Review: Stephen Colbert's Midnight Confessions

Stephen Colbert's Midnight Confessions by Stephen Colbert
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Short and sweet, this is a collage of "Confessions" bits from his popular segment on The Late Show. I miss Stephen Colbert's The Colbert Report and don't stay up late enough for The Late Show. So, this collection of Colbert bits, often brilliant and mostly irreverent, is entertaining. But, if I was up on The Late Show I would probably slam it for being too short (Length: 35 mins) and lacking in fresh material.

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Review: Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain

Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wolf does an excellent job at making a very scholarly, technical treatise (graphemes, morphemes, idiograms, etc.) engaging and enlightening. Overall, this is a deep dive into the details of reading as a neurobiological feat explored to its expression unique often culturally (such as Chinese versus English) and in its breakdown, such as in dyslexia. The survey of the science is very good and educational, but I cannot agree with a sort of moral about the triumph of digital media over books. The author points out that Socrates feared the rise of books as some sort of support for digital communication dumbing down humans without confronting an apparent hypocrisy: Might our fear of a digital rise be as short-sighted as Scorates' fear of the rise of writring?

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Review: A Conversation with W.S. Burroughs

A Conversation with W.S. Burroughs by V. Vale
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Back in V. Vale’s RE/Search Newsletter #127, June-July 2014, V. Value mentioned "Burroughs had even studied Egyptian grammar and hieroglyphs" and in the more recent newsletter mention of this limited run chapbook expounded that William S. Burroughs did this and recommended it and Chinese grammar for mental exercise. My recent reading of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain caused me to encounter the same topic where neuroscience shows us the Chinese use different neural pathways for language. This and much more on Burroughs' reading life and recommendations I hoped top find here. However, the grammar topic did not make it to printing and much of what is here on books is discursive, brief, and with misspellings of author names, etc. At the time, Vale was researching for an as-yet-unpublished The Books in my Life, but at the time Bill has other priorities that week around a methadone clinic and dinner guests. Some of that life in transcript and photographs make it here, making for an intimate if superficial exploration of the writer's life in late 1988.

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Review: Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon---and the Journey of a Generation

Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon---and the Journey of a Generation by Sheila Weller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon---why not Judy Collins, or even Laura Nyro? I am sure selecting any such triumvirate is open to criticism and I applaud Weller's courageous choice and the elegant way the trinity's career-life biographies are stitched together, switching back and forth, in an engaging and enlightening way without being confusing or off putting. Collins and Nyro make frequent cameos, as do Jackson Browne and James Taylor. Each woman had serious obstacles to overcome, not limited to Mitchell's early pregnancy, Simon's crippling insecurities and King's encounters with sexism from career limitations to abuse. Each woman built success and stability in spite of this during turbulent decades. The book I felt was especially interesting on Mitchell for her reunion with her daughter and tracking the varied artistic directions of her key albums. For King, it was fascinating to see the arc of her work from early pop success to determined environmental activism. At first, I felt Simon was the odd duck, but she was definitely part of that scene and being formerly married to singer-songwriter James Taylor tied together the biographies. Also, Simon's mastectomy, chemotherapy and reconstructive dovetailed with the theme of tribulation and triumph and her long, largely critically acclaimed recording career marks her as an equal, too.

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Review: All Music Guide to Country: The Definitive Guide to Country Music

