BOOK ARCHIVES
Yeah...a bar with a library

PTOLEMAIC TERRASCOPE
(37 Sandridge Road, Melksham, Wiltshire SN12 7BQ, England)
(UK 6 pounds, Europe 7 pounds, rest of world 8 pounds that's $US12 for all y'all ignorant-ass 'meercuns)

Hey, how come Pommy addresses are always so fuckin' L-O-N-G? Their whole country is only the size of goddamn NEW JERSEY, for chrissakes. Jayzus!Anyway...a 'zine of a slightly more psychedelic frame of mind than the average Barfly, Ptolemaic Terrascope is the brainchild of Nick Salomon, leader of the esteemed Brit psych group The Bevis Frond. The actual gruntwork of production is handled by editor Phil McMullen. They do a fine job.

I actually had the latest (#28) in my hot little hand during the Lord High Fixers/Sunshine Supergirl/Fatal Flying Guilloteens/Gospel Swingers show at 33 Degrees in Austin during SXSW, but put it back in favor of a Sugar Shack CD (shame on me!). Finally in the wake of my recent Beefheart obsession, I copped it from Bomp.

How could ya go wrong with a lineup like this: a Mick-Farren penned article on the Deviants' recent visit to Japan, a 1978 interview with Captain Beefheart by New York Rocker and Forced Exposure scribe extraordinaire Byron Coley, an interview with estimable Brit rockscribe Charles Shaar Murray (author of the most intelligent and readable of the thousands of books about Jimi Hendrix), a short one with Dave Davies of the Kinks (WHO?), plus reviews of Beefheart, Help Yourself (legendary Britband which has connections via guitarist Richard Treece with Bar staff fave psych lunatics Donovan's Brain), the Brain their own selves, the Deviants, and much, much more.

All in a big A4 format, with a layout that won't make ya puke, resolutely okay graphics, and a typeface that's easier to read than "Black To Comm," anyway. (Actually the look of the thing is pretty creative for this kinda thang, all credit due to artistic director Davina Ware.) As if that wasn't enough, the ish also comes with a CD that gives you otherwise-unavailable stuff by the Deviants, Help Yourself, and Donovan's Brain, along with a cross section of Brit psych weirdos of varying quality. I LIKE it - it's atmospheric in the same way as Glass Insects or those "Desert Sessions" albums on Mans Ruin.An essential read for folks with adventurous ears.
- Ken Shimamoto

RAW POWER: IGGY AND THE STOOGES 1972 - Photographs by Mick Rock (Creation Books)

Even remaindered at 10 American bucks (pubbed earlier this year at $US24), this seemed like an extravagance - a book of Stoogepics, no more, no less, from the "Raw Power" recording sessions and their ONE contemporaneous gig, in London's Kings Cross. But, uh, when one's a fan, y'know. Hard to believe how much rock iconography could come out of a single gig and photo session, but it's all here - you could look it up.

Take a bunch of fucked-up Michigan kids, send 'em to England in their rock'n'roll clothes, give 'em a buncha drugs, and what do ya get? Enough Image and Attitude to last 30 years, at least, and turn on generation after generation of kids who aspire to live The Life.

Here's Ron Asheton, who just a few short months before was hugging a tree and crying outside the SRC house in Ann Arbor when he found out Iggy 'n' James were gonna abandon him and his brother and head for London to ride David Bowie's coattails, looking cool in his shades and Nazi regalia (the "straight" member of the group, this guy), his role as lead guitarist usurped by Iggy's new dope-and-songwriting partner Williamson, back to the bass that he played in the Prime Movers and Chosen Few. His star a bit diminished by time, perhaps, but still acclaimed the "Coolest Stooge" by the voting wing of the I-94 Bar's patrons.

Here's Scott, "Rock Action," perhaps the ultimate rock'n'roll Dead End Kid, who does most of his talking through his drums, having caught the jones that would soon reduce him to hocking his drums to buy dope and wearing his stage towel on his head all the time (or so Nick Kent would have it), who took second place to his brother in the Bar's "Coolest Stooge" poll even though he's made more good records since the Stooges' demise (lessee, there's Scott Morgan's ENTIRE solo output, plus Tek's "Vertical," and Sonny Vincent, compared with what, New Race? Okay. Then what? Destroy All Monsters? Dark Carnival? PUH-LEEZE!). He looks like he brooks no bullshit.

