old and I have a family, a job and hobbies. I can't read, listen and watch everything (unless someone pays me to do so). With the seemingly bottomless amount of culture out there to peruse, you have to set parameters lest you drown in the tsunami of books, music, television and film that comes out every year. So I've become a bit picky with my culture. I maintain a strict diet of nutritious culture (a term I have not yet had time to define, but I'm hoping strikes a chord enough so that you know what I'm talking about) and try to avoid junk culture (i.e. reality television, nonsensical Hollywood blockbusters, radio friendly pop music and bad YA fiction). I do this by asking myself before hand: "will anyone remember this in 5-10 years?" If the answer is yes, then I'll give it a shot.

Some might call me a snob, and that's fine. I have no problem with that. A snob, with all its negative connotations, implies someone who is judicious and shrewd in their choices and life is too short to waste on things covered by Perez Hilton and TMZ. In fact, whenever I hear someone invoke those terms (along with other including buy not limited to Paris Hilton, Dancing with the Stars, The Bachleor, Twilight and any television show that ends in the word "Wars") I instantly think less of their culture choices and will think carefully about following up on anything they recommend. Harsh, I know, but like I said... I'm not interested in wasting my time on crap.

Which is why my lifelong love affair with glam metal makes almost zero sense. Glam metal is the very definition of junk culture. Glam metal from the 1980s is formulaic rock at its worst. If you don't believe me, go listen to every album ever recorded by Poison, Warrant, Extreme and Whitesnake and get back to me. Bet you don't get past Cherry Pie.

Oh sure, my musical tastes have expanded over the years to incorporate everything from Bluegrass to African music to minimalist techno (I even own a copy of Trout Mask Replica, though I admit that I don't get it). But come Saturday night when a couple of beers have lubricated my sense of decency I like nothing else but to crank up Cinderella, Ratt or my all-time personal favorite: Motley Crue.

Full disclosure: Motley Crue's Shout at the Devil was the very first album I ever owned, and I owned it on vinyl (yeah, I'm that cool). I got it for my 8th birthday and I played the living shit out of that record for years. I remember that the album was all matte black with a glossy black pentagram on the front (I still cannot believe that my mother bought it for an 8 year-old). The album folded out to reveal the four members of the band. I knew they were all men because their names where men's names, but they sure looked like girls. But holy fuck did they look cool with all that leather and metal. I wanted desperately to be that cool. And of all the guys in the band it was Nikki Sixx I wanted to be.

Even after I discovered Nirvana and moved on, I have remained a Motley Crue fan my entire life. I wrestle with this because despite their reputation as the dirtiest, nastiest, most reviled band in a dirty, nasty and reviled style of music (metal) and their perceived place as noting more than a musical sideshow (Vince Neil and Tommy Lee's foray into the realm of reality television didn't help matters) I still, to this day, believe that they have a canonical place in the history of music, and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise. OK, sure, they aren't the best musicians and their music is uneven but they defined what a band should look and act. Motley Crue personified metal. They were everything. And the reason for this was Nikki Sixx. Without Sixx, Motley Crue was simply Ratt, The Scorpions or (good God!) Dangerous Toys. Sixx, the bassist and primary songwriter in Motley Crue, was the man who brought the band together and was the driving force behind this rise to stardom. He seemed to drag the band, whose exploits seemed to indicate an ambivalence to fame and fortune, kicking and screaming into the limelight and held them there even while his physical, personal and psychological life crumbled.

Say what you will, but for a seven year stretch between 1983 and 1990 Motley Crue was arguably the biggest band in the world. Sure, they are/were misogynistic, drug-addled maniacs, but they were the logical extension of trashy, glam rock established by the likes of The New York Dolls (and if you've never listened to The New York Dolls, do yourself a favor). But in that span, they recorded four multi-platinum albums (Shout at the Devil, Theater of Pain, Girls Girls Girls and Dr. Feelgood) even though their primary songwriter (Sixx) was descending deeper and deeper into heroin addiction, an addiction that would take him to the brink of death on a fateful evening in late 1987 when he ODed and was declared dead.

The Heroin Diaries is essentially Sixx's diaries from Christmas 1986 through Christmas 1987 which coincides with the recording of Girls, Girls, Girls (Motley's sleaziest album by far), the subsequent tour and the worst days of Sixx's addiction and depression. It's a diary, and one written by a guy who was either freebasing or recovering from a night of freebasing almost 300 of those 365 days so I'm not really going to discuss the caliber of the writing. It was a personal journal for God sakes. The subject matter however, is dark, repetitive and downright scary. The Heroin Diaries takes you into the deepest recesses of six's mind at a time when he himself thought he was losing it. As an added bonus, there is commentary from the primary players (Nikki, his bandmates, various record execs, friends, family and his then girlfriend, Vanity) after most of the entries to provide context.

I know that rock and roll biographies and autobiographies always seem so indistinguishable one from the next what with their expectedly lurid tales of sexual and narcotic one-upmanship but this one is different in that it was written first hand and largely under the influence of the substances that musicians tend to glorify once they sober up and look back. The Heroin Diaries deserves recognition for its brutal honesty, not about music or the industry but rather about Sixx himself and the way in which he deals with his addictions day in and day out (and the way in which he hides his addictions). It is the most candid look into the psychotic mind of a junkie that I have ever read (this includes Naked Lunch and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas).

