The Boy Who Cried Freebird: Rock & Roll Fables and Sonic Storytelling [Hardcover]

Mitch Myers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 10, 2007

Wedding the American oral storytelling tradition with progressive music journalism, Mitch Myers' "The Boy Who Cried Freebird" is a treatise on the popular music culture of the twentieth century. Trenchant, insightful, and wonderfully strange, this literary mix-tape is authentic music history . . . except when it isn't. Myers outrageously blends short fiction, straight journalism, comic interludes, memoirs, serious artist profiles, satire, and related fan-boy hokum--including the classic stories he first narrated on NPR's "All Things Considered,"

Focusing on iconic recordings, events, communities, and individuals, Myers riffs on Deadheads, sixties nostalgia, rock concert decorum, glockenspiels, and all manner of pop phenomena. From tales of rock-and-roll time travel to science fiction revealing Black Sabbath's power to melt space aliens, "The Boy Who Cried Freebird" is about music, culture, legend, and lore--all to be lovingly passed on to future generations.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Music writer Myers is knowledgeable not only about rock but also about blues, jazz, country, folk, metal and electronic sounds, and he is also extremely funny—a potent combination that makes this collection of essays an insightful and entertaining look at popular music culture. Three of his best narratives include the decidedly mixed results of Black Sabbath's song "Paranoid" becoming the world's only defense against alien invaders; the adventures of a teenage Grateful Dead fan from 2069 who time-travels back to 1969 to see his heroes play in San Francisco; and a man driven to shout "Freebird" at every concert he attends. But Myers also displays excellent straight journalistic skills in looks at artists ranging from Doug Sahm, whose legendary psychedelic-country-rock-Mexican fusion, Myers shows, helped shape modern Texas music, to saxophonist Albert Ayler in an elegiac study of how his "hovering, stream-of-consciousness meditations" made him one of the most brilliant musicians in the 1960s free jazz movement. Also entertaining are his wild fictional scenarios about real artists like Phil Spector and Steve Albini that actually say more about those artists than can be found in much rock criticism. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Music journalism is a tricky animal to tame, but veteran writer and public-radio commentator Myers proves he's got the touch in this eclectic collection of essays, short stories, artist profiles, and rock fables. Myers' pieces run the gamut from the serious, such as an examination of the legendary recording Art Blakely's Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk,to the entertaining, including a fictionalized account of traveling back in time to attend a historic Grateful Dead concert in the story "Back to the Fillmore." Myers covers blues, gospel, jazz, psychedelia, and ambient sound, all in prose that keeps a fervent tempo and pulses with electricity. Some fiction reveals a creative writer still polishing his craft, but the serious music journalism is pure money. Many of the pieces were previously published in DownBeat, Rolling Stone, and the Village Voice,and no wonder, as they all possess the author's meta-outsider stance and prove enjoyably didactic. Readers may well be inspired to seek out some of the music Myers so expertly dissects. Jerry Eberle
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: HarperEntertainment (April 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061139017
• ISBN-13: 978-0061139017
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #998,913 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fun and Information, May 4, 2007

By 

Allan J. Cronin "francis gerard" (Alameda, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Boy Who Cried Freebird: Rock & Roll Fables and Sonic Storytelling (Hardcover)

Mitch Myers' collection of stories and articles are a varied collection. Deaheads will likely hope for more of the tales of Adam Coil in his various incarnations. Other pieces are cogent, accurate and fascinating expansions of liner notes for various albums from jazz to Allen Ginsberg and Terry Riley.

If you are a fan of any of this music you will love this book.

Having read some of these pieces in their original form and heard some of these done on NPR I am struck at the great quality of them collected together tweaked to perfection. This is his first book and I can only hope that there will be more to come soon.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars rock stories....., August 14, 2007

By 

Kerry O. Burns - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Boy Who Cried Freebird: Rock & Roll Fables and Sonic Storytelling (Hardcover)

a collection of short stories all revolving aroud music, mostly rock but jazz, fusion and minimal. A hit or miss collection, mostly hit but a few clunkers. The longer stories including where Ozzie Osborne is called on to save us from aliens really rock. Well written and original and an easy read.

0 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars If It Weren't for the Fact . . ., December 8, 2007

By 

J. Brown (New York, NY, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Boy Who Cried Freebird: Rock & Roll Fables and Sonic Storytelling (Hardcover)

. . . that author Mitch Myers is the nephew of the late, great Shel Silverstein, this wouldn't have been suitable even to line a birdcage. This is basically nothing more than an attempt to trade on (and simultaneously trash) Silverstein's reputation. I know, because I knew Shel for years, and remember him as honorable, decent and loyal - traits Myers wouldn't know if he fell over them. Not to mention the unforgivably poor writing throughout. In short, avoid this and the so-called "biography," "A Boy Named Shel" - which also smacks of a half-truth-laden hatchet job.