Here's Williamson, "The Junkie Skull," a reputed badass but an ambitious sonofabitch, too, who'd later present Iggy with a contract that stipulated that only he and Ig could write songs together. A coupla years ago on VH-1, he looked like nothing so much as a retired Army colonel (which his dad was, in fact); now he supposedly sits in some responsible position in the Sony corporate hierarchy. Back then he radiated menace, malevolence, DANGER. (At least one guitar-slingin' gal of my acquaintance still harbors a great deal of, uh, PROFESSIONAL ADMIRATION for James in his svelte '72 form.)

Then there's Ig Hisself, who's gotten farther on less work of enduring worth than anybody else in rock (sorry, but what's he done worth a shit since the Stooges folded the tent - I'll cop to maybe half of "New Values" and then what?). The World's Most Forgotten Boy indeed...as young as he looks here (as young as they ALL look), it's hard to believe that they're already five years down the road from beginnings as the Psychedelic Stooges, two years down the road from "Funhouse" and the Cincinnati Pop Festival TV extravaganza, and just shy of two years away from terminal crash-and-burn at the Michigan Palace. Looking at the Ig here in the goofy studio shots, he reminds me of my 12-year-old daughter, the former farting and belching champeen of the 4th grade (both boys AND girls), the quintessential kid. Then in the stage shots, with bleached hair and makeup, he looks like something inhuman, spectral, a daemon, a monster (as Mr. Rock writes in his intro) "in the Shakespearean sense, elemental, a force of nature." Who, I ask you, ever layed it down so forcefully and made it so REAL, from the deepest recesses of the Id to the rock'n'roll stage, than Mr. James Jewel Osterberg? Very simply: No one. No one. Which is why this stuff still stands up today. Why, this is ALMOST enough to make me wish I had a copy of His mix of the album to fry my auditory synapses while my visual ones are drinking in these images. Fucking "Raw Power" indeed.
- Ken Shimamoto

LET IT BLURT: THE LIFE & TIMES OF LESTER BANGS, AMERICA'S GREATEST ROCK CRITIC
By Jim DeRogatis
(Broadway Books)

So now it's finally here, and I don't know what to say.

The erstwhile Leslie Conway Bangs meant a hell of a lot to me. More, probably than any other writer, living or, uh, dead. Changed my life, in fact, not just in terms of music or literature but of a whole way of looking at the world. Filled a void I didn't even know was there within me with a swirling vortex of free-associational blather and jive wherein I discovered, much to my amazement, that the rudest noise could actually be the STUFF OF LIFE, and that the preoccupations of my punk teenage existence were every bit as important as the weightier matters that concerned those older, "hipper" brethren a half-generation removed from me and my cohort.

I got my first taste in the December '71 issue of Creem which contained his immortal screed "Do the Godz Speak Esperanto?" It was HIS fault that I filled the pages with my ninth grade English journal with rants about the MC5 and Stooges (a tendency I'm equally embarrassed and pleased to say I haven't gotten over yet). He laid down the law of Heavy Metal (back before that meant spandex-and-big-hair clowns) and punk and even influenced me, for a few years in the mid-seventies, to work very hard to try and convince myself that I liked free jazz. (Uh, Les, I STILL dig Trane and Miles and Mingus, tho'.) As I followed his writings through the years, I was surprised to discover another voice, one which spoke of a burning desire to connect with whatever was real and human in life. (A good example of this is the last piece of his I read during his life, "Captain Beefheart's Far Cry" in the October '80 Village Voice.)