On thing, however, troubled me about The Heroin Diaries. It's a shame that either the publisher (MTV Books?) or Sixx himself thought so little of these diaries that they were packaged as a full color book with photos and graphics on every page. The paper itself is magazine glossy and the entire package unfortunately takes away from the gravity of subject matter. These are the intensely personal ramblings of a rock and roll junkie and deserved better than a pseudo-magazine. I would have liked to have seen this published correctly, by a more literary press who might have given the diaries the treatment they deserved as an insight into the mind of a rock and roll junkie and as a piece of pop culture history.

Motley Crue may look the part of junk culture, but they most certainly are not. It's high time we all owned up to the fact that they played an important role in the evolution of rock and roll, glam and metal and stop selling them short by taking their output and treating it like an article in Metal Edge Magazine. Nikki Sixx may not be a musical genius but he's done enough by now to garner some serious respect.

A Visit From the Goon Squad

A Visit From the Goon Squad

By Jennifer Egan

Jennifer Egan broke my heart. She broke it long and she broke it hard. But more on that in a moment.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a acute piece of loose-fitting fiction that follows the lives of two generations of friends and acquaintances of varying degrees of connection. The narrative centers around Bennie, an aging punk rocker turned record producer and his mysteriously alluring assistant Sasha. Both Bennie and Sasha have secrets that won't tell and the novel simultaneously unravels and wraps them up tighter. The book starts in the middle and moves from the past to the future with jarring frequency, yet exquisite ease. Over the course of the book, the characters lives are intertwined into a Gordian Knot of wrong turns and lost opportunities. Yet somehow through sheer perseverance (in the sense of not dying) it all turns out and, like all great stories, ends with a concert (don't worry, this is not a spoiler).

As a work of fiction, A Visit from the Goon Squad is a prickly, sardonic ball of literary yarn. Prickly in the sense that it is possesses a hyper-intelligent self-awareness that reflects the emotions and reactions of the characters right back on the reader in terrifying clarity and sardonic in the sense that the novel seems to be hyper-intelligently self-aware of its self-awareness. Its a sort of meta-self-awareness that almost makes the novel too clever for its own good. Almost.

Just as an example, consider this maddeningly astute thought from a writer interviewing a young movie starlet:

I would like nothing more than to understand the strangeness of Kitty's world - to burrow inside that strangeness never to emerge. But the best I can hope for is to conceal from Kitty Jackson the bald impossibility of any real communication between us, and the fact that I've managed to do so for twenty-one minutes is a triumph.

By the end of this novel Egan has me reassessing the depth of my emotional responses. When I cry, am I crying because I am truly sad or am I deeper inside myself watching myself cry in order to illicit sympathy from the closest available acquaintance? And if I cry and think about crying at the same time, which one is the real me? Is there another me even farther back that watches myself watching myself? and so forth...

Like I said, this book is often too smart for its own good. But it's fantastic examination of life and hope and carrying on. As Egan writes: Time's a goon.

But I mentioned that she broke my heart. Well yes indeed she did. But it requires me to delve into what some might consider trivial (and for those of you who do think it's trivial, you don't know me very well). Much of this novel centers around the music industry and specifically the punk rock scene, a scene that I was never part of (too young) but a huge fan of (via unhealthy infatuations with The Velvet Underground and The Ramones that spiraled out of control). In one particularly avant-garde chapter entitled Great Rock and Roll Pauses by Alison Blake (written in a series of slides rather than in narrative form, I might add), Egan discusses an issue near and ear to my heart: Pauses in rock songs, those sudden false endings that sit in the middle of songs to add emphasis, a musical exclamation point via the absence of music.

She cites some exquisite rock and roll pauses including the one in "Good Times, Bad Times" by Led Zeppelin, "Roxanne" by the Police and "Bernadette" by the Four Tops. Great songs and great pauses, no question. But she completely neglects to mention the single greatest rock and roll pause of all time:

Waiting Room by Fugazi

Oh, Jennifer. For someone who name dropped a veritable buffet of my favorite punk rock bands from Black Flag to the Circle Jerks to The Cramps how could you have left out Fugazi? How could you overlook the pause that carries more gravity than all the other pauses in the history of rock and roll? How, Jennifer? You call yourself punk? Shame!

Such a formidable novel, such a criminal omission.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

By Amy Chua

Ah, the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Reminds me of a story...

One Christmas during elementary school my parents bought me a guitar. I was ecstatic! My mother signed me up for lessons at a place downtown called Hi-Note and I hauled my new guitar in a pillowcase down there week after week to get private lessons with a teacher there. Problem was, I hated, hated, HATED my teacher. She scared me and didn't really inspire me to play. I was too embarrassed to tell my mom that my teacher scared me so I simply told her I wanted to quit.

She let me.

To this day, it is one of my greatest regrets. I wish I had had the vocabulary to express that it wasn't the guitar I wanted to quit but rather the teacher. But there is a part of me that also wishes that my mother had forced me to continue. I would have done so kicking and screaming, but it would have worked out in the end (or at least I imagine it would have). Long story short, with all due respect to my mum, I suspect that there are advantages to having a tiger mother.

I heard about this book about a year ago when the media circus surrounding Amy Chua's "defense of the Chinese parenting technique" sent Western parents into a feeding frenzy of contempt and scorn. Having spent the past decade living in Taiwan and dealing with parents of Chinese decent (Taiwan is 98% ethnically Chinese), I was more than a little intrigued about what Chua had to say and was curious to see how close she was to what I see from the parents of my students. More on that in a moment.

