10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
There is no shame like the shame of realizing that you too know all the lyrics to a Styx album, May 6, 2010
Apparently all my contemporaries are writing right now. I just found out, for example, that Carrie Bradshaw (and, one assumes, Candace Bushnell) is/are just about exactly my age. In her book "The Carrie Diaries," she references Jimmy Carter and the Gremlin.
But Carrie Bradshaw listens to Aztec Two-Step, and right then and there I knew she could never be my friend.
Steve Almond knows what I'm saying here. Steve Almond gave up on a woman after a weekend of bananas sex because she listened to Air Supply - on purpose.
I know that Steve Almond is also just exactly my age, because HE references Aztec Camera, whose song "Oblivious" remains one of the most incandescent pop songs I know. It's got that androgynous 80's croon but on top of friendly, jangly guitars - and then you notice the line, "I see you crying and I want to kill your friends" and you start paying a little more attention.*
And that makes Steve Almond and I the same age because Aztec Camera was not together for terribly long, had one or two little MTV hits, and is one of the VERY few acts of that era who have not regrouped and gone on tour. Presumably, groups like The Jesus and Mary Chain, who were so charming to begin with**, have realized in their maturity that the world NEEDS their music, and they have a DUTY to provide it. One doesn't like to assume that they are back together, rather, because the tattered college students who liked them in 1983 now have the cash to fly to Iceland to see them play.***
Steve Almond's new book, in case you had not intuited this, is footnoted and rambling and studded - no, packed - with pithy little insights, analyses, and summations of bands and artists.
"...let me cite Duke Ellington, who once famously declared that 'there are only two kinds of music: good music and bad music. And by bad music I mean specifically the song "(I Bless the Rains Down In) Africa" by Toto.' Ellington died two years before Toto formed as a band, which speaks to his prescience."
But the book isn't about music. No? Whoops now I've pissed you off. No, ok, it's about music. But it's about how music affects us, and by us I mean the kind of repressed kids who have fallen between the generations - boys who weren't supposed to have emotions until times changed and all of a sudden they were expected to. Or girls who grew up on a feminism that couldn't yet incorporate vulnerability.
Steve doesn't oversimplify people in this way - I did that. Steve takes it from the other angle - he has noticed that the people most fanatical about popular music are the ones who have trouble integrating their emotions into their life. He posits that people who slam on the headphones and squeeze their eyes tight to hear every breath of Carolina Chocolate Drops doing "Hit 'Em Up Style" are looking for an intensity that they wish existed but fear to attempt.
Huh. Sounds pretty accurate, if memory serves. I would suggest to our boy Steve that he have a kid, but he's done that. His daughter was two at the time of publication - unless he's seriously emotionally retarded, I suspect that if he had waited a couple years he would not have been able to write this book except as a nostalgia piece. Kids allow one to access one's emotions with some fair expedience. In fact, it's probably the birth of his daughter that allowed him to express the ways that music has fulfilled his needs all these years.
All right, I think I'm done here. I laughed out loud at this book. There are some crystalline memories, some song references that bring me RIGHT THERE alongside him, some entertaining swearing, and - I hate to admit it because ok, emotion-y things still make me itchy - some insights that beat anything I learned in therapy.
Still not completely sold on Bob Schneider though.****
*Don't believe me about Aztec Camera? [...].
**I "saw" them in Cleveland, behind a veil of chemical smoke so thick that I had to watch the show from a crouch. They played their entire set with their backs to the audience, I guess so that they could see their instruments.
***I don't, but my friend Eric did, to see the Flaming Lips whom yes I realize have been together the whole time but let's face it most people lost track of them between the Vaseline song and "Do You Realize" showing up in a Mitsubishi commercial.
****Steve's massive mancrush, also the mancrush of my friend Leslie Miller, who may actually BE Steve - they like all the same music, and where Steve wrote a book about candy, she wrote one about cake (the delightful dessert, not the unpleasant band). Although Bob Schneider is ALSO exactly my age, and undeniably attractive, so I guess if we need a new Loudon Wainwright III, Bob could be it, because Rufus kind of isn't.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Testify, May 10, 2010
OK, I'll state the obvious and say that ROCK AND ROLL WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE is a must-read for serious music fans (aka Drooling Fanatics) everywhere. With his trademark blend of self-deprecating humor and razor-sharp intelligence, Almond celebrates the famous (Springsteen, The Police), the, um, infamous (Styx), and the criminal-that-they're-not-more-famous (Ike Reilly, Chuck Prophet, Dan Bern, Bruce McCutcheon, Nil Lara, Dayna Kurtz, Bob Schneider, Gil Scott-Heron, etc. etc.).
But just as a good movie is more than its soundtrack, this book is more than the musicians it praises. In the end, Almond's a passionate, honest storyteller who uses music to explore deeper truths about love, family, friendship, loneliness, disappointment, joy, ambition, and human connection. The sections about courting his now-wife Erin, trying in vain to influence his children's musical tastes, and roadtripping with friend The Close are particularly moving. In short, this book is for anyone who turns to the written word to feel more alive.
Some reviewers are calling ROCK AND ROLL WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE a nonfiction version of Nick Hornby's HIGH FIDELITY, and I guess the comparison sort of works on a few surface levels: It's true that HF's fictional Rob and R&RWSYL's nonfictional Steve both have massive music collections. Both Rob & Steve use music to help define pivotal life experiences. And both compulsively compile mix tapes/CDs to express their feelings to and make connections with others. After that, the connection's pretty thin. A more apt comparison is Hornby's lesser-known essay collection SONGBOOK, which explores his obsessions and life experiences more directly than anything else he's published. As a result, it's Hornby's most soulful, personal book.
Likewise, ROCK AND ROLL WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE is as soulful and personal as anything Almond's published before, and that's saying a lot. (For a sampling of Almond's Hey-Soul Classics, check out his tributes to Kurt Vonnegut and Barry Hannah as well as essays on fatherhood in 2007's essay collection (NOT THAT YOU ASKED).)
Almond's biggest complaint about music is "you can't eat it." The same could be said of ROCK AND ROLL WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE. We all find salvation wherever we can. For some it's rock and roll. For others it's great books...like this one. Testify.
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