When Lester checked out on April 30, 1982, I was in the Air Force in Biloxi, Mississippi, his passing not even, uh, a blip on my radar. Then a few years later, '87 to be exact, I read someplace that they were publishing an anthology of his work, ordered "Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung" from Taylor's Books in Fort Worth, where I was stationed then, and got RE-OBSESSED. What was he? Some kind of speed-and-Romilar fueled savant? A mad visionary? A born-too-late Beat wannabe? The rock-obsessed Thomas Wolfe (not the smug white-suited New Journalist fuckbag, but rather the torrentially prodigous author of Look Homeward, Angel) of his generation? An early male proto-feminist (NOT of the smug Alan Alda variety)? Yeah, all that and lots more.

Haunted by the image of his drunken father's death in a fire, shackled by his mother's Jehovah's Witness faith, traumatized by witnessing first a biker rape and then the orgy of violence at Altamont, the cat definitely had his demons. Perhaps that was why his writing, even at its most confrontational, never had the ironic detachment, cynicism, or mean-spiritedness of a lot of the writers (at Creem and elsewhere) who followed in his wake and copped his riffs, if not his substance.

Kudos to Jim DeRogatis for having, dare I say, the courage to take on a subject of Lester's stature. A long-time fan himself, DeRogatis, then a high school student, actually interviewed the man a couple of weeks before his death. While I disagree with the author's ridiculous assertion that "I probably came to know the many sides of Lester Bangs better than many of his intimates or even Lester himself," he HAS done his homework, interviewing friends and colleagues both famous and obscure (even Lester's therapist!), and presents a balanced account of the life and work (although I understand some of familiars are not happy with the author's depiction of some of Lester's habits, personal hygiene, etc., I don't think the SUBJECT of this book would object -- Lester kept few secrets, a few of which are unearthed here, from his readers, and besides, when it comes to dishing the dirt, DeRogatis is no Victor Bockris).

What DeRogatis DOESN'T do is capture the flavor of the writing, but then what biographer could? There's still Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung for that (and if you haven't immersed yourself in Lester's writings yet, dear reader, well, what are you waiting for?). In the big scheme of things, Lester Bangs was a fairly marginal literary figure -- but to those whom he reached, he really, really mattered. More so than equally talented contemporaries like Richard Meltzer, Nick Tosches, or John Mendelssohn, he defined an aesthetic, a WORLD VIEW, that persists today, even amid our horrid People and SPIN  magazine and MTV culture, in little pockets all over the world, in places like...well, the I-94 Bar; maybe at your house, too. For anyone who ever cared about Lester or had an interest in, uh, "rock journalism," this is a worthwhile read.
- Ken Shimamoto

THE PENGUIN BOOK OF ROCK & ROLL WRITING
Edited By Clinton Heylin
(Viking Penguin)

Don't let the cover splashed with images of The Lizard King, Brooooooce and The King fool you - this is not your quickie compendium of susperstar profile puff pieces (a la "Rolling Stone"), but a carefully constructed compilation of (mostly) great writing. Sure, many of the usual (mainstream) suspects are there but you also get to read some obscure prose too: Steve Albini, Peter Laughner, Thurston Moore and Richard Hell among them. Great anthologies are like tubs of beer at the I-94 Bar when we host a party - you keep heading back and dipping in to come up with something different - and this one passes the test.

Heylin's best known in I-94 Bar circles as the author of the scholarly, but excellent, read on the antecedents and partcipants in New York punk, "From the Velvets to the Voidoids"but the UK-based writer has churned out a lot of magazine stuff as well as profiles of Bob Dylan. The dust jacket describes this tome as "part history, part literature, part reference book" and the latter cap fits with the inclusion of things like Jon Landau's (overdone) sighting of Springsteen (history of rock and roll may arse!), Nick Kent's (justified) hyping of Television's "Marquee Moon", Tom Wolfe's punchy profile of Phil Spector ("The First Tycoon of Teen") and John Ingham's ground-floor review of the Pistols. But it's the gritty writing, like Don Watson's foray into the Lower East Side's No Wave scene, Ian Hunter's road tales and aforementioned Hell's farewell to Johnny Thunders that stand out. The inclusion of a couple of Lester Bangs musings (granted, not his greatest, but pretty bloody good anyway) is crucial. There's even a Lou Reed-penned piece, which must be required reading for any writer who's felt the barb of the Leather Jacketed One's acidic tongue over the years.