First, the nuts and bolts of this book have been discussed to death in the media and on blogs all over the Internet and I have no intention of summarizing the book here. The crux of Chua's argument (at least in the first two thirds of the book) is that, by and large, what she calls the "Chinese Parent" is far superior to the Western parent in producing math whizzes, musical prodigies and all-around model children. In the beginning, Chua lays out the checklist of things Chinese parents simply never allow their children to do:

• Attend a sleepover
• Have a play date
• Be in a school play
• Complain about being in a school play
• Watch TV or play computer games
• Choose their own extracurricular activities
• Get a Grade less than an A
• Not be the #1 student in every subject except gym and drama
• Play any instrument other than the piano or violin
• Not play the piano or violin

I can say with a degree of certainty that the above checklist describes a good number (though not all) Chinese parental expectations in Taiwan. So if anyone out there who doesn't live in or near a Chinese (or Taiwanese or Korean or Japanese) society and is appalled at that list, check yourself at the door. She's right. It's true. This is not tongue in cheek humor. This is very much the expectation for all Asian parents, more or less. Deal with that and let's move on. 

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is a very interesting and often thought-provoking memoir about Chua's experiences as a Chinese-American mother raising her children (Sophia and Lulu) in the traditional Chinese fashion. Sophia and Lulu were brought up in a strict, no nonsense environment that stressed excellence and achievement over all else (happiness included). This included five to six hours of piano (or violin) per day, every day, even when they went on vacation and a strict and unbendable academic schedule that allowed the children absolutely no time for social engagements.

But one must remember that it is a memoir. A humorous memoir. A humorous memoir about parenting.  Sure, it's a humorous memoir rife with the sort of family tumult and turbulence that one only sees in the most dysfunctional families in film. But it is humor and it is a memoir. Furthermore, the last third of the book is an open admission that the Chinese parenting model isn't necessarily the best (I am a firm believer that theoretical models, especially those of the social science variety are best left in textbooks and classrooms. They never work in practice. See: communism, Chinese and Soviet application of, but I digress). It is not a guide on how to raise your child in the Chinese fashion no matter what .

Despite what so many media hounds and angry soccer moms seem to think, Chua's book, while often pretentious and snobby, isn't a validation of the Chinese model nor is it a crusade against Western methods. Rather it is one woman's experience as a mother. Chua started out with a particular goal for her children and dedicated herself and her children's childhood to achieving that goal and I believe her when she says that she did it all for her children. I know because I see it every day with the parents of my students. 

That being said, I think Chua went overboard, even by Chinese standards. I'm not vilifying her, I'm just expressing what I think based on what I've seen. While I have absolutely no doubts that Amy Chua is not even close to the most ambitious Tiger Mother in the world (the worst example most definitely lives somewhere in Mainland China and I would never, ever want to meet her or her mutant, freaky children) she is not a typical example of a Chinese mother, either. The checklist above is most certainly standard fare among Chinese parents, however I have never met a parent during my decade in Taiwan that took excellence, achievement and perfection so seriously or so far. Nor have I ever met any parent that has dedicated so much time, effort and money toward their children's education.

What Chua fails to mention is the aloofness that Chinese parents often have for their children. Succeed, yes. Parents will give children the resources in which to achieve that success. But children must do it by themselves. Parents are busy. They have jobs working for bosses that couldn't give a damn about Junior's piano recitals and I don't think I have to explain that Asians tend to work longer hours and take less vacations (if any). This system works because of the ingrained system of shame inherent in Asian cultures (guangxi). Parents push their children because they don't want to lose face among their friends and neighbors (also because until recently, there was no notion of pension in Asian countries and children were seen as insurance policies for aging parents. Push the children into high paying jobs so that the parents can live in relative comfort in their old age. Furthermore, children lose their hair and become suicidal while studying because they do not want to shame their parents or lose face among their peers. Simply put, Lulu (Chua's second, rebellious daughter) wouldn't exist in a traditional Chinese society. Lulu is a product of the west. And that's OK.

Although I have never seen a parent as involved as Chua, during my years in Taiwan I have seen glimpses of what she describes. Parents in Taiwan have the capacity to drive their children to levels of excellence that one rarely sees in Western children of the same age (especially in math, science and classical music). Much of this is rote learning, something that is very much shunned in the West in favor of making learning fun. As well, Taiwanese parents view their children as an investment for the future and therefore spend lavishly on their education. Parents enroll their children in endless after-school programs (cram schools) to give them a leg up among their classmates in everything from English, science and math to music, sports and logic. Due to this over-emphasis on study many Taiwanese children lack basic social skills and have trouble thinking critically, but that's a rant for another book.

But for every overachieving child prodigy I meet and teach in Taiwan there are dozens and dozens of entirely mediocre students. And beyond that there are just as many lazy, incompetent students who would rather sleep through class, flip the bird to their teachers and waste time until they can get home and play online games until they die in front of their computer screen at the age of 26. I would even hazard a guess that the proportion of overachievers, regular achievers and slackers is virtually the same in Asia as it is in the West. We often forget that China, alone, has over a billion people. It is over four times larger than America alone. Add Japan, Taiwan and Singapore to that mix and the numbers are staggering. Of course it produces more prodigies. It's a simple numbers game.

So I'm not sure whether Chua is entirely correct in her assertion that she raised her children in the traditional Chinese way. It is a Chinese way, but not the only way. There are variations. I would hazard a guess that what she has mistaken as the Chinese method is in actuality an immigrant method or a lower-class method. A section of parents who whether for geographical or social reasons feel the need to horse whip their children toward greatness in an attempt to drag their families from what they perceive as the margins of society into the limelight. I don't know. I'm not a social scientist, but I do know that I've never met a tiger mother of Chua proportions anywhere in Taiwan and there's more Chinese people here than anywhere in America.

