Customer Reviews

Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

What could have been a great book is instead a muddled mess. Gina is happy to name drop and gush on her experiences to the point that it makes you sick. There are many mistakes in this book including lyric quotes from bands. Gina seems to put too much importance on Nirvana and "Smells Like Teen Spirit". The way she carrys on makes it seem that she just got involved when "Nevermind" came out, though she makes it CLEAR that she was in it from the "begining". This is a nice journey through the majority of "Safe" alternative bands that pretty much everyone knows or should know. However the pictures on the side lines are nice, including old concert fliers. It was a nice read, but not essential.

Supposedly a story of how punk infiltrated the mainstream in the form of Nirvana, this is really the inconsequential ramblings of an undistinguished music fan who was inexplicably given access to a typewriter. Amidst the overheated prose (hell, outright bootlicking) about R.E.M., Nirvana and Fugazi are some "revelations" that wouldn't surprise a Franciscan Monk. (the music industry is only interested in quick profits over art? The hell you say!) All the soggy writing also can't hide Arnold's conflict: if she has a thesis, she kept it to herself. For all her self-righteous carping about indie-rock's elitism, she has no qualms in taking cheap shots at metal fans and artists. If she feels conflicted over indie-rock's mainstream success, she has no qualms about taking the money and running by writing a book "about" Nirvana (who only appear in a handful of sections) and prominently pasting their picture on the cover. Give your average fan at a Paul Westerberg show $100, and you'll get a book like this (or probably better).

I guess what troubled me most about _Route 666_ was the fact that each of the bands who Ms. Arnold spent an enormous amount of ink, were actually all crossover (mainstream) bands, except, perhaps, Fugazi and the Buthole Surfers (but even they had a fairly big hit with "Pepper"). There is no question that Nirvana, the Replacements, and Husker Du all started out as Punks. However, to make a blanket statement that these bands lived and died as punks is a gross misunderstanding. This is the story of music which may be considered a trifle left of center. This is not the story of truly punk bands like Flipper, Fear, Black Flag, the Minutemen and Minor Threat although I'm pretty sure she mentions them all. Punk rock is and always was underground. That being said, I think Ms. Arnold does a pretty good job of telling the story as she saw it unfold.

I don't know quite what to say about this book. I found it entertaining,and it's nice to see someone out there is as daft about Fugazi as I am.Yet on the other hand it also has the same feel to it as someones' rambling account of a great night out - I guess you had to be there.The authors' passion for her subject is palpable but some of the stories rendered in breathlessly mythic tones come off as rather inconsequential.I think the initiated will probably enjoy this book more than those unfamiliar with the american alternative scene so potential readers may want to bear that in mind

ON THE ROAD TO NIRVANA is a great book for anyone who wants more than a textbook history of "post-punk" music. You'll learn about a lot of bands that went unsung while people like Michael Jackson and Guns n Roses had their day in the sun. I've personally bought maybe half of the CDs I own based on Arnold's reccomendations. The down side to this is that these reccomendatiosn come from her experience, and her experiences lead to non-stop name dropping, and annoying phrases like "We'd worked so hard for this..." as if Arnold had toured with Minor Threat or something.

Still, for a funny and personal look at some great bands, pick up this book.

This could have been a classic account of punk's "subversion" of mainstream culture. Ms. Arnold gives an exciting history of the punk roots of successful bands like Nirvana, the Replacements, Sonic Youth, etc., and punk's success at shaping fans' attitudes. She was a true insider of the American underground music scene, and provides hilarious anecdotes and insights into that culture. Simultaneously, she addresses issues usually ignored in the "alternative" scene, such as the complacent sexism and racism, and the punks' ambivalent views on influencing the mainstream.

But too often her epic comes off as a name-dropping boast. A lot of ink is wasted on events and experiences that are more self-agrandizing than illuminating. I'm glad you met Chris D. at a party, Ms. Arnold, but what did he say? What did you think? Some of her memories are gushy and insubstantial, like the ramblings of a groupie.

