BEST OF 2012: BOOKS

Feburary 2nd, and I'm STILL working on my Best Of lists for last year?! What the hell is my problem, anyway?! Guess life is too busy being lived to think about it. Plus most of my stuff is still sitting in a pal's garage in Denver, waiting for me to work up the scratch to have it shipped back to me. (And THAT will take awhile, as I found the solution to What I Will Do To Replace The Temporary Holiday Job At The Book Store is Getting A Two-Day-Per-Week Retail Gig And Finding Myself Inadvertantly Becoming A Full-Time Freelance Rock Journalist again. Which means I'm busy as hell and not going to see much in the way in cash until maybe a month from now. But it's all good, as certain annoying sorts like to say....)

So, since I've now got my brain properly hyper-caffeinated and Johnny Throttle's excellent England's-Finally-Got-Its-Answer-To-The-Devil-Dogs debut LP for the wonderful Dirty Water Records imprint damaging my hearing further, all I can do is search my fevered brain and attempt piecing together what books I read last year, keeping in mind I read on average a book per week. And not all of those I read are new. And I couldn't afford a lot of new books last year. Nor could I always find what new ones I wanted to read at the public library nor in my friends' private collections. Nor that I really want to keep digressing into the ozone like I appear to be at the moment.

No, this isn't a fucking book, you silly twit!

Among the new books I remember liking was certainly Johnny Ramone's posthumous memoir, Commando. A fast read, mostly due to its intended form (Johnny's brief reminiscence accompanied by others' voices), it neither misses the intended other voices nor needs them, nor feels skimpy. In many ways, Commando reads like both Johnny's right-ward politics and highly influential guitar style: Loud, fast, brutal, fun, funny, terse and economical. It also gains bonus points for its unusual packaging, which is reminiscent of a grown-up punk rock version of a Little Golden Book.

Then there's the literary debut of my long-time pal, the Rev. Norb. Besides becoming my favorite podcast DJ with his “Bubblegum Fuzz” show and a professional Trivia Night host in his native Green Bay, WI, the former Sick Teen/Sic Teen editor and MRR columnist and bandleader/frontman (Suburban Mutilation, Depo Provera, Boris The Sprinkler), Norbie became an author last year. It apparently was the best way for him to cope with being snowed in during a typical Green Bay winter. He decided to simultaneously tell the tale of Boris' history and explicate his hilariously dense lyrics for the band. What The Annotated Boris ended up being was as hysterical and smart as you'd expect Norb to be if you have even the thinnest familiarity with his work. It's also the most hilariously-overannotated book ever written! Seriously: The footnotes are as equally weighted as the text! It also reveals Norbie to be the seriously great lyricist I never really thought about him being (and unfairly so, I'll admit): Over-the-top funny and intelligent as you expect him to be, densely-packed with cultural references and in-jokes, and surprisingly angst-filled. I never thought I'd be saying this of my friend, as much as I admire him. But with The Annotated Boris, Norb could stake a claim to being a spastic American answer to John Cooper Clarke!

Then there's Punk Rock: An Oral History, from my boss at the Louder Than War punk site, John Robb. John's kind of my English cousin: A long-time punk rock musician in The Membranes and Goldblade and a respected rock journalist with Sounds and other publications. And this is not really a new book, but the long overdue American publication of a 2006 book of his. It takes the form of other punk histories like Please Kill Me and We Got The Neutron Bomb in allowing the participants' voices tell the tale, and yes, this is strictly focused on the UK. But unlike nearly every other book on the subject, Punk Rock: An Oral History DOES NOT presume punk died with Sid Vicious' last breath and the story there. Robb takes in UK punk's 2^nd/3^rd/4^th waves without sneering (another thing these sorts of books never do), and also takes in post-punk and offshoots like 2-Tone. Voices that frequently get drowned out in these books by John Lydon and the usual suspects also get their volume knobs boosted dramatically, such as Charlie Harper, most of The Damned's membership, TV Smith and Gaye Advert, Penny Rimbaud, etc. It's a truly worthy, fine, necessary addition to the punk rock bookshelf, very welcome.

