Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk - Jon Doe with Tom DeSavia and Friends

X is releasing a final album and going on a farewell tour, and while final albums aren’t always final and farewell tours are almost never a farewell, I’m concerned enough they mean it to travel to Rochester on my own and see them while I still can. Buying my ticket got me in the mood to read a book I’d purchased years ago but hadn’t gotten around to until just now: Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk.

In my experience, a book authored by musician “with” another writer is usually little more than a biography in first person, the perspective belying the obvious distance of the actual subject to what’s being written. Here, though, the “and friends” gives a better hint of what the book is about. Rather than a straight up autobiographical account of Doe’s live before, during, and after X’s heyday, Under the Big Black Sun has the patchwork feel of an oral history, with musicians, writers, and scenesters contributing their own stories and perspectives on the unique scene that emerged in late 70s LA.

Doe gets the most page time, but in a way his parts are the least narrative of the book, focusing as they do on small moments and assuming (correctly, in my case) that the reader already knows the general story of the band. Most of the other contributors take the more traditional route, charting their arrival in LA and immersion into a small but rich musical scene, though the focus is almost always on the culture rather than the specific band, furthering the anthropological sense of the book. There are a couple of missteps, but for the most part the writers feel like earnest people wistfully recollecting a difficult but formative time in their lives. Contributors namecheck bands with frequency, and I came across a few artists I’d never heard of and now adore (Nightmare City by the Alley Cats is incredible). There were also bands I knew but had never associated with the punk scene (The Go-Go’s, really?).

As befitting an anthology, the book is a grab bag of styles, and while some went more florid than others, I found the whole thing well constructed and readable, with only a couple passages that struck me as indulgent and over-written.

Overall, a solid book for those interested in a scene that, while not launching many marquee names, undoubtedly influenced American music for the rest of the century.

Faith, Hope and Carnage - Nick Cave and Sean O'Hagan

Last month, I was pleased to receive a copy of Faith, Hope and Carnage as a Christmas present, as I’d heard about the book but hadn’t gotten around to buying it. The book os co-authored with Sean O’Hagan, but their collaboration was not in the traditional sense of celebrity biographies (i.e., the celebrity lends his name and the partner does all the actual writing).

For one thing, the book wasn’t written in the traditional sense. Rather, it is the transcript of an extended interview with Cave, conducted through phone calls over a roughly year-long period. The start of the timeline is shortly after the first COVID lockdowns, which are to some extent an impetus (a book written by phone being an apt medium in the era of social distancing).

The pandemic is thus naturally a subject for discussion, but the biggest theme is certainly Cave’s experiences as a grieving father in the wake of his son’s death in 2015. I doubt the years lessen the pain in an absolute sense, but they do offer Cave some time in which to reflect and articulate the experience, which those without children can never understand, and those (like me) who have kids but have not lost one can sense only as a sort of vertigo. I make no claims that I can in any way truly understand the abyss the grieving parent plunges into, but since becoming a parent, I can, in contemplating such a thing, peer queasily over the edge.

Though the book deals in grief, O’Hagan’s questions never feel exploitative. He is a good interviewer, probing where he senses more could be said without driving the conversation, pushing back on some statements in a way that is not confrontational, but prompts Cave to delve a little deeper or offer a clearer sense of his meaning. This isn’t needed often, for Cave is, in my opinion, a great thinker. There is an unfortunate tendency to assume people in a creative field have an innate understanding of larger issues, but Cave has long struck me as someone who truly thinks deeply about things. He is the sort of religious person that I greatly admire. Not a zealot, because zealots are invariably shallow thinkers who don conviction as a kind of flashy armor, but one who doubts as much as they believe. One whose belief is fueled, almost paradoxically, by that doubt. As someone who struggled with belief and wound up on the other side of the equation, it is always fascinating to me to read from someone who wrestled with the same questions and reached the opposite conclusion.

Of course, Cave is known most of all as a musician, and while the book avoids the trappings of the standard music interview (when’s the new album out? What does this song mean? Who are your favourite artists?) some discussion of his work is inevitable—and much appreciated. It’s particularly intriguing to read his discussions with Sean while in the process of writing Carnage with Warren Ellis.

I loved this book, loved it’s intimacy, loved Cave’s passion that has mellowed with wisdom into a surprising optimism. I was sad when it ended. As a Cave fan, I’m certainly the target audience, but I’ve also never been huge on biographies or books about my favourite bands for their own sake. Too often, these feel more like collector’s items than works of literature. This one is different. I would recommend it to people who haven’t even heard of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. What Cave has to say cuts deeper than fandom.

Songs in the key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music - Irwin Chusid

My wife gave me Songs in the Key of Z as a gift several years ago, and it’s been a favourite of mine ever since. This is my third or fourth rereading, and I enjoy it as much today as when I first cracked it open. It might seem an odd candidate for repeat reads, as its stated purpose is to introduce the uninitiated to a roster of bizarre and largely unheralded artists. Yet I find myself coming back to it every couple of years, engaged time after time in these stories of hope and perserverence in the face of indifference, madness, and a host of other obstacles.

I was not truly uninitiated when I picked up this book, having heard of several fo the artists already—and not simply the more commercially successful ones—but I nevertheless learned of a lot of amazing individuals, some of whom became personal favorites. Chusid casts a wide net, chronicling the careers of respected avant garde stalwarts like Syd Barrett and Captain Beefheart, indie darlings like Daniel Johnston and Wesley Willis, and true off-the-radar oddities like Jack Madurian, a resident at an assisted living community who recorded a pinballing medley of Tin Pan Alley hits, and Shooby Taylor, whose unreleased demo of himself playing air saxophone have made him a celebrity among a small but fervent clutch of devotees (count me among them).

In addition to varying levels of fame, Chusid makes no distinction between artists whose intensity fo vision make them commerically unviable despite considerable knowledge and skill, and those who truly have nothing that could be called, in the conventional sens,e musical talent. Harry Partch and Robert Graettinger are undeniably able composers with deep understanding of music theory—Partch even devised his oen 43-note scale based on Just Intonation—but chose to compose music that most listeners would not appreciate, whereas the tin-throated heiress Florence Foster Jenkins had what is universally described as an atrocious voice, and can be appreciated more for her guileless faith in her own abilities. Nor are the camps clearly defined: I imagine most listeners owudl consider The Shaggs utterly devoid of talent, but I remain convinced that in an alternate universe, they are as big and influential as the Beatles.

Chusid’s prose is deft and funny, descriptive withotu being overwrought, and gilded with many funny turns of phrase. He is a talented writer, and I was surprised to find that he doesn’t have any sort of writing background, going so far as to claim in his author bio that Songs is his first and last book. I hope he reconsiders. there remain considerably greater depths to be plumbed here, and he is clearly the man to do it.