A funny, earnest, and knowledgeable musical remembrance.
Grady presents a collection of short essays about 1980s New Wave, alternative, and punk music from the perspective of a devoted fan.
The author writes about growing up as the youngest of seven children in a music-loving household in Stoughton, Massachusetts, and how he discovered a range of new music—“New Wave, Punk, Alternative, Post-Punk, whatever you call it”—along with his siblings as he grew older. He lovingly details the technology he used (including 8-track tapes), the venues he attended (and those he was afraid to visit), and what bands and songs were important to him at different moments in his life. Some essays focus on his brother JB, a devoted punk and New Wave fan, and his tragic death from AIDS. Others focus on the author’s relationship to his wife, Theresa, whom he met at a 1990 Concrete Blonde concert. He tells of how soundtracks to such films as Times Square(1980) gave him access to music that was otherwise unobtainable or prohibitively expensive; how the actor John Cusack served as a role model of sorts (“Did I mention John Cusack and I share a birthday?”); and how he became a radio DJ in college, fulfilling a dream that his mother had for herself. Overall, Grady’s essays are united by a focus on the connection between songs and emotion. In particular, his recollections show an interest in nostalgia and how it changes and highlights feelings that fans already have about particular tunes and artists. Readers may wish that he’d included more specific detail about the music itself, or deeper dives into particular songs or albums. However, he effectively engages with the different ways people experience the art through live shows, TV, radio, and especially mixtapes, which he sees as the ultimate in personal music connection. Overall, Grady excels at conveying his passion for the art form—encompassing the tactile experience of it and the sense of connection it fosters with others. His writing is fun, breezy, and earnest, which helps him to easily bounce between funny and serious topics.
A funny, earnest, and knowledgeable musical remembrance.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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