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.

Too Naked for the Nazis: The True Story of Wilson, Keppel and Betty - Alan Stafford

I sometimes come across books through odd channels. In this instance, I read a review for a movie (I don’t even recall exactly which movie) that made a passing reference to the Sand Dance. Curious, I looked it up on Youtube, and found an intriguing video of two extremely thin men with fake moustaches in what likely would have bee described at the time as “oriental garb” doing a tap dance routine on a carpet of sand. After a bit more digging, I discovered the duo was really a trio, and that there was a book about them called Too Naked for the Nazis.

With a title like that, how could I resist?

As the full title suggests, the book tells the story of the vaudeville trio Wilson, Keppel and Betty, largely forgotten now but nearly a household name in Britain during their heyday. Wilson and Keppel began as a duo, but made an inspired addition of a talented young chorus girl named (or rather, stage named) Betty Knox. A young mother with a history as a runaway and a love of performing, Betty helped shape the act for over ten years before departing on good terms, lending her name to a host of other Bettys, including her own daughter.

The book chronicles the ups and downs of the troupe’s career, but the real star is Betty. We are treated to a description of her early life in much greater detail than Wilson or Keppel, and follow her in depth long after she leaves the trio. I can’t blame Stafford for this decision, as her life post-Wilson and Keppel was as intriguing as her life during her days with the troupe. Drawn almost by happenstance into journalism, she became a war correspondent, first known for her lighthearted articles on Anglo-American relations during the war, and later for her coverage of the Nuremburg trials, where her sense of justice for all, even former Nazis, earned recriminations from many in the press. To be clear, Betty was no Nazi sympathizer, but she felt that the trials of lower-level defendants lacked the rigor of true justice. She even claimed to have been writing a book to this effect, but the manuscript has sadly never been found, if it ever existed in the first place.

Stafford has a good, breezy writing style, unornate and clear. It reminds me of Irwin Chusid’s writing in Songs in the Key of Z: clearly the work of a devotee, but well researched and discussed without gushing. Too Naked for the Nazis provides a neat snapshot of a period in entertainment history far removed from what we have today, using one longstanding and widely celebrated act as a lens to view music hall as a whole. Recommended for anyone interested in such things.

Who By Fire - Matti Friedman

As I get older, I sometimes encounter stories that make me wonder how I could possibly have never heard about them before. In Who By Fire, Matti Friedman gives an impressionistic yet precise account of an event that should be part of the broader Rock ‘n Roll mythos alongside Elvis’ hip-shaking Ed Sullivan debut, The Beatles’ rooftop concert, and the fatal stabbing at Altamont Speedway.

In October 1973, Israel fought a brief and brutal war with Egypt and its Arab allies, waged by the latter in retaliation for an ignominious defeat in the Six Day War a few years earlier. The Israelis, careless with bravado from past victories, were caught completely by surprise, and faced the very real threat of annihilation. This conflict, launched on the eve of the Jewish Holiday Yom Kippur, drew Jews from around the world to come and defend their ancestral homeland, regardless of whether they’d once lived there or even visited (echoes of this can be seen in Ukraine today). One of these Jews, who came not to fight but to work on a kibbutz and free up a younger man for the front, was Leonard Cohen.

Cohen never saw a kibbutz. Israel knew he could serve the land he called his “myth home” better with his true gifts of poetry and song. And so he roved about the battlefields of Sinai with a contingent of musicians, playing concerts for weary troops, drifting between platoons like a phantom, leaving many who heard and saw him wondering if the encounter was even real. No footage of these concerts exists, and only a few photographs can be found.

From this material, alongside entries in Cohen’s journal and interviews with spectators, Matti Friedman pieces together a rough account of Cohen’s travels. It is solid journalism, precise when it can be an honest about its gaps when it can’t. Yet the strength of the book is not in reconstructing the minutia of a tour schedule (an impossible task; even Cohen didn’t know where exactly in Sinai he was most of the time), but in capturing the feeling of obligation and looming terror that haunted that war and all others. Indeed, Cohen isn’t even the true protagonist of this book. His concert is more a lens through which to view the lives of several young Israelis fighting for their survival and the survival of their country.

I was moved by this book in ways I didn’t expect. I feel I have a deeper knowledge of Cohen and his myth home for having read it. Though it lacks a cohesive ending, it is powerful from start to finish and adorned throughout with lovely prose. Worth a read from any Cohen fan, but even if you know his work only vaguely (as was the case for some of the soldiers he played for), this book still has a lot to offer through its timeless reflection of war and art, and the place one has in the other.

Remain In Love - Chris Frantz

I’ve been a huge fan of Talking Heads since university, so it was only a matter of time before I picked up Remain in Love. The book is not a chronicle of the band itself, but a memoir of its drummer and founding member Chris Frantz, which is actually more interesting. I’m already familiar with the contour’s of the band’s rise and untimely dissolution, and much of the popular press for the band has focused on its frontman David Byrne. I love and admire Byrne as an artist, but I was also aware going in that his relationship with the band ended on fairly sour terms, and that the responsibility for this was largely his.

Frantz is not shy about pointing this out.. He acknowledges (implicitly for the most part, but also outright in a couple of instances) how important Byrne was to the success of Talking Heads, while also emphasizing that it was never a one man show. He makes a strong case for his own contribution, and to an even greater extent that of his wife and creative partner Tina Weymouth. The assumptions of the music industry at the time were that Talking Heads was essentially a vehicle for Byrne’s genius, and the other heads were little more than musically adept side players. I must admit I’d made similar assumptions myself. Frantz sets the record straight, and rightly points to his and Weymouth’s work wtih tom Tom Club as evidence that the talent pool in Talking Heads was deep all around.

Despite recalling some less than pleasant moments of friction with Byrne, there is little bitterness in Frantz’s book, and his treatment of his former bandmate seems pretty evenhanded. There were a couple of anecdotes that I thought were petty to include (the thing about the turd on the bed was second hand and unverified, and though Frantz admits this, he shouldn’t have spread the rumor without knowing for sure it was true). For the most part though, he gives credit where credit is due.

My favourite parts of the book were naturally those describing Talking Heads’ ascent, and Frantz does not skimp here. More than half the book follows the band from its early days at CBGB to its pre-stardom tours. His discussion of how Remain In Light was made were fascinating, as were the anecdotes of the creative foment of New York in the mid 70s. It truly is mind-boggling to think that the foundation of twenty years of music were built in a few square blocks of crime-ridden Manhattan.

Frantz writes in an easy, plain-spoken, conversational way. There are no poetic flourishes, and some ocassional repetitiveness that makes it feel almost like it was dictated. This isn’t a problem, and is vastly preferable to literary overreach, which can be jarring if not done well. Frantz must have kept a tour diary, because he is able to give great detail about cities visited and sets played, though there are some moments where memories may be muddled or conflated (he has a young Damon Albarn, singer from Blur, tending bar in a London hotel during their 1977 tour, when he would have been only nine years old. I believe this happened, but probably on a later tour).

Above all, his profoung love for Tina Weymouth shines through and is a pleasure to see. As a rare celebirty couple that has stayed together since young adulthood, I’ve long admired Frantz and Weymouth. Reading about how much he loves her still warms my heart. May they Remain in Love for many more years to come.

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.