But I liked this book and I learned a lot. And despite the fact that I am not the product of a tiger mother (far from it) nor do I see either myself or my (Taiwanese) wife being tiger parents I have taken a lesson or two from this book and intend to implement them, namely choosing their extracurricular activities and not allowing them to quit simply on a whim. A little pressure and a little coercion never hurt anyone and acquiring a skill is an invaluable asset later in life whether it's violin, tennis or flower arranging.

But if there is one single lesson I learned after finally reading Amy Chua's parenting memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother it is that Americans (especially those in the news media industry) seem to have problems with reading comprehension, nuance and irony. The shit storm and fallout that pulsed, radiated and mutated from the pages of Tiger Mother seem so unwarranted and completely fabricated once you actually read the entire book (which leads me to assume that a good amount of people who did raise a fuss about this book didn't finish it). Chua's memoir is an truthful account of how she raised her children and she should be commended not only for her candid honestly but also for her ability to change gears mid-race. Furthermore, it is not a vilification of Western parents. I suspect that much of the furor this book garnered has more to do with Western fears about China than it does about Chinese parenting and that's a different issue altogether. If Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother had been written by Amitava Battacharya, it would not have generated the volume of bad press Chua's book did.

Toward the end of the book Chua seems to be obsessed with finding a  way in which to conclude, but I figure that her conclusion is embedded in the narrative. Aside from the fact that the book must have been a therapeutic exercise for Chua and her daughters, whether she intended it or not, Chua seems to suggest that parenting cannot be boiled down to models or tradition or theories. I couldn't agree more. Parenting (I imagine) is an organic process and it's fundamentally uneven, unjust and unscientific. You can impose certain ideals, but in the end each experience, each ordeal is going to be entirely different from the last. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother has little to do with raising children the Chinese way and far more to do with the human adaptability, acceptance and love.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil

Anvil! The Story of Anvil

By Lips and Robb Reiner

Late edit: I just finished watching the film and I am completely wrong in my assessment here. Anvil is nothing like Spinal Tap and the film is much, MUCH better than the book (sorry Robb and Lips). Anvil! The Story of Anvil is a truly amazing story and the film is a must watch. For everyone. Everywhere. Period. (Lars Ulrich is still an insufferable ass, though)

Anyone (like me) who was a fan of heavy metal in the early 80s will remember the band Anvil. They were a heavier than heavy outfit from Toronto that seemed to burst onto the scene with an instantly classic album called Metal On Metal and then, seemingly, melted back into the ether from which they had emerged. Their album was mildly successful but their sound was wildly influential. Other bands such as Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax would cite Anvil as a major influence and those four bands would go onto superstardom while Anvil went.... nowhere.

But Anvil never broke up. The founding members, Lips and Robb Reiner (not to be confused with Rob "One B" Reiner, director of This is Spinal Tap) endured a fall from grace so humiliating that by the mid-90s they would be touring North America in a rented van, playing to audiences as small as a single person in tiny clubs where they would make enough for gas money to get to their next gig hundreds of miles away. Having made a pact to stick it out through thick and thin Lips and Robb continued to record albums (thirteen in all over the course of their career from 1978 to the present) and tour both in North America and Europe.

If you are thinking that this sounds like the premise of the movie This is Spinal Tap, you'd be absolutely correct, and the similarities are astounding. So much so that I was beside myself that This Is Spinal Tap is only mentioned once in the entire book (although references to the volume going to 11 are rife). Lips and Robb reminded me so much of Nigel Tufnel and David St.Hubbins from Spinal Tap I often heard them with those snooty British accents while reading. I don't mean to sound condescending or dismissive. On the contrary, I think that Nigel and David are two of the most wonderfully crafted characters in film and you can't help root for them throughout the This Is Spinal Tap. I found the same endearing qualities in Lips and Robb Reiner. I so badly wanted them to make it, even when they were acting like complete rock n' roll tools.

Many people say that James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich from Metallica more aptly recreate the inanity and pomposity of Spinal Tap in their rockumentary Some Kind of Monster. But while the similarities in pretentiousness, arrogance and cluelessness between Metallica and Spinal Tap are identical, Metallica lack the endearing qualities and viewers are very hard pressed to root for (or even like) either James or Lars by the end of that film. Especially Lars.

The story of Anvil is the quintessential story of never giving up on your dreams, no matter how far away they seem to be, which is far more akin to the premise of Spinal Tap than the overblown nonesense Metallica whines about in their rockumentary. Sympathy and empathy have a way of making or breaking a film about losers (and I use this word in the most loveable way).

The book is written (not ghost written, mind you... written) by Lips and Robb and while this deters from the stories in one way (the dialogue is almost unreadable) it makes up with in brutal, heart-wrenching honesty. It ranges from the absurdly moronic (the very serious introspection Lips goes through when a promoter tells him to stop using a dildo as a slide on his guitar... "...but it was fun and it was always done with integrity. And sometimes I would jack it off...") to tear-jerkingly touching (the last 40 pages of the book, really). Obviously, their literary range is limited. Their reaction to encountering any sort of fame from meeting Ozzy to recording with Chris Tsangarides was: "Like.... wow!" This book won't be winning any Pulitzers, but that's okay.

