A veteran of the Minneapolis bar-band scene takes readers on a ramble down the roads of a life spent working on the outer edge of fame but on the center stage of satisfaction.
While he may be a first-time memoirist, Metsa is a long-time raconteur who has been saving up stories from nearly 40 years in the music business, most of it spent in his beloved home state of Minnesota. From his first junior-high garage band to a successful stint with a Grateful Dead–esque ensemble to a bevy of solo gigs, Metsa has dedicated his heart to performing, and his earnest and often self-deprecating memoir—sprinkled with generous doses of Kerouac/Kesey flights of verbal fantasy, some more successful than others—shows him to be as likable a narrator as ever graced a bar stool. Too many rock memoirs dwell on excess at the expense of inspiration; Metsa quickly dispenses with the former (a bout with cocaine in the ’80s) to better concentrate on the latter. Fusing music and social activism has allowed the author to build a loyal following in addition to attracting attention from such luminaries as Nora Guthrie (Woody’s daughter), John H. Hammond (the rock promoter who helped elevate Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger to prominence) and the late progressive Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone. The best example of this dedication comes in a chapter called “Slings and Arrows,” in which Metsa details his (unfortunately unsuccessful) attempts to save the historic Guthrie Theater from demolition. More than simply a title of regional interest to Midwesterners, this musical journey will resonate with readers who prefer their tell-alls spiced with a generous helping of conviction and a dash of humility.
Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8166-7642-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Univ. of Minnesota
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 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
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