An engaging and deeply personal journey, for both the writer and her subjects, and an adroit disquisition on the nature of...
Life among the Indiana Joneses of record collectors, who will let nothing come between them and a rare Charley Patton.
This new book by Pitchfork contributing writer Petrusich (It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music, 2010) proves once again that it takes a rare person to hunt for rarities, especially when the obscure object of desire is a classic 78rpm blues record. The author investigates both the history of blues and its literally fragile legacy. She joined professional blues travelers as they scoured the Earth for vinyl Stradivariuses, whether it was one of the two known copies of Tommy Johnson’s “Alcohol and Jake Blues” or the only copy anywhere of Solomon Hill’s “My Buddy Blind Lemon.” These people don’t just haunt record stores, yard sales, festivals and eBay; they go where no one else thinks to look, pursuing rare leads, taking out ads, spending sacks of money and weeks of time. Sometimes they strike gold—there are great stories of treasures hauled out of Dumpsters or from under beds—but mostly they just lose sleep over the one that got away. Petrusich caught the virus herself, and she examines the bigger picture. Is it all about the love of music, the thrill of the chase or something more disturbing? Are collectors like Freudian dissidents, seeking the kind of solace that can only be found in the original pressing of “Devil Got My Woman” by Skip James? Or is this all about personality disorder? Collecting old 78s “demands an almost inhuman level of concentration,” writes the author, and there is “a violence to the search, a dysfunctional aggression that vacillates between repellant and endearingly quirky. It’s intimidating to outsiders, and it feeds on sacrifice.”
An engaging and deeply personal journey, for both the writer and her subjects, and an adroit disquisition on the nature of this distinctly American form of insatiable lust.Pub Date: July 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6705-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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