Instead, the book reads like a how-to manual on how to fail in the music industry. You can see that even years later both Lips and Robb agonize over the precise moment in which fame passes them by. Whether it was the time that Lipps insisted to their new record company that he wanted his drums shipped to Japan despite having not recorded a single album for the company or whether it was their brief and disasterous flirtation with Poison-esque glam metal. It would be comedy gold if it weren't so tragic. Reading about their descent from heavy metal stardom to fighting promoters for their $300 performance fee and taking second jobs as delivery boys for sushi restaurants in Toronto was gut-wrenching. Thank god this book had a happy ending. I don't think I could have handled a real-life Hard Core Logo.

I do think this story is better suited to film and I am aware that there is a movie (it is profiled extensively in the book). The Sacha Gervasi film is the reason for the sudden resurgence in interest for the hardest working band in heavy metal. The film received all sorts of accolades at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and you've probably heard of it. Michael Moore called it one of the best documentaries in years.

If you are a fan of Anvil or simply early 80s heavy metal you have probably seen the movie or at least heard about it. If you haven't read this companion to the film, I urge you to do so. There is something extraordinarily personal about the way Lips and Robb tell their story. I haven't seen the film yet but I'm going to imagine I will enjoy it more than the book. This isn't to say I disliked the book. I enjoyed it, for the most part. I admire and respect the fact that these guys took the time to sit down and pen their version of their career but the book lacked precision and coherence in places. It lacked the elements that a professional writer could have cleaned up. There's a reason these guys are Heavy Metal legends and not literary giants. A few points in this book, their writing style became insanely grating. Like... wow!

But the fact that these guys stuck it out through some of the most humiliating experiences a band can endure, stayed positive and watched their dreams of stardom come true 25 years later than expected; The fact that they never gave up even when faced with pressure from friends and family to grow up and get real jobs is so admirable and inspiring, you can't help but love these guys and the book.

Anvil rocks!

Noise: Fiction Inspired by Sonic Youth

Noise: Fiction Inspired by Sonic Youth

Edited by Peter Wild

There is a scene from Woody Allen's 1997 film Deconstructing Harry where an out-of-focus Robin Williams visits his doctor because he is... well... out-of-focus. Nothing metaphorical. his body is literally fuzzy. The doctor assures him there is nothing physically wrong with him but he makes his family nauseous and loses his work as a film actor and in classic Woody Allen (and Kurt Vonnegut) style, the idea is never resolved. It's not a long segment, only three or four minutes in the film, but it's one of those quirky scenes that sticks with you forever.

It's odd because when I think about Sonic Youth, I often think about that scene. Sonic Youth is the sort of band that remains eternally peripheral no matter how hard you try to focus on them. To me, they are the sort of band that fills the miniscule gaps in pop music without ever falling into a particular category. Born of the punk rock/new wave scene in New York City in the early eighties, they were never a punk or a new wave band, and although they are often called the grandfathers of the grunge/alternative scene on the 1990s, they don't fallen easily into either of those categories either. As you can see, just like the scene in Woody Allen's movie, Sonic Youth is unresolved.

I was an ambitious music listener when I was younger. I was listening to Johnny Cash in kindergarten, Motley Crue as a 7 year-old, Metallica at the age of 12 (before Enter Sandman, mind you) and I still bought my first Sonic Youth album far, far too early. I bought Daydream Nation in the wake of the Nirvana/Pearl Jam fiasco of 1992 expecting to get a variation on a theme. What I got was nothing like I had ever heard before. It was nihilistic and dangerous and painful and off-putting and all sorts of things a 14 year old isn't really ready to handle. Well, at least not me. It was like a Nora Jones fan picking up mid-career Tom Waits and expecting them to make that leap. I was simply baffled. Sonic Youth is opaque.

I put the album away for a couple of years until I inadvertently discovered Dirty in my first year of university. By then I was listening to a wider array of music and was susceptible to the more unsettling sounds of Thurston Moore's eccentric guitar work and Kim Gordon's flat, monotonously sexy vocals. Over the years I have grown to like Sonic Youth. Not love, mind you... but like. But it's a very strong like and Daydream Nation is now one of my favorite all-time albums. Sonic Youth is a mushroom on the brain.

When I saw them live in the late 90s, it was (and still is) one of the best shows I ever saw. The way they would tear a song apart like a predator slashing into its prey, both vicious and tender. Then, just when the song has been stripped down to nothing more than a wall of sheer feedback, distortion and noise to the point where you don't think you can stand it anymore, they slowly stitch the song back together like a musical Frankenstein. It was like waves of pleasure and pain, an oscillating cacophony of sound. It was, simply put, the first and only time I have experienced noise art. It was mesmerizing. Sonic Youth is idiosyncratic.

Try as I might, I could never really place them. Many bands defy categorization. That's the mark of any good band. But Sonic Youth defies the existence of categories or boundaries themselves. Just when you think you may have them all figured out, they come at you with something so outlandishly different you can only stand and marvel at the audacity of it all. Sonic Youth is not my favorite band. I doubt they are anyone's favorite band. It would be a difficult, moody relationship. High maintenance. Prone to vase-shattering arguments, long, painful silences and violent, knee-shuddering make-up sex. In a lot of ways, Sonic Youth is the musical equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome.

So I was excited to get my hands on Noise: Fiction Inspired by Sonic Youth. A literary collection I hadn't even heard of until it fell in my hands. The premise of the collection is quite interesting. A series of writers were given a title of a Sonic Youth song and were asked to write a short story inspired by the song. Song titles include some of Sonic Youth's most accessible songs: Kissability, Kool Thing (Or How I Want to Fuck Patty Hearst) and Bull in the Heather as well as some of their more obscure titles. I hadn't heard of any of the writers in the book except for Katherine Dunn (which gives me the opportunity to plug her wonderfully weird novel Geek Love) but I will be seeking out a few in the near future.

