You won’t find “the next American music” here.
A solipsistic quest for authenticity, conducted with road map and library card—and without a clue.
Music journalist Petrusich (Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, 2007) purportedly set out to define “Americana,” an umbrella term for tradition-oriented strains of country, blues and folk music. Neglecting to clearly delineate the boundaries of this non-genre for either herself or the reader, she hit the road through the South and Appalachia. The book’s subtitle is an infuriating con. Far from being “lost,” the highways through Memphis, Nashville and Clarksdale, Miss., to name a few of her destinations, have been driven so often that they require repaving—or at least more energetic and keen-eyed travelers than Petrusich. The music she writes about is neither obscure nor new; tiresomely familiar stories about Elvis Presley, Sun Records, Robert Johnson, the Carter Family and Woody Guthrie abound. Relying heavily on the work of earlier journalists and scholars, this maddeningly underreported volume often reads like a book report. Only two dozen new interviews are cited, most of those with performers who have been active for at least a decade; Petrusich is more comfortable talking with academics, other writers and the occasional publicist than with musicians. She devotes an irritating amount of space to descriptions of museums, archives, tourist traps, motel rooms and her roadside meals, as well as the scenery along the interstate. In the thousands of miles she covers, the author makes exactly one stop to check out the local music action, and that’s at an upscale Clarksdale juke joint. In this navel-gazing context, it makes perfect sense that Petrusich would lamely dub the members of indie rock’s neo-hippy-dippy “freak-folk” scene (many of whom derive their sound as much from British sources as American ones) as the truest exponents of contemporary Americana.
You won’t find “the next American music” here.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-86547-950-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2008
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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