erasing clouds
 

Book Reviews (33 1/3 Series)

by dave heaton

Eric Weisbard, Use Your Illusion I and II

There once was a time when specific album release dates stayed with me years after they passed. I didn't remember September 17, 1991 as the date Guns N' Roses released Use Your Illusion I and II at the same, until Eris Wesibard mentioned it on the second page of his book on those albums, but I do remember the day. I remember eagerly buying both albums, one on CD and one on cassette (slightly cheaper that way), just as I remember seeing them play some of the UYI songs in concert the summer before, at a show in St. Louis that ended abruptly and turned into a riot (my first rock concert!), which Weisbard mentions. And just as I remember the fuzzy bootleg tape I got from somebody I barely knew, a year or so before the UYI albums came out, which had a version of "November Rain" with mostly just Axl Rose at a piano, which I listened to again and again and again. Guns N' Roses were a big deal to me then, and Weisbard's book sets up the setting of 1991 perfectly, reminding me of what now seems strange – that I was listening to GNR (and Skid Row and Metallica and other remnants of my metal-loving childhood) the same months that I was getting into Nirvana, that I was way into hip-hop (I remember buying Ice Cube's Death Certificate along with Nevermind). Weisbard does well to get beyond conventional notions of the time – that Nirvana killed off hard rock, for example – by extensively recounting both what was happening in music at the time and what people were writing about it. He does the same with GNR as a band and a phenomenon – he handles the various controversies ("One in a Million", disastrous concerts) fully, recounting them but also considering their impact, and what they say about the band's persona. He captures the idiosyncracies of Axl Rose, and GNR as a band: their larger-than-life and narcissictic tendencies as well as why this music was popular. It's strange to me, though, that Weisbard came to hard rock as a self-conscious rejection of the indie-rock he had been listening to…it almost sounds like he made himself like hard rock as a music-critical statement. That's fitting, though, for the overall tone of this book. While I enjoyed many aspects of it, I also find this book particularly "rock critic"-y. What seems most important to Weisbard is what Robert Christgau or Chuck Eddy or whoever else said about Guns N' Roses, and placing his take on GNR in that context. It doesn't seem to be about what the music means to him now, or did in the past, which gives the book a cold demeanor. The tone of the writing is also awkward in some ways. Weisbard makes a point of not listening to the album until the final chapter; he's continually saying things like "when I listen to the album" in a way that makes the book feel like a first draft, like you're reading each thought soon after he had it. Be that what it may, I found the book fascinating in other ways – and it certainly spurred my own looking back, thinking on my own changing tastes and evolving role as "music fan."

Zeth Lundy, Songs in the Key of Life

I've read around 30 books in the 33 1/3 Series; it's been interesting to see how each writer approaches the format of an entire book about one album. Some go for a personal approach, others an analytic ones, and many a journalistic one focused on telling the story of the album – its creation, release and impact. This book on Stevie Wonder's 1976 epic Songs in the Keys of Life, by Zeth Lundy (Music Columns Editor at PopMatters, a site which I also write/edit for), is on the surface an especially well-researched version of the latter type. The book's Introduction starts with a captivating portrait of an extravagant pre-release album listening party (first sentence: "The gun belt that Stevie Wonder wore the day he foisted his sprawling new album upon a pampered press corps was branded with pun and pomp: NUMBER ONE WITH A BULLET, it read"). Lundy takes the multiple stories around the album - Wonder's maturation as an artist, his place on Motown, the ways the album marked his independence – and tells each in both a comprehensive and a highly entertaining way. There's loads of interesting facts, in both the main text and the footnotes, and I left the book feeling like I had learned even more than I expected to, about the time period, the album, and Wonder. At the same time, Lundy isn't just re-telling the facts. There's thoughtful analysis here too, in the way that he presents the album as mimicking the cycle of life, and in the serious consideration giving to each song. In that way his writing is personal, too – he doesn't hold back from including his own opinions on anything and everything. The open and critical sides of his writing join with the scholarly side to make the book the best of all worlds. It ultimately stands as one of the more thorough and interesting books in the series thus far.

Mike McGonigal, Loveless

My Bloody Valentine's Loveless has achieved more than just the status of a classic album. The band's lack of a follow-up, and the countless stories of false starts in that direction, has built up layer after layer of mystery and rumor around Loveless and MBV. In tackling Loveless as a topic, Mike McGonigal has much more to deal with than just a collection of songs. He's taken on an enigma, in so many ways. The only people who can really answer the years' worth of questions that have built up are the members of MBV themselves, especially its captain Kevin Shields. So that's where McGonigal turned, to an understandable but sometimes bothersome extent. This isn't a straight book-length interview with Shields, like the 33 1/3 book on DJ Shadow's Entroducing. But it ultimately just about feels like one. That's partly because of the amount of time spent on Shield's account of Loveless, in comparison with the other approaches (interviews with other key figures, McGonigal's memories of the time, his attempts to describe the music). But it's mostly because Shields is a fascinating figure, and his stories equally fascinating. He doesn't exactly expel the impression of the artist as an obsessive, contradictory eccentric. But he also seems especially forthcoming for someone typically described as a hermit. The book presents the story of Loveless in a remarkably full way, chasing away many of the shadows previously hanging over it. At the same time, I remember few elements of the book besides Shields' own perspective – few of the author's own ideas or opinions on the album make much of a mark at all. At times I wonder if a straight oral history of Loveless, just the interviews with Shields and the others involved, would have been even more rewarding.

{www.continuumbooks.com, 33third.blogspot.com}


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