All Music Guide to Country: The Definitive Guide to Country Music by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With country music and its manifestations reaching ever deeper into the world's cultural psyche, All Music offers an in-depth encyclopedic guide to the massive genre. The book covers the extended bluegrass scene given greater popularity by O Brother Where Art Thou?, with entries from the close harmony traditionalists, Osborne Brothers, to such progressives as Darrell Scott. Doc Watson gets four pages and the FM country scene from Dwight Yoakam to popular western swing revivalists, Asleep at the Wheel, is here. The alt-country scene is present, too, covered from Bloodshot recording artist Robbie Fulks to the popular Old 97's. The entries are in the expected form for these successful All Music 'cyclopedias. That is, biographies and then key reviews with recommended starting points. This makes for over 10,000 rated reviews. The well-indexed tome includes style descriptions, a section for compilations and sound-tracks, essential albums by genre and two dozen rich essays on aspects of country music, like "Country on Film" and "Country Soundtracks." This is a valuable resource for the serious fan of any part of the varied country music spectrum. Where else would you find that The Residents, Savoy Brown, and Elvis Costello all drew on the early 70s countrified British pub rock group Chili Willi & the Red Hot Peppers for members?

[I was a contributor to this and other All Music Guides]

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Review: Magnified Lyle

Magnified Lyle by Friendly Rich
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Friendly Rich calls his book/CD combination release "an anti-music video." The single track is matched with an illustration of its narrative lyrics in "Magnified Lyle". The work concludes with a reading of dramatic personae, which adds to its theatrical quality. It is a morbid tale of a child's ant-burning antics becoming a global holocaust. Fans of Captain Beefheart lyrics (one line: "her melanoma chuckled") and Tom Green's humor will appreciate this... Elaborating on this theme, Friendly Rich offers the cryptic "De Rien." This is a collection of essays and poems along with a "listening activity" called "Mercy." No track listing accompanies the CD, which in this case does not follow the text. The audio is live audio miscellany and field recordings from a carousel organ rally. The two are "blended" for your schizophrenic pleasure. However, "De Rien" is not presently commercially available.

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Review: Death in December

Death in December by Michael L. Sheridan
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I hope this lightweight account got some attention for more investigation into the brutal Cork County slaying, because it reads like such a plea for a case that needs the attention. However, with little details other than the crime scene and 168 pages fattened with a fictionalized account of what may have happened, this is not destined to be a true crime classic.


UPDATE: There are more details in a more in-depth treatment in the audiobook West Cork

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Review: Chesapeake 1880

Chesapeake 1880 by Ken Rossignol
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Largely a collection of period newspaper articles, this feels more like a scrapbook than a book of history. Still, it has its merits from details (even gruesome ones) of ship accidents and the hot oyster wars of the era. I think this would be particularly interesting to area residents due to the tie-ins to local communities and geography.

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Review: The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War

The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War by James D. Bradley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

From the movie made of Flags of Our Fathers and recent reading his Flyboys: A True Story of Courage, I was drawn to read another history by James D. Bradley. This one is easily the most provocative and probably important of the trio. Bluntly stated as an "American Aryan" outlook, Bradley exposes a racist imperialism to Teddy's America and self-created image. Seeing in the Japanese a potential ally in a West-facing tide of civilization, T. R. anointed The Land of the Rising Sun as inheritors of their own version of The Monroe Doctrine -- something that grew into a monstrous evil of WW II's PTO. Meanwhile the instigated Spanish-American War led to a brutal American treatment of The Philippines, including the roots of The Moro Conflict (1899–1913). This armed conflict between the Moro people and the United States military during the Philippine-American War pitted the U.S. against Muslim people who lived in the Southern Philippines. Off and on, through advisors as support, this initiated basically a century of conflict with a Muslim insurgency in the area. Such education including the revelation of the era's effectively racist imperialism and Teddy's carefully cultivated image through such far-sighted manipulations as "posterity letters" placing this work along with Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building and A People's History of the United States as necessary reading for understanding the 19th Century roots of America's role in global politics.

I have a feeling Teddy's views on nativism etc. would have found him comfortable and unsurprised by Trump and understanding Teddy can do much to explain how we got here.

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Review: Mommie Dearest

Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Quite an amazing look into the life of Joan Crawford collecting kids via adoption and treating them like serfs while floating on a lake of 100-proof vodka, serial marriage, violent outbursts and "Lesbian proclivities". Of course the "no wire hangers" leapt into popular consciousness from the screen and is here in one of the earliest chapters about alcohol-fueled "night raid" on her children's' closets. However, the entire arc of the memoir is one of neglect and of Joan pushing her children far away, physically, financially, and emotionally as the grew away from babes and into adulthood. The final slap from the grave being written out of the will...