And that's all about all I can stand of this exercise, for now. Now I have to wrack my brains and try to think of what movies I liked last year. 'Til then....

Year-End Inventory II: The Music

"Personally, I like the Bern Elliot and The Fenmen reissue!"

This is always the time of year your fave-rave cultural journalists love to compile Top Ten Lists of the stuff they got sent for free that they feel was important. I never enjoyed doing those lists - how egotistical can you get, making such grand pronouncements? Fact is, taste is individual, the brain is an imperfect memory bank, and something's gonna get left out that'll offend someone or other. Then again, most of my actions offend someone or other, it seems. So, what the eff...?

So, despite having retired from the rock critic fray in 1998 and only occasionally writing about music for pay in the years since, I know there's scores of people out there who still look at me as being a (*gulp*) "rock journalist." Not that they likely care what my opinions are on anything....

Still, for some odd reason, I can't resist doing a recap for the past year in culture. Guess I crave punishment, for some weird crime I'm unaware of....

Record Of The Year 2011: This had to have been the oddest musical year in my memory. I don't know about your memory. But I think we have official evidence of the destruction of the music business by the Oughts' technological revolution now being complete. I no longer have any accurate compass on new music, new bands, etc., etc. Now that music has been fully democratized and placed in the hands of The People by technology, it's harder to find the cream on the surface for the flood of people starting bands and releasing every note they play on MP3, etc. And my tastes are no longer in synch with Da Yoof, so I don't really know or get what people with a lot of facial hair like.

Yeah, I guess I'm officially old.

I do know that what filtered through to me last year were a number of strong releases from veteran bands, some of which I wrote about in this blog (Gang Of Four, Michael Monroe), some of which I didn't (Motorhead, UK Subs). But two records (yes, I still call 'em that, whether the source is digital or not) stand out in my mind from this past year: The New York Dolls' Dancing In High Heels Backwards (which I wrote about here) and one I didn't write about and should have, The First Four EPs by OFF!

That Dolls record, like everything the reformed New York Dolls have done, has been rather controversial. Some people are just never going to get over the absence of Johnny Thunders, Jerry Nolan, and Arthur Kane. And many expressed to me that Dancing.... sounded less like the Dolls to them than the previous pair of studio albums by the reunion lineup. That actually might be one of the strengths of Dancing....: It broke from the sound of the last two albums, and even broke from Dolls tradition with its strange, almost avant garde production. Less reliant on raunchy guitars and more on atmosphere and songs, this also may have hewed closer to the Dolls' classic spirit than anything they'd done since their heyday. Why? Because it's almost surely the Dolls' tribute to their girl group roots, right down to the faithful cover of Patti LaBelle and The Bluebells' "I Sold My Heart To The Junkman." It's a solid album through-and-through, and one of the two new discs I reached for the most this past year.

OFF!'s Steven McDonald (l) and Keith Morris (r) sandwiching yours' truly, Denver, CO., Oct., 2011 (pic: Adams Pinkston)

The other release, by OFF!, is both a throwback and a shockingly vital, brand new blast. Fronted by punk rock force-of-nature Keith Morris (do I have to tell you he was in Circle Jerks and Black Flag?!) and featuring members of Redd Kross (Steven McDonald), Burning Brides (Dimitri Coats), and Rocket From The Crypt (Mario Rubalcaba), this is hardcore punk as it was originally intended: A solid blast of intensity. This isn't about speed or politics (except in the most personal, real-life terms possible). This is about raw power, anger, and sheer release. Keith's performance, on this record and live, is especially potent. He's unleashing something, and you can't help but pay attention to this unfiltered torrent of emotion and spleen. This band could be a one-band revolution all in themselves. Bless 'em.

Coming soon: My picks in books, movies, etc. Enjoy!