james lewis

Just Get It

Revisado: 09-05-21

In short - Lurie delivers exactly what you’d hope for.
In long - I’ve been a Lounge Lizards fan for a long time after stumbling on The Queen Of All Ears years ago. He does a great job of tying the music in together with his other work, which I was certainly aware of, but which I mostly passed up in favor of the records and art.
Lurie might have a rep in the media/entertainment industry as a difficult person, but he also has a body of work to back up everything he says. He fires back on anyone who he felt wronged him, and why pull punches anyway? Nobody wants to read about about nice boys getting along with everybody.
I’m an active musician, and I actually appreciate that he lays out how much work something like that takes. He seemed to be able to fall into movies and celebrity easily enough - maybe an oversimplification, who knows how all that shit works - but you get a real feel for the sort of work it takes to develop that sort of musicianship. He didn’t just happen into that, he made it happen with work and sweat and good and bad decisions, and he wrote about it in a way that would get me to put down this audiobook at times to go practice or check out a record or musician I was just reading about. To me, that is the biggest mark of the success when it comes to writing about music. Try reading Nick Tosches’ Unsung Heroes Of Rock ‘n Roll without running to YouTube to listen to every unheard gem you’re being introduced to on every page. If it doesn’t illicit that sort of response in you, we either don’t see eye to eye or you should be doing something else.
I wouldn’t really compare this one to Ribot’s recently released book as they are two very different works by two different people, but personally I’d start with this one and then move on to the other afterwards. If I had to compare them at all: Lurie’s is more similar to Miles Davis’ expansive autobiography, while Ribot’s splits the difference between something like that and then a bunch of sketches that kind of seem like a creative mind working in a different form, rather than something that is framed around a cohesive narrative from start to finish. Ribot’s does offer plenty of concrete details around his life and music, it just goes in other directions.
So if you’re a fan of his work or some nerd into celebrity musician autobiographies, you’ll find what you’re looking for here.

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esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

Start With American Tabloid First

Revisado: 08-02-20

First of all - Craig Wasson’s performances of Ellroy’s books is nothing short of masterful. Their sympatico styles pair wonderfully.
If you’ve already read American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand, jump on this title fast. Though I had previously read the two books some time had passed before I started Blood’s A Rover, so i started the trilogy again. Read back to back, the books are even better. I believe each of them stands up on their own, but the events surrounding the assassination of JFK and MLK so haunts the characters and plot, I would recommend making your way through the first two books of the trilogy first. Good shit.

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Wonderful

Revisado: 09-18-19

The book is so great but the reader is a little weird. You’ll really notice it when he recite’s Jason’s lyrics but the text is good enough that it doesn’t get very much in the way.

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This is the whole book

Revisado: 05-11-19

Lots of complaints about chapters missing, but that has been fixed. Wonderful performance, fantastic book. A classic.

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