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Review: Alien Rock: The Rock 'n' Roll Extraterrestrial Connection

Alien Rock: The Rock 'n' Roll Extraterrestrial Connection by Michael Luckman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book reads like a hastily thrown together potpourri about UFO aesthetic and dreamy inclination by musicians over the decades. There is not much of a basis for a "connection" here. No evidence that, say, plumbers are not similarly inclined in at least as great a percentage. It seems to be a bit of a pamphlet to a promote a then upcoming "Signal to Space" music festival, a bit of an odd marriage in truth between a music festival and an organization actively trying to make contact with life in the universe by beaming a signal and offering a landing pad in 2006. Did this festival ever happen?

In the rush or maybe some OCR fail, a lot 1980-something dates ended up back dated, such as this about Nina Hagen: "Nina has always tried to link her singing career with UFOs. In 1905, for example, she descended over a concert crowd of fifty thousand people at the Couto Pereira Stadium in Curitiba, Brazil, in a spectacular flying saucer." Wow, she's old!

There is a lot of supposed first-hand encounters detailed credulously, such as this also backdated report: ""Former Kinks star Dave Davies, who now performs backed up by his own four-piece band, said that his latest album, called Bug (as in alien implant), was inspired by personal contact he had with extraterrestrials in 1902"

This did make me seek out the documentary "Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs" and look into the arbitrarily cancelled Out There series.

I didn't expect much, so it met my low expectation. I enjoy reading music history and this delivered on that offering UFO flavor and believes from musicians famous and underground.

There were some things that irked me, like such errors as

Gort, the beloved hero of the classic 1950s flying-saucer movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, who came with a message of peace (and a warning) for all mankind.

Hey, The humanoid alien protagonist of the film is Klaatu (Michael Rennie), not the robot Gort (Lockard Martin).

Then, it's all worth it for "insights" like this

The Alien Twins, Taharqa Aleem and Tunde-ra Aleem, who once shared an apartment with Jimi and were background singers on Hendrix’s Cry of love, War Heroes, and Rainbow Bridge albums, claimed, “Jimi was able to make visible musical entities from the ethereal world of sound, and on numerous occasions he actually performed that for us…. Jimi would take us into a room and he would perform an act that would summon up entities that we were able to see. Of course this was mind-boggling.

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Review: Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A year after the infamous rally in Charlottesville, dozens of Confederate monuments have been removed from different states. NPR went to Memphis, Tenn., to find out what happens after their removal. Lee Millar told NPR host Audie Cornish,

Maybe ask your listeners, what would it feel like if your fifth great-grandfather's grave was destroyed? Yes, it's personal.

Before reading this fascinating investigation of the echoes The Civil War in the CSA's former lands, I would have dismissed that remark as bordering on ridiculous. The author finds much evidence of such sentiment, and strongly rooted. He traveled with hard-core reenactors to sacred sites, including spooning with some unwashed participants. Horwitz finds the antipathy for the north, sublimated racism, and deification of CSA heores still well entrenched across the region.

The only thing keeping me from giving this compelling study five stars is the unfortunate lack of a single picture when there is so much importance in the appearance of the most committed reenactors as well as the many sites and towns visited across the south in a breathless, tour called the Civil Wargasm.

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Review: Rockers & Rollers: A Full Throttle Memoir from AC/DC's Legendary Frontman

Rockers & Rollers: A Full Throttle Memoir from AC/DC's Legendary Frontman by Brian Johnson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am not a motorhead, but Johnson loves his cars, and tells his stories with such glee and color that this is a joy to listen to. Not just cards, there are escapades in planes and on motorbikes, too. Of course, this touches here and there with his career with Geordie and AC/DC, sometimes in salty tour tales. Read by the author with some crack-ups and background laughter left in, this is a rockin' and rollickin' series of vignettes and stories, brisk in the reading (listening).

