Review: 'In the Groove: The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution'

Long ago declared dead, vinyl has made a zombie-like comeback in recent years that doesn't seem in danger of declining. A report on sales published in Variety just three and a half months ago provides strong support for such confidence. 

But if you're the kind of person who reads Psychobabble, you probably already know this. In fact, I'd discontinued music reviews on anything but vinyl quite a while ago and walk it like I talk it with my own music collection: I've sold off almost all of my CDs and replaced almost all of the essentials with their vinyl equivalents in a move I hope I won't regret the way I regret exchanging my original vinyl collection for a handful of magic beans back in 1990. 

Basically, I love vinyl, I have pledged allegiance to vinyl, and I demand you do the same. So a book about the current vinyl and turntable revolution should be just the ticket for someone like me. The book's bona fides are strong: its five authors include some of the most well-known rock writers of the twenty-first century: Matt Annis, Gillian G. Garr, Ken Micaleff, Martin Popoff, and Richie Unterberger. In a series of short essays, they discuss the history of the format, stand-out record stores, iconic album covers, the mono vs. stereo debate, important record labels, and, at its most advanced, the parts and components of various varieties of phonographs. There are also some potentially useful tips for phonograph calibration, but by mostly delivering the basics, In the Groove will most appeal to youngsters new to this whole vinyl collecting thingy and are just learning what azimuth is. 

Review: 'The Lyrics' by Paul McCartney (Updated Eidition)

From August 2015 to August 2020, Paul McCartney talked to poet Paul Muldoon about songs he'd written since 1956, and these talks became the basis of the 2021 book The Lyrics. In his foreword, McCartney explains that he'd been approached several times to write an autobiography, but the idea never interested him much, so this is the closest we'll probably get. In a non-linear way, it does get the job done, because the guy who wrote "Bip-Bop" and "Wild Honey Pie" often doesn't engage much with his lyrics and instead uses the various songs he discusses as pretexts to open up about The Ed Sullivan Show ("All My Loving"), Jane Asher ("And I Love Her"), the Beatles' decision to quit touring ("Honey Pie", of all things), the Rolling Stones ("I Wanna Be Your Man"), his bass playing ("She's a Woman"), his mum ("Let It Be"), his feelings about being on the receiving end of John Lennon's infamous nastiness ("Too Many People)", and quite a lot more. 

Because of the casual, conversational nature of the book, Paul allows himself to set aside his affable-at-all-costs persona to get disarmingly candid. More than once he says that John could be "an idiot" while also professing his love for his very complicated partner. However, he rarely expresses any regrets about the songs themselves, only saving a bit of embarrassment for the fun yet somewhat cheesy "Rock Show". This might be because he and Muldoon are fairly selective about the songs they discuss. Indeed, quite a lot are missing, and not just from his solo career, which does not get as much attention as the Beatles days. Fab tunes such as "Every Little Thing", "Getting Better", "I'm Looking Through", and "Oh! Darling" miss the cut, although a new edition makes room for several songs that weren't included in the 2021 one: "Bluebird","Day Tripper", "English Tea", "Every Night", "Hello, Goodbye", "Magical Mystery Tour", and "Step Inside Love". I'm not sure if the addition of these seven songs justifies a second-dip for any but the most dedicated fans, but fans should get at least one copy of The Lyrics, both to learn quite a few new things (I was particularly surprised to read a very different version of the story of how Lennon and McCartney delivered "I Wanna Be Your Man" to the Stones and amused by McCartney's discussion of how mercurial Stevie Wonder could be) and to read it all in Paul's own distinctive voice.

Review: 'Elvis Remembered'

Elvis superfan Shelly Powers chatted with ten people in Elvis's inner circle, posed for pictures with them, and assembled a bunch more vintage ones, and Elvis Remembered is the result. While this may all sound pretty superficial, and not all of Powers's questions are David Frost-quality, she's actually quite good at weaving "What's your favorite Elvis song?" level queries with more probing ones that reveal some fairly personal things about the icon. 

Powers's power to play on the surface before probing beneath is what makes Elvis Remembered worth reading, even if you sometimes have to wade through some completely idle chatter to get there. Really, these chapters read more like conversations than interviews, which could have easily been reigned in with sharper editing, but including expendable chatter like "How's the tea?" reveals her process: Powers gets her subjects comfortable with an amiable presence before diving in to get them to open up about Elvis's good qualities (his extreme generosity; his genuine interest in the problems of those less iconic than himself) and his not-so-great ones (his refusal to ever say he was sorry; his extremely asinine behavior with guns; his drug use). She also knows when to back off on topics that are making her subjects uncomfortable, which may not be the preferred technique of the most probing interviewers, but it's certainly the preferred technique of an empathetic human being. 

