Veteran music journalist Koster surveys music from the state with the most to offer. In addition to well-researched and historically savvy sections on country, rock 'n' roll, and blues, Koster tackles folk, ethnic music, a variety of black musical styles, easy listening, classical, and jazz. While some formats are inevitably relegated to, at best, a passing treatment, Koster is able to apply his amazing expertise about these forms and combine this knowledge with a smart and funny writing style. His special genius is his ability to link famous names with well-known songs where the relationship has previously been unknown. For instance, how many readers will already know that the Champs, who recorded ``Tequila'' in 1958, had Texans Jim Seals and Dash Crofts as guitarists—the same Seals and Crofts who went on become easy- listening stars in the '70s? His principal weakness is his seeming desire to cast everyone as a Texan. Jimi Hendrix, he points out, was not born, never lived, and did not die in Texas, but he did, Koster notes, once buy a guitar from bluesman Jimmy Vaughan. Robert Johnson is included because he made all his extant recordings in Texas, although he is most often associated with the Mississippi Delta players he inspired. On the other hand, Koster gives proper attention to ground-breaking Texas acts like the indescribable Butthole Surfers and Austin folkster Meredith Louise Miller. Koster also intersperses his text with boxed profiles of ``Criminally Overlooked Musicians,'' to bring attention to some truly influential artists who have gone unnoticed. A lively and affectionate study for music lovers of all stripes. (100 b&w photos, 7 maps, not seen)
Pub Date: March 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-18193-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1998
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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