Review: 'Rush & 2112: Fifty Years'

 

I haven't read much by him, but Daniel Bukszpan had a big impact on my own writing. Reviewing his Encyclopedia of New Wave a long time ago here on Psychobabble, I was most impressed by how he balanced humor with doing what any rock writer is supposed to do. So when I received a press release announcing his next book was on Rush's 2112, I lit up. I like Rush, and 2112 is a pretty good album, but I was mostly on board to read how Bukszpan would handle the topic. Considering Rush's highfalutin concepts, their kimonos, Geddy Lee's wood-sprite voice, and Neil Peart's mustache it's not like there's no material to poke a bit of good-natured fun at. 

Review: 'Punk: The Last Word'

When you call your book Punk: The Last Word, you better be pretty damn comprehensive. A title like that yawps "Here's all that's left you'll ever need to know and everyone else can shut it."

At 600 pages, Chris Sullivan and (mostly) Stephen Colegrave's oral history is certainly fat. And they definitely cast a wide net to snare up whatever might be considered punk. Along with the expected punk rock bits, Punk: The Last Word also spews a lot of ink on fashion, venues, lifestyles, beatniks, underground theater, and old, dead philosophers and poets. 

Review: Lynne Goldsmith's 'Music in the '80s'

If you paid any attention to rock music during the eighties, you've seen a bunch of Lynn Goldsmith's pictures. She shot all of the decade's biggest stars from the coolest (Prince, The B-52s, The Ramones, Siouxsie) to the squarest (Barry Manilow). The variety of her photos is as eclectic as the people she photographed. She took glossy posed pics and candid back-stage ones that could be Polaroids. She took black and whites and colors and electrifying live shots and casual al fresco ones. My personal faves are the weird after-party pics featuring unlikely gatherings of stars. You want to see John Mellencamp beaming alongside Jayne County and David Johansen? You want to see Nile Rogers, Chrissie Hynde, Dexter Gordon, and Paul Shaffer sharing a table? You want to see Darlene Love in a clutch with Joan Jett and Elton John, who's wearing a huge, fake mohawk? Then Music in the '80s is the book for you. 

Review: 'The Light Pours Out of Me: The Authorised Biography of John McGeoch'

Siouxsie Sioux, Howard Devoto, and John Lydon were three of the most high-profile front-people of the post-punk era. They had something else in common. During their most creative periods, John McGeoch was invaluably assisting them on guitar. Side musicians in bands at the popularity level of the Banshees, Magazine, and PiL usually are not the subjects of their own biographies, but McGeoch was more than a side musician. His artful yet subtle colorings were essential to classics such as "Shot by Both Sides", "Happy House", and "Spellbound", and his influence on guitarists without a taste for Clapton's rote blues or Van Halen's showboating is immeasurable. Johnny Marr of The Smiths, John Frusciante of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jonny Greenwood and Ed O'Brien of Radiohead, and Mark Arm of Mudhoney are among the musicians who praise McGeoch as one of the greatest in The Light Pours Out of Me: The Authorised Biography of John McGeoch. 

Review: 'Gothic: An Illustrated History'

Gothic is a bit like that old pornography rubric: I know it when I see it. Dracula? Gothic. King Kong? Not Gothic. The Cure? Gothic. Metallica? Not Gothic. Gothic isn't just the monstrous, or the dark, or the nihilistic. It is ruined structures. It is shadows. It is urbane yet corrupt. It is beautiful and ugly in such close proximity that it is impossible to decipher which specific features are beautiful and which are ugly. Robert Smith tripping on acid with his jet-black bird's nest, smeared lipstick, and vulnerable pout is Gothic. James Hetfield guzzling Bud in denim is not.

Roger Luckhurst keeps his definitions much more specific and academic in his new book Gothic: An Illustrated History. Yes, he agrees that Gothic involves ruined structures, monsters, and blurred borderlines, but he has no problem defining King Kong or Godzilla as Gothic characters because they're monsters and monsters are Gothic. I don't know where he comes down on the big "Is Metallica Gothic?" question because he completely ignores Gothic music. He does address architecture, art, literature, design, and film, so Gothic: An Illustrated History, so it would be unfair to call the book limited, and the writer does cover these topics with authoritative command and novel organization: the chapters are largely organized according to locations, which allows a great deal of discussion of ethnicity and cultures, revealing the racism at the heart of a good deal of what might be considered Gothic. However, by ignoring Gothic music and fashion, Luckhurst leaves a major gaping hole in his book and fails to complete the definition he valiantly works to construct.

The illustrated format of Gothic would have also lended itself very well to discussions of Gothic music and style, since both of those strands are so closely entwined--after all, Robert Smith and Siouxsie Sioux are probably the Goths most Goths strive to emulate. There are no images of those two Gothic icons, but there are plenty of images of architecture, furniture design, fine art, and horror movie stills that make each turn of the page a thrill. 

Review: 'Rock and Roll Woman: The 50 Fiercest Female Rockers'

Who would you select if tasked with choosing “The 50 Fiercest Female Rockers”? Once I was through grumbling about that measly number, I wouldn’t select a lot of the ones who make it into Meredith Ochs’s new book Rock and Roll Woman: The 50 Fiercest Female Rockers. To the writer’s credit, she makes a strong case for even the ones who made my eyes roll while perusing the table of contents. Ochs’s colorful prose and infectious love for her subjects nearly brought me to the precipice of reconsidering the artistry of Gwen Stefani or Sheryl Crow.

