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.

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.