Rick Johnson Reader: Tin Cans, Squeems and Thudpies [Paperback]

Bill Knight (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 26, 2007

In the first collection of rock critic Rick Johnson's writing, the late writer is gadfly, smart-aleck and court jester, praising or blasting subjects from the Rolling Stones to the Raspberries, from Heavy Metal to Punk Rock, from Pac-Man to Chicago baseball.

Product Details

• Paperback: 250 pages
• Publisher: Mayfly Productions (January 26, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0978915607
• ISBN-13: 978-0978915605
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,040,276 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Also Includes Two Instrumentals, May 18, 2007

By 

Leapso (Australia City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rick Johnson Reader: Tin Cans, Squeems and Thudpies (Paperback)

There are a few handfuls of folks who read CREEM magazine back in the late 70s/early 80s who think this guy was one of the best music reviewers/pop culture decoders/plain old 20th Century humourists in the history of the world and portions of Cleveland.

Rick Johnson's gone now, and it seems rugged that he didn't get recognition even fractionally commensurate with his talent and originality during life, but at least there's finally a collection of his work available to remind us how good he was, during the cold Johnson-less years to come.

I should also mention, because Ranger Rick probably would at around this point - lest the tight formal-hire collar of funeral atmosphere choke us into pious reflection - that the funniest thing in the book is probably when his former editor mentions the time Rick was so whacked out, he not only fell down his own stairs, but continued right on and fell down his neighbours' stairs as well.

Rick Johnson had a unique use of language, and I mean completely unique to the point where sometimes it seemed like he'd invented Esperanto in reverse; file cards full of lines from TV and advertising to wield out of context (and yet strangely perfectly IN context) in reviews of albums that never knew what hit them; also used typeface, punctuation and all other print medium tools as weapons; and had the greatest, most genial take on the whole pop/mass culture "flow" - TV, movies, celebs as dingbats, music, packaged supermarket foods, video games - it was all the same to Ranger Rick, and it seemed like it was all fun.

What this book contains is a handful or two of his CREEM articles, and a large amount of stuff he wrote for some sort of free press type publication (I think) called the Prairie Sun. Although any dyed-in-the-wool Johnson fan would love a well-chosen comp of the CREEM work (or just ALL of his stuff that appeared in CREEM to cut down on thinking time) there's a bonus here for people that have been hoping a book of Rick's material would come out eventually.

Basically unless you lived in the area covered by the Prairie Sun, you never saw this material before, and it includes prime Reeek era "stand-up reviewing" stuff from the late 70s/early 80s. There's some earlier stuff too, which tends to be a little more earnest/conventional but has its moments, and it's interesting to see the guy's style develop.

Most of the book is album reviews, and if you're thinking why on earth would someone want to read curling discoloured album reviews from the previous century, then you don't know Reeek. No-one who remembers being unable to restrain themselves from laughing out loud reading vintage CREEM issues on public transport will have any doubts whatsoever.

In addition to telling us important musical knowledge, eg how Peter Frampton's voice and guitar sound like "two extremely tired waitresses complaining about a particularly obnoxious customer", the Johnson material here takes on a lot of the subjects previously mentioned, including packaged foods, video games, and the more disposable end of television, which were trademark Johnson subjects.

There are a couple of nice xtra surprises, in that we find out (if we already didn't know, and we-being-me didn't) that Rick Johnson was a sport nut, and there's some of his writing about sport - still in the trademark all-over-the-shop-and-surrounding-county style - which I'm not sure he ever did for CREEM. Another is a real nice and somewhat ahead of its time piece on some of his fave trashy movies, well before certain sections of the publishing industry became dedicated to woodchipping entire jungles in the name of "psychotronics".

I can't recommend this book highly enough if you: took in a lot of music and popular culture in the 70s-thru-now; ever heard of "Ranger" Rick Johnson; or would just care to fall into a pile of writing by one of the most distinctive and original written humourists ever.

If you (a) tend to the humourless, (b) are a sobersides, (c) have certain sensitivities to language and what they hilariously call on television "adult themes", then you don't want this book.

Everyone else of grown-up newspaper buying age qualifies.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars rick's picks, October 17, 2008

By 

Ewing Grahame - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Rick Johnson Reader: Tin Cans, Squeems and Thudpies (Paperback)

The contents of this book will be unfamiliar to most Brotish readers (like myself)and, inevitably, some of the allusions Johnson makes - and even some of the TV programmes he reviews - will carry no cultural clout this side of the pond.
However, that really doesn't matter a great deal. What we're left with is a sharp, if skewed, sense of humour and a refusal to take high or low art too seriously. It's sad to think that, for nmost of his last 25 years, he wrote very little at all but this compilation does hios memory justice.