Powers also had the gumption to interview some fairly controversial figures in Elvis-lore, such as bodyguard Sonny West, who alienated some with his tell-all biography of his former friend and boss, and Larry Geller, Elvis's "spiritualist," who apparently claimed the King had occult powers or something. Despite the sketchy reputations of some of these guys, and Powers reveals some reservations about some of them in her talks with others, she remains a respectful conversationalist during her interviews and always manages to get something interesting out of them. Sometimes the revelations are downright bizarre, as when Elvis's Blue Hawaii co-star Darlene Tompkins reveals that "Colonel" Tom Parker tortured chickens in a carnival sideshow before managing Elvis. Yecch.

Review: 'The Spice Must Flow: The Story of Dune from Cult Novels to Visionary Sci-Fi Movies'

We are living through very Duney times. The last thing I reviewed here on Psychobabble was Max Evry's oral history A Masterpiece in Disarray. The latest is Ryan Britt's The Spice Must Flow: The Story of Dune from Cult Novels to Visionary Sci-Fi Movies. This is a very different worm from Evry's hulkingly exhaustive 500-page dive into David Lynch's bizarre adaptation of Frank Herbert's sci-fi franchise. Britt delivers only half the page count but sets his blue-within-blue eyes across a more complete vista, reminding us that Lynch's film is only one stop along a hero's journey that began in the early sixties when Frank Herbert, a struggling writer with a debt to the IRS looming over his head, conceived a far off galaxy in which royal houses squabble over control of a sandy drug empire. Dune World was published as a magazine serial in 1963, fleshed out for the more pithily titled novel in 1965, and further expanded for a series of literary sequels. Then came Alejandro Jodorowsky's doomed aborted attempt to adapt it into a film, Lynch's doomed unaborted attempt to adapt it into a film, John Harrison's TV miniseries for the Sci-Fi channel, and Dennis Villeneuve's ongoing big-screen remake series.

Despite wielding a hefty influence on such whiz-bang entertainment as Star Wars, Dune in all its iterations has a reputation for being fairly dense, serious stuff, but Britt goes out of his way to give the property's history a light telling to re-emphasize the fact that once you boil Dune down, it's still a story of heroes and villains and giant worms in outer space. After setting the tone with an extended discussion of Herbert's facial hair, the author blazes along all of the major stops on Dune Avenue, including its influence on its much more eager-to-please kid brother, Star Wars. 

If all you want to learn about is Lynch's film, which despite its rep as a turkey has a pretty sizable cult following and gains extra curiosity simply because it was made by our greatest living filmmaker, A Masterpiece in Disarray is certainly the book to get. But even though Britt only devotes 28 pages to that which Evry devoted 500, we still learn a few new things via Britt's interviews with Kyle MacLachlan and Alicia Witt. And, of course, if you have a more sweeping interest in Dune, Britt earns his keep by discussing matters such as the miniseries and the remake franchise that aren't among Evry's main focal points. And if you're pressed for time, Britt's book is certainly quicker to digest than Evry's, even if it isn't likely to leaving you feeling as satisfied.

Review: 'A Masterpiece in Disarray: David Lynch's Dune, an Oral History'

Having only made one purely avant garde feature that became a smash by playing to freakos at midnight showings and one Oscar-baity period piece, David Lynch was a real weird choice to helm a blockbuster adaptation of Frank Herbert's space opera Dune. But chosen he was, though he couldn't quite be blamed for the critical and commercial disaster it became. Although Lynch's sensibility has never exactly been commercial, he was also at odds with a producer who didn't quit sync up with his vision on this particular project, a truly harrowing production in an inhospitable environment, source material that may be a bit too convoluted and esoteric to translate into matinee fare fit for Star Wars fans, and a truncated run-time that forced the story to get whittled down to a confusing nub. 

Consequently, Dune is the one David Lynch movie many David Lynch fans-- and David Lynch, himself--disown. But its myriad problems are also what make the story of its making so much more fascinating than, say, the making of Blue Velvet, which was an altogether happier and more satisfying experience for everyone involved. 

Writer Max Evry is aware of Dune's flaws, as well as its often ignored charms, which is the correct perspective for anyone qualified to tell its story, which he does in his new book, A Masterpiece in Disarray: David Lynch's Dune, an Oral History. That subtitle is only partially accurate because this book is only intermittently an oral history and doesn't even become one until we're 100 pages into it. Again, Evry is correct. Oral histories fail to get the job done when they rely too much on their interview subjects, who may not cover every necessary part of the story. Evry lets his myriad subjects fill in the gaps but also provides long passages of straight narrative to ensure his making-of account is linear and complete. This is the right way to write an oral history, and A Masterpiece in Disarray is nothing if not complete. The film's unproduced predecessors, casting, scripting, costuming, filming, release, toys, magnificent failures, and legacy are all covered in full detail, whether by Evry's text, his subjects' quotes, or both. 