Heylin doesn't pretend his book is comprehensive- he apologises for the omission of Robert Hilburn and Mikal Gilmore and justifies the exclusion of "adjective merchants" like Dave Marsh - and (thankfully) most of the excesses of modern Brit-rock-criticism (the Cult of Self Obsession) has been left by the wayside as well.

The bottom line is that rock writing can be an enjoyable adjunct to listening to (or participating in) the real thing. Heylin hopes that the sheer quality of most of the writing inspires his readesrship to "dust off some of theose old black platters (or, if you insist, little silver discs)". It does.
- The Barman

THE DA CAPO BOOK OF ROCK & ROLL WRITING - Edited by Clinton Heylin (Da Capo)

This weighty tome was known in a previous life as "The Penguin Book of Rock & Roll Writing," but it's the same fine volume, just reprinted in a still-pricey trade paperback edition (I got mine for cheap in remainderama; you should, too). If you enjoy reading about this noise as much as I do (and I'll bet you do, or you wouldn't be here in the I-94 Bar reading REVIEWS OF ROCK 'N' ROLL BOOKS - caught ya!), then this is right up your alley, even though you might have a lot of this stuff already.

As editor Heylin points out, it's not intended to be "comprehensive" - what single volume COULD be? - but it DOES provide a good cross section of scribes 'n' styles. All the essentials are here, and you'll undoubtedly discover some new gooduns you HAVEN'T read before, too.

Among the essentials, I'd include Nik Cohn on "Classic Rock" (that's the fifties kind, not the same 13 seventies records currently programmed on the Old People station in every major metropolitan area of America), Lenny Kaye on "The Best of Acapella" (for what it says about fandom-fandom as much as the music itself), Lester on punk rock from his Blondie book, Patti Smith on the early Stones ("The Rise of the Sacred Monsters"), and Lou Reed on rock death ("Fallen Knights and Fallen Ladies").

Among new ones I discovered through this volume, I'd include the excerpts from the highly-opinionated Joe Carducci's 1990 polemic rant "Rock and the Pop Narcotic," the 1980s resurgence of Paul Williams from "The Map," a Thurston Moore tour diary, and Steve Albini's somewhat (make that EXTREMELY) jaundiced take on some of his clients in "Eyewitness Record Reviews."

There are a few pieces included here as much for their historical import as for their merit as pieces of writing: Paul Williams "How Rock Communicates" and Richard Meltzer's "The Aesthetics of Rock" (philosophy students on drugs take on rock'n'roll), Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons' "Germs" (excerpted from "The Boy Looked At Johnny": jaded punks take on the Whole History of Rock'n'Roll), Jon Landau's ridiculous "I Saw Rock & Roll Future and its Name is Bruce Springsteen" (hype-ola disguised as journalism), Frank Zappa's 1985 testimony to Congress on the subject of music censorship. Best piece for my money: Allen Ravenstine's "Music Lessons," a thinly-disguised account of a Pere Ubu gig when Peter Laughner was still in the band.

For maximum effect, read while drunk, back to back with Laughner's own "If You Choose, Choose to Go." And that's just scratching the surface. A deep lode; a pleasure to mine.
- Ken Shimamoto

ROCK BOTTOM: DARK MOMENTS IN MUSIC BABYLON
By Pamela Des Barres
(St. Martin's Press)

UNKNOWN LEGENDS OF ROCK 'N' ROLL
By Richie Unterberger
(Miller Freeman)

Recently, I was chewing the fat with Bomp garage guru Greg Shaw for an interview that'll appear in a future Black To Comm 'zine. Now, having been present at the creation (as managing editor of Mojo-Navigator Rock and Roll News ca. '66) of "rock journalism," Greg knows a little bit about rawwwk writing, and he and I agree that having started out at a pretty high level, the quality of stuff has deteriorated markedly over the years.

