{"id":23018,"date":"2016-03-14T15:35:33","date_gmt":"2016-03-14T19:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=23018"},"modified":"2016-03-14T15:46:39","modified_gmt":"2016-03-14T19:46:39","slug":"rock-book-capsule-reviews-early-2016-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/rock-book-capsule-reviews-early-2016-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Rock Book Capsule Reviews, Early 2016 Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/t5NdvE3QRCA\" width=\"420\" height=\"236\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Extended travel of late means I&#8217;ve just finished a couple more rock books of note on <strong>Sam Phillips<\/strong> and <strong>the Replacements<\/strong>!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock &#8216;n&#8217; Roll<\/strong>, by Peter Guralnick<\/p>\n<p>I had just a cursory knowledge of Sun Records and Sam Phillips. \u00a0If you&#8217;re in the same boat, this is a good history lesson on the Memphis scene in the 50s. \u00a0Guralnick was a friend of Sam&#8217;s and relied on him big time for his two Elvis books, so this story line takes most of what Sam says and thinks about the period at face value. \u00a0Of course there are great stories about Jerry Lee, Cash, Ike Turner, and Elvis, but beyond that\u00a0are\u00a0the people, family members and mistresses that surrounded Phillips throughout that golden age and later. It also does a good job explaining how independent labels functioned and the shoe leather (and tire rubber) it took to break artists&#8230;and then how the majors would come in and sign the rising star for big money. There&#8217;s also vintage gear talk!<\/p>\n<div class=\"a-section a-spacing-none\"><!--nextpage-->It&#8217;s clear that Phillips was kind of a &#8220;my way or the highway&#8221; type of personality, which works up to a point, but led to the demise of Sun and Phillips spending the rest of his life as a wealthy radio station owner and\u00a0finally a\u00a0rock n&#8217; roll gadfly. Phillips comes across to me as a benevolent (to some) dictator, who didn&#8217;t really want to play ball with anyone, so just dropped out of the record business\u2014but what a run while he was in it. His personal life is wild\u2014he \u00a0basically stayed married to the mother of his two sons, but lived with a long-term mistress, and\u00a0other shorter term gal pals, for decades.<\/div>\n<p>The last quarter of the book is a slog, as Sam tries to burnish his own legacy after the death of Elvis. The accolades start rolling in as people get nostalgic for &#8220;the Sun Years&#8221; (all that stuff was put out by the guy he sold the company to for a million dollars). All in all, it&#8217;s a worthwhile read and fun to listen to\u00a0some of the more obscure Sun artists\u2014The Sun Records Story\u2014a lot of it is on YouTube and streaming services.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/sOPIySsXZlA\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements\u00a0<\/strong>by Bob Mehr<\/p>\n<p>Boy I feel old. This books dissects a big chunk\u00a0of my youth and I feel like I&#8217;m reading about the Beatles in Hamburg. Cripes, was it all that long ago? Yes&#8230;yes it was.<\/p>\n<p>I thought I knew all there was to know about the Replacements, but this right here is the definitive book. Usually I don&#8217;t like an extended examination of the younger years in rock bios, but when Tommy Stinson is recruited to join the band at 12, well you can&#8217;t get around it. This book is chock full of interesting early stuff\u2014previous band names Dogbreath, and The Impediments. I never thought of\u00a0how close to the edge of poverty they lived until they got their Sire record deal. Even then, Bob Stinson seems to never have given up his job as a restaurant cook. Of course, Bob\u00a0was soon booted.<\/p>\n<p>Mehr goes through each record in great detail. I knew Twin Tone was low budget, but the stories surrounding the label hammer that point home in spades. The author\u00a0also casts a dubious eye on the production values for <em>Tim<\/em> and its &#8220;tinny&#8221; sound. It&#8217;s rock legend now that the Mats sabotaged their own career, but the crap they pulled again and again is staggering when it&#8217;s presented on page after page. There&#8217;s some good backstage stuff\u2014Bowie sees Tommy and Paul Westerberg all dolled up before a TV appearance and remarks &#8220;Aren&#8217;t you the bright young things!&#8221; Tommy sees some SoCal mohawk-wearing dudes at a show and deadpans, &#8220;Oh wow&#8230;punk rockers.&#8221; Paul tells a hair band that Flying Vs will give them VD.<\/p>\n<p>The author\u00a0also describes various shows, both good and band. Their infamous stint as openers on a Tom Petty tour gets quite a few pages and, for those of you who saw some of those shows, you&#8217;ll get a kick out of the details. <em>Personal aside: He mentions\u00a0an early\u00a0at St. Cloud State&#8217;s Atwood Center show that my buddies and I and about 15 others attended. And an outdoor 1983 Navy Island show in St. Paul\u00a0that included\u00a0R.E.M., Lets Active, The Suburbs, and local heroes, The Phones, which was the best day of my life up to that point.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s plenty of stuff to get bummed out about\u2014not only is Bob Stinson&#8217;s\u00a0sad demise told in great detail, but Paul had serious, serious alcohol issues that are explored in more depth here than I&#8217;ve ever read. There&#8217;s material\u00a0from and on\u00a0everyone from Jim Dickinson, who produced <em>Pleased to Meet Me<\/em> in Memphis, to Dylan, to Peter Buck, and the Young Fresh Fellows. I can highly recommend this one\u2014and again, it&#8217;s a great excuse to dig out <em>Hootenanny<\/em>, <em>Pleased to Meet Me<\/em>, <em>Stink<\/em>, even <em>All Shook Down\u2014<\/em>damn it&#8217;s all good to me.<\/p>\n<nav class=\"page-links\"><strong>Pages:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/rock-book-capsule-reviews-early-2016-edition\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">1<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/rock-book-capsule-reviews-early-2016-edition\/2\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">2<\/span><\/a><\/nav>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Extended travel of late means I&#8217;ve just finished a couple more rock books of note on Sam Phillips and the Replacements! Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock &#8216;n&#8217; Roll, by Peter Guralnick I had just a cursory knowledge of Sun Records and Sam Phillips. \u00a0If you&#8217;re in the same boat, this is a good <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/rock-book-capsule-reviews-early-2016-edition\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1413,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[167,182,43,1028],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23018"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1413"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}