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Review: A Whole New Mind

A Whole New Mind by Daniel H. Pink
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This sounds like a presentation in front of a live audience, with some Q&A or maybe even a staged interview after. Pink is an engaging, entertaining, and even enlightening speaker. His basic message, well supported, is that all activity capable of being routinized will eventually be outsourced to the burgeoning Asian populace. Therefore, creative right brain stuff is a better career choice: sculptors triumph over assemblers. I like to think it less extreme than that: the blend is best. Best to design the cellphone than assemble it. After all, how many sculptors can even a new mind economy support?

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Review: Journey to the Center of the Earth: A Signature Performance by Tim Curry

Journey to the Center of the Earth: A Signature Performance by Tim Curry by Jules Verne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, Tim Curry could just narrate all my audiobooks, that'd be fine with me. His delivery enlivens this already exciting and entertaining adventure festooned with real science imagined with a manometer and a volcano tube. Verne is among the very little sci fi that I truly enjoy.

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Review: Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets

Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets by Dick Cavett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The other night watching TV, we caught a clip of Cavett exhibiting his sparkling wit and cris enunciation. Neither of us could place his name, so impressed with his performance and seeking to make amends, I took in this audiobook expertly narrated (with impressions), a collection of his New York Times postings. Really an early blog, Cavett comes across as amused by "comments" and "emails" coming in reaction to his observations on the 2008 McCain - Obama election race, depression, and more being mostly recollections of interviews on his show. This includes the semi-apocryphal Jerome Rodale episode and the onscreen death more remembered than seen. In these recollection, Cavette reveals himself to be very well read, very broad in interest and in awe of such varied contacts as Bobby Fischer and John Wayne. The poignant recollections of the troubled chess Grandmaster make nice commentary to Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall - from America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness.

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Review: Fractions, Tilings, and Geometry (IAS/PCMI Teacher Program)

Fractions, Tilings, and Geometry (IAS/PCMI Teacher Program) by Bowen Kerins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Ostensibly designed for precollege teachers, this teach-the-teacher course based on one offered in the Summer School Teacher Program at the Park City Mathematics Institute has applicability to teaching undergraduates as well. This introduction to non-periodic tilings in two dimensions and space-filling polyhedra is architected around engaging and enlightening group activities to benefit of the secondary education instructor. This content is ready classroom capsules to enliven first-year college courses. Topics covered range from tessellations including Penrose dart and kite tilings and Voronoi diagrams to the golden ratio, packing problems, and more. Very well designed to offer participants authentic self-discovery through an orderly succession of motivation and revelation through guided, hands-on investigation of patterns, the finished material can be directly applied to aid students in honing reasoning, learning to formalize ideas, and grow in mathematical sophistication while having fun solving problems." ...

[Look for my entire review at MAA Reviews]

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Review: Flyboys: A True Story of Courage

Flyboys: A True Story of Courage by James D. Bradley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

From the title I thought this was a story of plucky airmen in the Pacific in some limited theatre or engagement. I found the hardcover edition on my shelf and flipped through to the photos section which included a lot of atrocity pics, like live bayonetting of captured U.S. personnel. Taking in the audiobook version, I learned the scope here is much more broad: from pre-WW II anti-Christian Japanese sentiment to captured airmen subjected to cruelties including vivisection and cannibalism -- sometimes at the same time. Some key features spanning the entire PTO include the Doolittle Raid and the story of the its missing crews revealed in a February 1946 during a war crimes trial held in Shanghai to try four Japanese officers charged with mistreating the eight captured crewmen. The basis of much of the work is The U.S. Navy War Crimes Commission on Guam (commonly called the Guam war crimes trials). Inter-spliced with the deep background on these crimes is recollections of George H. W. Bush's fighter pilot career. Generally around the crimes is the story of the Pacific Theatre as a successful air war from beginning to nuclear end. A fair amount is laid our that the devastating fire bombing by air would have defeated Japan without resorting to the A-bomb.

