A tour of the contemporary pop music industry with one of America's most promising new bands, whose three members happen to be women. A nail-spitting punk trio of potential long-term influence that reserves the right to be both attractive and assertive, Babes in Toyland is one of the first all-female rock groups to earn widespread renown. Former Rolling Stone editor Karlen documents the Babes' pursuit of both fame and punk rigor; their long nights on the road; their difficulties with record execs, hangers-on, and one another. He also peeks into the world of enigmatic A&R man Tim Carr, who brought the Babes to Warner Music, then struggled to win them attention with a minuscule ad budget in a climate in which MTV's Beavis and Butt-head are the ultimate arbiters of cool. Karlen is sometimes more interested in his subjects' reputation than in their talent, so the content of their music gets scant attention; almost no lyrics are offered, despite the author's assertion that lead singer Kat Bjelland is a poet. But he's lucky- -the three Babes are intriguing women: Lori Barbero, the first female drummer embraced by rock's mostly male establishment; the orphaned, waifish Bjelland, whose performances resemble primal therapy; and Michelle Leon, a brainy 19-year-old whose boyfriend's murder, recounted here, causes her to leave the band. All three (and Maureen Herman, Leon's replacement) are role models for a new generation of female musicians intent on making a place for women in rock 'n' roll. Karlen's hyper-rhetoric sometimes intrudes, but he isn't oblivious to the ironies in Warner's effort to sell the Babes without sacrificing their street credibility. Recommended for moms and dads whose daughters want to grow up to be rock musicians—and (of course) their rockin' daughters. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8129-2058-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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