Like Sonic Youth themselves, I wanted desperately to love this book unequivocally, but like my relationship with the band, this work is uneven and difficult. The good is really, really good. Catherine O'Flynn's interpretation of Snare, Girl is especially good in the way that she traps the reader along with a girl in the trunk of the car only to manipulate the reader through an emotional and psychological tug-of-war. Christopher Coake's variation of Unmade Bed captures the sharp reality of getting your ass kicked for absolutely no good reason and Brother James by Emily MaGuire is a smart, snarky and satirical look at the life of Jesus as seen through the eyes of his brother.... um... James. These stories alone are worth the price of admission.

But like a mediocre Sonic Youth offering, the bad is really, really bad. Call me a literary troglodyte if you must, but I simply hate avant-garde fiction. While I understand what is represents from an Ornette Colman/Free Jazz sort of perspective, the idea of reading 15 pages of sentences that don't really add up to a coherent story seems like a waste of time. Listening to My Friend Goo, the song, is a far cry from reading it as a stream of consciousness mess (Sorry Shelley Jackson). I've read a bit of avant-garde fiction over the years and it has literary value, I'm sure. It's just not my thing and I found that it really disjointed the collection. Made it uneven and quirky. But I guess I should have expected this sort of dichotomy given that Sonic Youth has played the same game with me for over 20 years.

Regardless, fans of Sonic Youth are going to find something in this collection to enjoy. I did. I droves. As for everyone else? I'm not sure. If you go into this collection blind (as in having never heard Sonic Youth) I would suggest a primer. You could download all the tracks used in the book. That would be the logical introduction given that you are about to read the book. But I'd do what I did. Go get Daydream Nation. Sit at home... alone... in the dark, glass of wine in hand and take it in. Do this repeatedly over a few weeks. If that album hasn't seeped into the pores of your very being, then give this book a pass. Sonic Youth is not for everybody.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin

Captain Corelli's Mandolin

By Louis de Bernieres

Poor Captain Corelli never stood a chance.

As I've mentiond before, I'm a strict reader that adheres to a lot of self-imposed rules (My cousin, mentioned below, thinks this makes me strange). One of my self-imposed rules is that I finish everything I start, regardless of whether I enjoy it or not. The logic is that I gain from bad books as much as I do from good books, and it forces me to read outside my comfort zone. Also, laying into a bad book is so satisfying. Therefore, once I commit to a book, I'm locked in. Period. Paragraph.

When I picked up Captain Corelli's Mandolin, I was literally at my (reader's) wits end. I picked it off the shelf of my growing little community library (one of the biggest English libraries on the East Coast of Taiwan if I may pat myself on the back for a moment. Over 800 titles and growing!). I had zero interest in reading Captain Corelli's Mandolin when it was donated to the library last year and that interest had grown by a factor of zero. It just wasn't the sort of book that screamed: read me! But it was the best book available to me at that particular moment, so I locked in.

Almost as soon as I started the book a whole bunch of events conspired to ensure I would not give this book the chance it probably deserved. Here they are:

1. My cousin came to visit.

This is an awesome reason. Living 15,000km from my entire family means that when I get a visitor from home, it's a big deal. It happens less than once a year, but it's always a monumental event. My wife and I love visitors from home and we love playing tour guide for the area (Taiwan's east coast is spectacular and should be considered for your next vacation).

The visit has meant a lot of time driving, scootering, hiking, eating, talking, drinking and the such. Tons of fun for us, but less time for reading. Oh, sure, I'm fufilling my requisite 25 pages a day, but often not much more than just that. It's hard to really immerse yourself in a story when there is so much start and stop.

2. I'm knee deep in vinyl.

My cousin brought me a new needle for my turntable. This has been heavenly. My turntable has been out of service for over five years for various reasons but now it's turning and grooving and I have spent a lot of time rediscovering my vinyl collection (I am currently listening to Stereolab).

If there is one non-athletic pastime I enjoy more than reading, it's music. I started collecting vinyl records about 15 years ago and (like most audiophiles) prefer vinyl to CDs and MP3s. But moving to Taiwan put a temporary end to collecting as I did not have a turntable or records until my Mum shipped them all over earlier this year. It arrived fine, but the needle needed replacing. It has subsequently been replaced and it has been fantastic!

3. I got a whole lot of new books!

This is by far the best/worst thing to happen to me while reading something I would rather not read. When I got about 80 pages into Captain Corelli's Mandolin, I received three packages in the mail full of books from various awesome people. The first was a extraordinary birthday package full of books (and a George Foreman Grill... Thanks Mom!). The second came from a good friend on the other side of the island who was concerned about my recent lack of books (Thanks Tom!) and the third came from another fantastic friend on the other side of the island who has been kind enough to lend me some more books about Taiwan (Thanks Michael!). I also happen to know a fourth package is in transit from Canada (Thanks JP!). If anyone wants a book, let me know. I'll hook you up.

Within the space of 24 hours my reading shelf went from empty to full. New books staring at me and begging me to be read while I was mired in a book that never really found any rhythm for me given the relative chaos of the last week.

All of this was not fair on old Captain Corelli and his mandolin, which seemed like a good story that deserved a bit more attention than it got from me. I want to say it was the sort of book I couldn't put down, and I suspect that in any other instance it might have been. But circumstance conspired against Louis de Berniere this week and I'm left with very to say about a book and an author that should most definitely be given another chance.

Sorry.

Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom

Sweet Soul Music

Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom

By Peter Guralnick

If you like good music....