Finally we are happy for the author that she had such a great time and was privy to so much hipness, but we can't learn much from it. And that's a shame, because there are fantastic sections of this book that are devoid of narcissism or silly hyperbole. If these were published separately, I would give the re-issue five stars.

if you read the other reviews of this book then you basically get the idea that this book is the road leading up to the band called nirvana. it is a one sided story seen thru gina arnold's eyes and does open up a wealth of info about a ton of bands that all deserve their day in the sun. my one problem is i found a number of discrepencies such as her naming chuck dukowski as the drummer of black flag? sorry sweetheart, he was the bass player.
all the incorrect info made me question the whole book and wonder what is true and what is false. she did stipulate that this book was about the "spirit" and not neccesarily about the bands individually but from my experience real fans know and cherish the music and the bands they adore. they know every detail. i dont doubt gina's love of the music but to me she appears as what i call a "scenester" someone who travels from one spot to another, from one scene to another because she thinks it makes her cool. she always seemed to be going off to another gig, never apart of a scene but in a state of constant motion, a state of constant flux. .
she does have the spirit of the music down pat and all in all the book is a good account of some great bands that all made it possible for the next wave to do their thing which all allowed nirvana to conquer the world as they did. i just wonder how accurate it all is.

if you're getting this just to read about nirvana-don't. it's mostly about old punk music like the sex pistols & the evolution of punk music upto the time of the first pressing.

A certain verbose reader to the contrary, it is possible to be a male groupie. Millions exist worldwide. All you need is a toadying, self-serving bent and an overheated style. Groupies usually don't even think about seducing their idols; Danny Sugarman apparently never did. They are just thrilled by hanging around celebrities, name-dropping celebrities, having others associate them with celebrities, etc. Some of them, like Gina Arnold, happen to be gifted writers with a rare passion for music. The difference between a gifted, passionate groupie and a journalist is whether or not you have something to say. Not whether you woke up in Dave Groll's tour bus.

The trouble with Arnold's book is that her keenness for Punk is hard to share or to understand because she gives no coherent basis for it. Her account has no focus and no thesis. It contains the seeds of many brilliant debates - why is punk more valid than metal, what are the roots of sexism and ageism in punk, why is a Deadhead's worship of old music bad but a Punk's worship of old music good (??)- that are quickly discarded in the rush to the next faaabulous show. After 200 pages of this tantalizing hodgepodge, you stop ascribing it to some anarchic "punk rock" ethos and start suspecting laziness.

Often, Arnold's gusto drowns out the story she's trying to tell. She is more interested in describing how she felt about a particular show or band than what occurred or what the performers were like. Her voice is mostly self-reflexive, sort of a "look-what-a-fun-person-I-am" exhibitionism. Worse, her lapdog credulity allows her to be bamboozled by the Butthole Surfers in a mock-interview that a real journalist would've seen through in a second. Byron Coley she's not.

Despite these flaws, Arnold's understanding of Punk seems far superior to most of her male peers'. Her book's failings have nothing to do with gender and everything to do with bad reporting. Free Speech Advocates who smear other fans for expressing their opinions should find the maturity to stop projecting their sexism onto others.

P.S.-Love the scene where Arnold and friend, clad in business suits, strut through a posh parking garage setting off car alarms, then smugly ascribe their impunity to the security guards' "looking for Negroes to blame." Ooh, rebel city! So working-class people are de facto racist, Ms. Arnold? And, I wonder if the guards did find an African American scapegoat? Someone always suffers for this kind of declasse' suburban posing, and it is usually an underdog.

an exceptional book telling how it was.... and how it still should be. But it's not..Gina Arnold captures the essence of many bands before they became large, though essentially NIRVANA! MAY THEIR MEMORY LIVE ON FOREVER IN ALL MUSIC LOVERS