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Review: Born on the Fourth of July

Born on the Fourth of July by Ron Kovic
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Akashic’s new edition of Born on the Fourth of July is a timely indictment of why societies use soldiers and how they use them. Like the powerful works of Jack Kerouac, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, and Henry Miller, Ron Kovic’s story comes across as an explosive, lucid revelation about a life made low and miserable by war, mistreatment, and substance abuse.

A fast-paced and enlightening history, Born on the Fourth of July is a quick, personal study into the people’s history, á la Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn. In a fairly experimental, even hallucinogenic style, Kovic varies the tempo and shifts the point of view of his autobiography to place the reader by his side in the dungeon-like atmosphere of a VA hospital and in the dizzying liberation of mass protests. The only drawback to this updated history is that none of the many relevant photographs which must surely exist are included in the book.

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Review: Hallo Spaceboy: The Rebirth of David Bowie

Hallo Spaceboy: The Rebirth of David Bowie by Dave Thompson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is actually Dave Thompson’s second volume in a continuing enlightening and detailed look at the life and career of über-artist David Bowie. The first volume, Moonage Daydream, closed with 1987 when Bowie’s career was at one of its nadirs. This book covers the next two decades up to 2006, showing the successes and missteps of a protean genius who shows a remarkable ability to recreate himself. Some of the surprising moves made by Bowie during this fertile period is playing to the techno masses (“Pallas Athena”), being the most challenging as Tin Machine, funding his future with “Bowie Bonds” and more. Surprising moves, sure, but not all would agree they were all successes or even wise. In an insightful work that is honest and not hagiographical, Thompson fairly assesses what went right and what went wrong with Bowie’s moves.

In a comprehensive review of this period of Bowie’s career, one near constant thread is the hot and cold creative relationship with guitarist Reeves Gabrels. Through the lens of Gabrel’s interaction with Bowie we learn a lot about Bowie’s creative process and his at times distant approach even to his closest collaborators. Closing on a better point in Bowie’s career than Moonage Daydream did, almost twenty years later Bowie has re-established himself at a new peak after another extraordinary comeback. Included in this book is the darkly astonishing 1.Outside, insights into his private life as a contented family man married to super-model Iman, and a running close examination of the relative strengths and weaknesses of The Berlin Trilogy of Low, “Heroes” and Lodger. (Often, this important series of releases is dispensed with superficially and categorically.)

Along with suggestions for further reading, this book features an extensive discography of career studio albums, live releases and details of recording sessions. Surprisingly, though, it is not indexed.

[My review that ran, among other places, on ink19.com]

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Review: Ticket to Ride

Ticket to Ride by Graham Sclater
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Graham Sclater, today a music publisher in England, was active as a musician in the “Hamburg Sound” era when Germany was fertile ground for English “beat groups” plying their trade and crafting their sound and style. Sclater was there as organist of The Wave, The Birds & The Bees and Manchester Playboys. With this “ticket to ride,” he gained the experiences translated into fiction form in this, his debut novel.

However, I think this rich trove of experiences would be more entertaining in a work of non-fiction, as anecdotes to add color to the lives of working musicians, perhaps easily integrated into the largely known history of Brit rock with some occasionally recognized names, albums, etc. This, I think, would add a depth to the story that is currently lacking.

Ticket To Ride is full of wild tales and outlandish incidents as the musicians become prisoners in a foreign land to tiring and harsh transitions from desperation to decadence. Through this, the characters are remarkably flat, lacking in dimension and emerging at the end of their tribulations lacking in real transformation. Sclater fails to give the characters in his work real emotional depth and believable motivations.