(Yeah, yeah)

I had a very musical upbringing. Oh, sure, I can't actually play any instrument well (although I've been known to carry a tune on the clarinet and the guitar from time to time). What I mean by musical upbringing is that music has always played an important role in my life and was a defining element of my personality through adolescence. It's still plays an important role in my life, as one can plainly see via the book choices I have made recently.

Spotlight on me, now.

My earliest recollection of music was my father's record collection. It was standard dad stuff like Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Bobby Goldsboro and Neil Diamond with a smattering of good country and a smattering of bad rock (Fleetwood Mac?). It was an unfortunate collection in that it didn't adequately represent the depth of his commitment to country and western music.

I grew up listening to CFGM radio in Toronto while sitting in the backseat of my Dad's Cordoba. He used to sing along to Charlie Pride, Waylon Jennings, Charlie Rich and all the other classic country singers of the era. It was all too embarrassing for a kid who was sort of into Prince and Michael Jackson, but still listening to the odd Chipmunks LP.

My father also liked soul. I recall late night poker games at my house. The adults would listen to radio programs spinning old soul and country music. I fell asleep to the sounds of Motown and Stax long before I had any idea what those two words meant. I still have a soft spot for Diana Ross and Supremes for singing me to sleep at such a tender age.

As I grew up I, like so many other kids, rejected the music of my parents and moved onto things a bit more extreme. First metal, then classic rock, then hip-hop, folk, punk, reggae, alternative, indie, trip-hop, electronic and on and on. Each genre opening the door to new sounds and new ideas. I went through a serious, and entirely self-motivated musical education from the age of eight through college and beyond. I have become, over time, what I refer to as a music snob. I was so engrossed in the idea of listening to the music that I simply never got around to learning how to play the music. But I sure do have opinions on music. Woo-boy. Don't get me started.

But somewhere along the way (probably back in my deepest hipster-music snob days) I returned full circle to the country and western music and soul of my childhood. People say everyone eventually goes back to their roots. Well, I did with a vengeance and I've never looked back. I rediscovered Hank Williams and Willie Nelson, Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding. I dug deeper and listened (really listened) to the likes of Joe Tex, Booker T, Gram Parsons and Ralph Stanley for the first time. I developed new appreciation for the work of James Brown, Aretha Franklin and George Jones. People I had roundly dismissed early on as "My Parent's Music." It was a homecoming of sorts. It was "my parent's music," and they, like so many other things, were right. It was a return to the scorching hot leather interior of my father's Cordoba. And while I love country and western music and northern soul, there has always been a special place in my heart for Southern soul.

Spotlight on Peter Guralnick, now.

Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom by Peter Guralnick is a wonderful behind the scenes look at the evolution, rise and eventual demise of Southern soul music. But it's so much more than that. It is a work five years in the making in which Guralnick traveled the length and breadth of America talking to the veritable who's who of soul music in Memphis and the south: Jerry Wexler, Ahmet Ertgun, Ray Charles, Joe Tex, Jim Stewart, Estelle Axton, Booker T, Steve Cropper, Solomon Burke, James Brown, Dan Penn, Isaac Hayes and on and on and on... Thank God he had the foresight to write this book in the early eighties when many of these people were still alive. The history is what makes this book important, but it's the stories that make it seminal.

What really struck me about the scene in Memphis and Alabama in the 1960s was the sense of togetherness and camaraderie among the company men, record producers, writers, musicians and singers. They were hanging out at the studios, making hit records, touring the country and repeating. Everyone was working for each other. Booker T and the MGs would do session work on an Otis Redding tune in the morning, cut their own record in the afternoon and play onstage with Rufus Thomas in the evening. The Memphis horns play on virtually every track ever produced at Stax but were also available to artists at Muscle Shoals and Atlantic. It was all more like family than a business (a fantasy that would nearly sink Stax in 1970, but that's another story). The story of southern soul is a story of a movement rather than simply a genre of music. This was something that could never, ever be recreated no matter how much talent you stuffed into a studio or on stage today. Something was happening and the music was the catalyst.

Spotlight on Otis Redding, now.

At the center of this movement was Otis Redding. His rise to fame and tragic death mirrored (or foretold) the rise and fall of southern soul. His success mirrored (or foretold) the rise and fall of Stax Records. Wile Guralnick seems tempted to hypothesize as to what might have happened had Redding's plane not gone down in northern Wisconsin he backs away from that ledge and let's it be.

Spotlight on Solomon Burke now.

With all due respect to Stax and Ray Charles, I especially enjoyed the stories about the Reverend Solomon Burke (aka The King of Soul... much to the chagrin of James Brown), one of the oddest characters in a genre stocked with odd characters. From his free popcorn giveaways to his recollections of playing a show for the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi (they thought he was white when they booked him) Burke is far and away the most engaging character in the book. Guralnick and Burke became fast friends during the writing process and it shows. I also enjoyed the various accounts of Aretha's disastrous recording session at Muscle Shoals and the constant political machinations between Memphis, Muscle Shoals and Atlantic Records.

But the book really culminated with the account of the demise of soul. Guralnick does a great job of recounting the events of 1968 through 1970 with an objectivity and clarity that another writer may not have had. It would be easy to place blame entirely on one event or one person (the death of Otis Redding, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the rise of black militancy, Atlantic Record's retreat from the south, the rise of guitar driven rock) but he doesn't. Every detail is chronicled but Guralnick refrains from making any judgment stating that he was simply a fan trying to make sense of a genre that came and went far too fast.

