Pinfield is a disarmingly likable guide through rock ’n’ roll’s twilight, though he occasionally epitomizes a music industry...
A charming, rambling account of a life saved by rock ’n’ roll—and devoted to the music industry.
Pinfield, the host of MTV’s “alternative” show 120 Minutes, does plenty of decadent tale-telling and name-dropping while presenting himself as a lucky rock nerd who fell into his fantasy life. Obsessed with music from infancy, he claims, “the dream of access, of proximity, began when I was a kid sitting in front of my record player.” He compellingly portrays his late-1960s childhood as an era of ubiquitous, exuberant music beneath the surface strife. He began attending concerts obsessively as a teenager, while barely surviving a brain aneurysm solidified his connection to rock’s raunchy nonconformity: “As always, records got me through.” He began DJ-ing for the Rutgers University radio station and at New Jersey clubs just as punk and new wave were surging regionally. “It was a perfect time to be on college radio,” he writes. Pinfield shrewdly built his reputation, befriending bands as a thoughtful interviewer and developing a following on a small commercial station: “For years,” he writes, “well into the ’90s, we were the one stop every alternative act had to make.” This led to his jump to MTV, despite being “this bald barrel of a person with a voice like granite, spouting arcane rock trivia.” Similarly, this insider’s perspective took him to Columbia Records, where he signed hard-rock bands, looking for post-grunge hits, until the industry’s financial strife led to mass layoffs. Pinfield’s enthusiasm endured, and he ably discusses the cultural value of rock and the quirky, high-risk mechanisms of the industry. He breaks up the narrative with best-of lists and vignettes of encounters with big bands (KISS, U2, etc.), which can seem superfluous, and he’s frank about the dark side of rock culture, noting his own trips to rehab and some lapses into sleazy behavior.
Pinfield is a disarmingly likable guide through rock ’n’ roll’s twilight, though he occasionally epitomizes a music industry hustler.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-9389-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