In the first generation, you had everything from scholarly academics (such as Paul Williams, the Commie Greil Marcus, and that guy who roooned the MC5 and then went on to see rock'n'roll future in that, uh, overly Sincere fella from Noo Joisey) to inspired genius-madmen (of whom Lester Bangs, of course, was the god-king, but in whose company I'd also include Nik Cohn, Richard Meltzer, and Nick Tosches) and just plain fans (Lenny Kaye, Greg his own self). Since then, who? Nick Kent, sure. In the "scholarly academic" category, Commie Brit Ben Watson has done yeoman work on Frank Zappa, if you care. Clinton Heylin, but he's more of a historian than a critic-essayist in the mold of the best of the folks I mentioned earlier. Uh, Legs 'n' Gillian's "Please Kill Me," but that's, uh, oral history. In the 'zine ghetto (in which I'd proudly include the I-94, when we've had the right amount of *substances*), a lot of enthusiastic amateurs -- in the sense of "people who don't get paid for writing about this stuff" -- who are mainly paying homage to Lester or one or the other of the early greats (if there hadn't been a Creem Magazine, we woulda had to invent it).

Rawwwk scribes today generally come in one of two flavors: glorified publicists, or glorified gossip columnists. Of the former (in which category I'd include Unterberger), I'd call them honorable when they're doing the P.R. for cool new bands that they really and truly dig and think that we (the audience at large, such as it is) need to hear...or, for departed greats who never got props in their lifetimes/active careers. Of the latter (where I'd classify Des Barres -- with a difference; see below), inasmuch as I've gotten many hours of twisted kicks from the aforementioned "Please Kill Me," I was talking to a certain Detroit rock luminary for a future project, and he complained of having spoken to the authors of said tome for hours, only to find nada from their conversations in the published work; when he ran into one of 'em and asked 'em why not, he was told, "You didn't give us anything we could use. You were TOO POSITIVE."

Now sure, there's a little bit of the voyeur in every fan, and you could make a case that it's the writer's prerogative to take a certain amount of, uh, ARTISTIC LICENSE, it also seems like such censoriousness is a little...DISHONEST. Or maybe that's just my thang. Which brings us to the two tomes in question, available in remainderama here in the States and maybe in Oz too. In the first, rock "insider" Des Barres (Frank Zappa's former governess, leader of the "outrageous" all-girl band the GTOs, author of "I'm With the Band") tells the story of seemingly every rocker who's croaked since Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper vectored in (and, curiously, two non-deceased subjects: Jan Berry of Jan & Dean fame, who was severely brain-damaged in an auto wreck at the height of the hotrod craze his music helped start, and Rick James, currently singing the REAL Folsom Prison blues for substance-and-physical abuse patterns unmatched by any name entertainer since Ike Turner).

I was prepared to dislike "Rock Bottom" a great deal, but I found it a surprisingly good read...even though some of these stories have been told TOO many times, Miss Pamela sets herself apart from the competition by bringing a certain survivor's compassion to her subjects, and (surprise) she can actually WRITE, too (always a plus). Pour yourself a tall one, read her chapters on Syd Barrett, Brian Jones, Johnny Thunders, and Sid Vicious back-to-back with those from Nick Kent's "The Dark Stuff," and get really depressed. Or read her chapter on G.G. Allin to find out just how lowdown and repugnant rock'n'roll can really get.

More fun, fer sure (although not better written) is Unterberger's compendium of "Psychedelic Unknowns, Mad Geniuses, Punk Pioneers, Lo-Fi Mavericks & More." If you're like me and read books 'n' mags to discover cool music you might have missed, you'll find this doorstop to your liking.

The "BIG NAMES" here are Syd, Roky, and Arthur Lee! Broken down into sections by genre (lost rockabillies, Brit invaders, garage denizens, psychedelic victims, Krauts, punks, "one-hit wonders," etc.), "Unknown Legends" features capsule bios (mostly based on interviews with The Actual Participants) with recommended recordings by all the subject artistes, and even includes a CD with some sound samples (unless the folks in yr local secondhand bookstore copped it). If you ever wanted to know something about the Avengers, the Raincoats, the Hampton Grease Band, or the Mystic Tide (obscure sixties garagers from the Long Island stomping grounds of my youth, whom I never heard of before reading this!), grab this tome now!
- Ken Shimamoto
Rock Bottom:

Unknown Legends:
1/2

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