The author goes above and beyond by even talking with actors who were up for roles but didn't get them, such as Zach Galligan and Kenneth Branagh (both would-be Paul Atriedeses). We get the consequential making-of details as well as the inconsequential trivia that makes oral histories fun reads, such as the original plan to cast Divine as the wicked Baron Harkonnen, the surprising details about ever-affable Kyle Maclachlan's geeky demands during his audition, Lynch's bizarre first meeting with the head of Universal's film division, Patrick Stewart's hilariously clueless first conversation with superstar Sting, and the outrageously scatological reason Charlotte Rampling backed out of the project when Alejandro Jodorowsky was still slated to direct. Perhaps best of all, we get a brief but sweet interview with Lynch, himself, who has long been reluctant to talk about an experience that was pretty painful for him.

A Masterpiece in Disarray is superb because of its content, but it's also a pleasure to read because the book itself was crafted with 1984 Publishing's usual luxurious attention to detail: red gilt edges and ribbon bookmark. It's amazing to think the story of a film so universally panned forty years ago would be treated to such a lush treatment today, but it's Evry's storytelling that really earns such lavish attention. Plus, to be fair, Dune really isn't so bad.

Review: 'We're Not Worthy: From In Living Color to Mr. Show, How '90s Sketch TV Changed the Face of Comedy'

Over TV's first several decades, there were never many more than two or three sketch comedies vying for American air-space at the same time. Your Show of Shows ruled the fifties. Laugh-In and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour took over in the sixties. The Carol Burnett Show and Saturday Night Live gave the format new life in the seventies. SNL continued its reign in the eighties while  SCTV from Canada and Not Necessarily the News on cable applied some competition. 

Then things went haywire in the nineties. In Living Color, MADtv, House of Buggin', The Edge, The Kids in the Hall, The Ben Stiller Show, The State, Mr. Show with Bob and David, The Dana Carvey Show, Upright Citizens Brigade. Not all of these shows had long and successful runs, but all of them made some sort of impression on the Vast Wasteland's landscape, and all are fondly remembered by the cults they earned. 

One such cultist is Jason Klamm, who references fifty-or-so shows and interviewed some 150 individuals for his new book We're Not Worthy: From In Living Color to Mr. Show, How '90s Sketch TV Changed the Face of Comedy. Along with creating dedicated chapters on the biggest or most noteworthy sketch shows of the era, Klamm also fortifies his book with a history of sketch comedy on stage and on TV leading up to the nineties, sprints through lesser known programs from his main decade, and provides chapters on sketch-show derived movies like Wayne's World and talk shows like Late Night with David Letterman and The Conan O'Brien Show, which relied more on sketches than run-of-the-mill celebrity interviews. 

That's a lot of stuff, and these are shows that often have very complex histories and legacies. There've been entire books written on Saturday Night Live, In Living Color, and The Kids in the Hall, and I've read a few, which makes some of these chapters, which mostly run between ten and fifteen pages, feel kind of inadequate or too focused on one particular element. The chapter on The Tracey Ullman Show is mostly about how it birthed The Simpsons. The Saturday Night Live chapter has so much to discuss in so little space that the narrative ends up feeling particularly scattered. 

So the book is strongest when dealing with the shows that didn't have as much of a legacy and can be discussed in brief chapters more satisfactorily. There's certainly a lot to learn on these pages (wait... Rich Fulcher of The Mighty Boosh was Mike Myers's body double in Wayne's World?!? Iiiiit happened...), and if you're anything like me, the more obscure shows will send you running to YouTube in search of clips or complete episodes. Plus, the book is just beautifully designed with its colorful hardcover, ribbon bookmark, blue gilt edges, and bonus film-strip bookmark depicting frames of Molly Shannon as Mary Catherine Gallagher sniffing her pits.

Review: 'Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever'

Watching Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert's TV reviews in the eighties and nineties was only partially about finding out which new movies were worth watching, especially if, like myself, you often disagreed with them (those guys had little affection for horror movies or David Lynch). Watching two guys who look like fairly benign uncles get genuinely exasperated with each other was a big part of it too. As anyone who reads Matt Singer's new book Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever (or watches that infamous behind-the-scenes video of them shooting a TV promo and calling each other assholes) will learn, Siskel and Ebert really didn't like each other. At least at first. After nearly two decades sharing the camera, a sincere love developed between the critics, and viewed from one of several angles, Opposable Thumbs is a sort of Sam-and-Diane love story. 

Since wringing a whole book out of the relationship between two movie critics, even ones as famous as Siskel and Ebert, is probably no simple feat, Singer had to rely on several angles. Some of these are a bit ho-hum, such as his efforts to get to the bottom of how they ended up on TV in the first place or why Siskel's name came first or how the whole "thumbs up/thumbs down" thing developed. These guys didn't exactly live juicy lives, but it is interesting reading about their early careers, especially when getting more details about Ebert's fleeting yet still-surprising partnerships with The Sex Pistols and fellow breast-enthusiast Russ Meyer. The passages about Siskel's pranks on Ebert and an ill-fated co-star spot for a skunk on their show are amusing enough. The conclusions of both mens' lives are sincerely sad. But the real core of this story is how two rival Chicago film critics came together to insult each other on the air and learned to develop a friendship that transcended the drastic differences in their personalities. That facet of Opposable Thumbs gets a sincere thumbs up from me.