Not as witty or breezy as the title would lead you to believe, but still a solid primer to today’s Byzantine music industry.
If you don’t like what you’re seeing in your record store or hearing on your radio, don’t blame the musicians—blame the suits.
Recent studies have shown that in any given year, as many as 50 percent of the CDs purchased in the U.S. are not the product of contemporary artists, but rather classic albums from classic rockers, or reissues from old-school jazzers, or repackaged “best of” collections. Some fans claim the reason for the apathy toward newer releases is that rock-’n’-roll, R&B and hip-hop have been co-opted by record label numbers-crunchers, while others feel the current generation of musicians has simply run out of original ideas. A journalist/musician who’s written biographies of Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen, Bordowitz accuses everybody, maintaining that the entire music industry has shot itself in the collective foot. In his rambling, somewhat didactic treatise, Bordowitz points the finger at red-tape-wrapped record labels, ethically questionable radio stations and greedy retail conglomerates. He places the blame for the multi-platinum success of such dubious talents as Kanye West and Avril Lavigne on everybody from the sales-obsessed trade magazine Billboard to the manager at the local Sam Goody’s. If you’re already even the remotest bit familiar with the music industry’s ins and outs, few of Bordowitz’s revelations or assertions will come as a surprise, but for music-business newcomers, the thumbnail profiles of various musicians, producers and executives—not to mention the user-friendly descriptions of how record labels and radio stations are run—are engaging and enlightening. He doesn’t offer much in the way of new firsthand reportage, but his research is first-rate, and he is consistently able to support his arguments. The downside is that Bordowitz’s prose is relatively academic, his jokes feel forced and the so-called “dirty little secrets” aren’t particularly dirty—or secret.
Not as witty or breezy as the title would lead you to believe, but still a solid primer to today’s Byzantine music industry.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2007
ISBN: 1-55652-643-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
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
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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