Review: 'The Cure: A Perfect Dream'

Best known for their gloomy worldview and cobweb-coiffed front man, The Cure do not seem like an expected topic for one of Sterling Publishing’s slick, coffee table-style Rock biographies. Yet much about The Cure is unexpected. Mixed amongst the dirges were near-bubblegum confections such as “Just Like Heaven” and “Friday I’m in Love”, and for a band that seemed consciously designed for cult status, they’ve sold millions of albums and stadium-seat tickets. So unlikely stars The Cure may be, but they are stars nonetheless and perhaps not such a bizarre choice for a jolly old pictorial history such as Ian Gittins’s The Cure: A Perfect Dream.

Fortunately, A Perfect Dream isn’t really that jolly, because that would be dishonest to The Cure story. Theirs is a history with all the demon-wracked turmoil of “From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea” or “Give Me It”. The group was beset from within with substance abuse, legal, and interpersonal issues. Robert Smith was a sometimes-cruel control freak. Lol Tolhurst was regularly a victim of that cruelty yet often unable to contribute anything to the band because of his constant inebriation. Even those adjacent to the band could be rather difficult, such as Siouxsie Sioux, who dismissed Robert as “Fatboy Smith” when he decided to quit being a part-time Banshee to re-commit himself to The Cure, or Ross Robinson, the nu-metal producer who helmed The Cure and sounds like an absolute dickhead.

A Perfect Dream certainly isn’t a sanitized version of the Cure story, but it does have a whiff of redundancy considering how heavily Gittins leans on quotes from Tolhurst’s recent autobiography Cured and the old biography Ten Imaginary Years. His writing is generally crisp, but he has a tendency to lapse into pretentiousness when analyzing the music. To their credit, those analyses steer clear of hero worship, but they can also be a tad confusing. Why after giving Pornography a veritable track-by-track drubbing does the author conclude that it is “oddly addictive?” Despite such issues, A Perfect Dream still works as a pithy biography that refuses to pull punches and provides plenty of color images of some of Rock’s most photogenic freaks.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 193

The Date: April 10

The Movie: Punk Attitude (2005)

What Is It?: Don Letts’s era-spanning punk doc lingers a bit too long after the seventies, but it’s still awesome hearing the whole filthy and furious story straight from the mouths of Siouxsie Sioux, Captain Sensible, Mick Jones, Chrissie Hynde, Polly Styrene, David Johansen, Tommy Ramone, and too many other legends to mention.

Why Today?: Today is Safety Pin Day. Clearly, there is a bullshit holiday for everything you could possibly think of.

Review: Siouxsie and the Banshees Reissues

Five years ago, Universal Music Company was still doing right by one of its coolest properties, reissuing Siouxsie and the Banshees’ original albums since 2007 with remastered sound, bonus tracks, and nice digipak packaging. The pop-breakthrough Tinderbox had come out in 2009, and the transitional covers album Through the Looking Glass was next. Then the reissue campaign stopped. Banshee Steve Severin, who’d been involved in these reissues, claimed that UMC lost interest because there weren’t enough bonus tracks to accompany his band’s final four albums to justify reissue. The claim seemed like a sketchy excuse, but whatever. The bottom line was that we would not be getting remasters of Through the Looking Glass, Peepshow, Superstition, and The Rapture.

21 Underrated Songs by Siouxsie and the Banshees You Need to Hear Now!

I know, I know. As far as most people are concerned, they’re all underrated. Siouxsie and the Banshees have always had a cultier audience than their stadium-filling peers in The Cure. They slink in several slots behind The Sex Pistols and The Clash during discussions of British punk’s genesis, even though they were there from the start. Siouxsie Sioux was conspicuously, fabulously present when Steve Jones dropped the live-T.V. profanity bombs that ignited the filthy, furious war between the Pistols and proper (i.e.: tedious) society.

Of course, Siouxsie and the Banshees are hardly obscurities in the new wave collective consciousness. Siouxsie, who turns 55 today, is still as iconic for her terrifying trill as she is for her exotic, immensely influential sense of style. The band’s equally otherworldly music has been profiled on three greatest hits compilations. None of the tracks contained therein are included here. Instead, Psychobabble digs a little deeper into the dark wells of the band’s catalogue, reemerges a little dazed, a little roughed up, but clutching 21 underrated songs by Siouxsie and the Banshees you need to hear now.

1. “Metal Postcard (Mittageisen)” (from the album The Scream) 1978

In classic punk fashion, Siouxsie and the Banshees began their career doing everything in their power to be as off-putting as possible: interminably massacring “The Lord’s Prayer” at their debut show, adopting disturbing Third Reich imagery, allowing Sid Vicious to drum. Those who know the group from pleasantly poppy crossovers like “Cities in Dust” and “Kiss Them for Me” might be shocked to hear their early work. Disjointed, strident, far scarier than anything in Johnny Rotten’s imagination. “Metal Postcard (Mittageisen)” from their debut embodies this as well as any other track, instantly placing Siouxsie’s swastikas in ironic quotes with a dedication to anti-Nazi artist John Heartfeld, then lamenting/celebrating an increasing mechanized society to a shudder-inducing mechanical rhythm. Siouxsie’s conflicting messages clash just as hard as the vertiginous beat.


2. “Jigsaw Feeling” (from the album The Scream) 1978

Like “Metal Postcard”, “Jigsaw Feeling” draws its immense power from intense Sturm and Drang, but there’s also some fiery guitar work from John McKay to melt the ice around Siouxsie’s shout. Still, that does little to sooth the savagely paranoid lyric.


3. “Nictotine Stain” (from the album The Scream) 1978