However, do not let my arguments against the book detract from its joys. I myself have walked the streets of Hamburg’s St. Pauli district and eventually met Erin Ross, who designed posters for Rory Storm and Hurricane, The Beatles, and more. I was hoping for just such an encounter to somehow find my own link to this era and place.

So it is quite fun to muse upon Sclater’s book as to what facts and real events are behind the elements of his story. Do we think that we recognize anyone in these scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue? The chapter titles have lyrical references like the book title, do you recognize them? Also, as a former indie rocker myself I feel a connection to the characters in this book. I have gone through and experienced and seen much of what they have and I think any current or former amateur gigging musician will also make that connection.

[My review that ran, among other places, on ink19.com]

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Review: Killing Molly

Killing Molly by Eric C. Novack
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I lived in Michigan's Ferndale as it transformed into a countercultural hotbed with cheap rent. Previously, I had discovered a deeper view into drunkard poet Charles Bukowski through a two-volume VHS set of French TV interviews rented from the local Thomas Video. It was either on those tapes or other Hank material when the Buk' tried to explain the difference between himself and Henry Miller. One of the authors was pointed out to explain a coupling as merely "he stuck his dick in her," while the other used a lot of hand waving.

I forget now which way the comparison ran and it has been too long since reading either writer to figure it out in my head. However, if you are still weighing the merits of each genius and spending time in rented houses babbling pseudo-intellectual conversations over beers like a scene out of Slacker, then you may appreciate Killing Molly. Or, you may enjoy critiquing Eric C. Novack's character depth and rigid, if experimental, architecture of dramatis personae or just gazing through his kaleidoscopic view of diabolical influence and lives wasted.

Novack's diary-like entries start out as brief, superficial paragraphs but amplify into pages as the book moves along. This development recalls the Treasure Island comic books made by the young Crumb brothers, in which the cartoons were eventually overtaken by huge bubbles of text detailing the conversations between the Captain and the boy. (See the Crumb movie.)

This all suggests a climactic ending, but the final lines are more like something Robert Frost would pen. Exactly what difference did the "the one less traveled by" make?

[My review that ran, among other places, on ink19.com]

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Review: Bang Your Head: The Real Story of the Missing Link

Bang Your Head: The Real Story of the Missing Link by Dewey Robertson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a complete autobiography of one of wrestling’s more colorful “heels”, a grappler with the character of a “bad guy.” Bang Your Head is complete in the sense that it covers the arc from Dewey’s childhood to wrestling introduction in Canada to even meeting his co-writer and his current post-career activities. Beginning with an interest in body building and the art of wrestling, a young Dewey Robertson became more and more a 24/7 actor playing the role of The Missing Link, a mysterious and unpredictable actor on a colorful and ostentatious stage.

Anyone interested in making sense of the alphabet soup of wrestling federations and how the WWF/WWE rose from the din can benefit from Robertson’s travels between the federations and insider’s insight. Dewey spent more time out of the WWF/WWE than in it. In comparing the regional and organization differences to the various wrestling organizations there emerges a complete picture of the growth and development of theatrical, “predetermined” wrestling into a popular pastime.

Just as enlightening is Dewey’s frank discussion of his descent into substance and steroid abuse. Robertson does a fine balance in the telling and this becomes neither a tawdry tell-all or a preachy lesson. In so doing, the juicy bits come out in sufficient detail and the moral is clear. What is not clear, and would be a story worth telling is how it looked from the outside. Insights from his children (both sons would go into wrestling) and wife would be especially telling. Mrs. Peterson, especially, emerges as an unknown but pivotal elemental of this colorful life. As The Missing Link took his family from high living to low, from state to state, from home ownership to renting at nudist colonies, the matriarch kept everything together with or without money, with or without a present husband.

In the final summation of it, this is a tale of survival. Surviving self-destructive behavior and gaining self-knowledge, Dewey Robertson appears to be one of the lucky ones and his story takes us down a trail littered with the dead, the broken and the forgotten.

[My review that ran, among other places, on ink19.com]

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