Sweet Soul Music is a must read for any fan of soul music. It really delves deep into the closed-off world that was southern soul (many of these guys hadn't even heard of the Beatles when they turned up on American soil, and most never bought into their sound. Hell, even Motown was too mainstream for many of them). It really was a community. small and tight-knit. But one that changed the face of music in the 1960s and beyond. Without Stax and Muscle Shoals there would never have been funk, modern R&B or hip-hop (at least not as we know it).

Anyway, if you like good music, that sweet soul music, Read this book, now.

Yeah, yeah.

Scar Tissue

Scar Tissue

By Anthony Keidis

I've never been a rabid fan of The Red Hot Chili Peppers. They've always inhabited a peripheral position among my record collection. I own a copy of Mother's Milk, Blood Sugar Sex Magic and One Hot Minute, but none of them have ever gotten heavy rotation on my stereos over the years. The problem being that, in my mind, the Chili Peppers are masters of the single but struggle to compile enough material to produce a competant album. The closest they came was Blood Sugar Sex Magic, but even that is a struggle to get through in one sitting.

So I was a little apprehensive about reading Anthony Keidis' biography, Scar Tissue. Couple that with my reservations about reading rock and roll biographies about known drug addicts and you have a very reluctant reader. But it came highly recommended, so I gave it a whirl. Since I went in with no expectations, I would rate the experience of reading Scar Tissue as good overall, but just barely.

Turns out Anthony Keidis is either one of the most genuine souls in rock and roll or his years of relapses has turned him into one of the best smooth-talkers in the business, able to sell ice to an Eskimo. While I was rooting for the former throughout the book, by the end I was fairly convinced of the latter.

The first third of the book chronicles Keidis' turbulent childhood straddled between Michigan and California. Growing up with his drug-dealing father exposed the young Anthony to a bevvy of sex and drugs at a very young age (and no small amount of jealousy from this reader). As with virtually every rock and roll biography, this is by far the most interesting part of the book. I had no idea that Keidis was essentially living with Sonny Bono through his junoir high school days.

The second third of the book chronicles the formation and emergence of the Red Hot Chili Peppers on the L.A. punk scene in the early 1980s. I liked that they defined convention at the time and played a unique brand of funk in a scene dominated by glam metal and to hell with what the scene dicatated. The rise of the band co-incides with Keidis' descent into the world of heroin and cocaine addiction, which, as I have written before, is such a cliche it's almost boring if it weren't about the very real suffering of a human being. Before he finally kicks his habit (for the first time) prior to recording Mother's Milk the book reads like "Knock Me Down" on perpetual repeat.

The segment devoted to his first clean stint (the time period between the recording of Mother's Milk and the end of the Blood Sugar Sex Magic tour) is also a fun read. Keidis is a bit of a world traveler and I enjoyed is recollections about trekking through Borneo, touring Japan and his irrational and incomprehensible love for New Zealand.

It's when Keidis relapses for the first (of too many to count) times that this book derailed. I hate to complain about the narrative of a biography, but the story went from slightly repetitive to a broken record of scoring drugs, driving to a motel and getting high for a few days then flying somehwere warm, weaning off the drugs, playing a few gigs, attending to a few responsibilities, repeat. I'm not kidding, this formula went on for over 200 pages. In the meantime people were born, people died, he changed girlfriends and guitarists more often then I change my underwear and his band recorded two albums.

This is not to say that the book was without merit. In fact, I found myself revisiting a lot of Chili Pepper albums while reading this book. While I still maintain that they have never recorded a great album, I had forgotten how good many of them were. Also, I found that I had never really given them thir place among the great rock and roll acts of all time, which they most certainly are, if not in the studio, certainly for their brazen live performances. I was especially pleased to not that Keidis wrote specifically about a show in Toronto that I attended in the late nineties (a free show at the corner of Yonge and Dundas). That was kinda cool.

Also, the first half of the book was devoid of that smarmy self-help remorse that so many former addicts have. He's recollections of a childhood and early adulthood consuming drugs and playing rock and roll were entirely without regret or remorse. I liked that he could look back fondly on a time he would not necessarily like to revisit rather than spent that portion apologizing to everyone and their brother about the pain and suffering he put them through. That makes great psych couch conversation but terrible reading.

But the book ultimately falters. It was when the 12-step philosophies began to creep into the narrative that things really took a turn for the worse. While the recollections on band life, touring and his travels remained fun to read, his intellectual musings on the nature of addiction and healing got nauseating (granted, I have never had a heroin problem so who am I to talk). Lots of new-age, self-help mumbo-jumbo and psuedo-religious ramblings that only served to prove that his years of drug intake had done their best on his brain.

As I mentioned to the guy who leant me the book, you can't help rooting for Anthony Keidis throughout the book. He seesms so genuine. Each time he cleans up you are hoping it will be his final detox only to have him disappoint you time and again. But the end when he (supposedly) cleans up for the last time, I could barely manage to feel anything for a guy who had thrown away so many chances.

Anthony Keidis is a really lucky man. Not because he is the frontman of one of the world's most successful rock and roll outfits, although that is certainly pretty cool. He's lucky because he has continuously been surrounded by people that never gave up on him. Despite lying, cheating and abusing them, his family, friends and bandmates never abandoned him. Considering his behavior over time, he should count himself blessed to have a support network as dedicated. If only he was that dedicated to himself.

Scar Tissue. It's the One Hot Minute of rock biographies. Full of promise, an all-star cast, some really, really spectacular moments, but in the end fails to inspire much beyond a curt nod to say, "Yep. I've read that now. What's next?"