Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life
By John Sellers
Simon & Schuster, 215 pages, $23, $13 paper
Music fans have encountered a hard-core music head like John Sellers at some point in their lives. He was the guy in high school who always seemed to know just a bit more about your favorite band or would always manage to find obscure band, x, y or z — inevitably making you feel uninformed or even worse, un-hip.
The 35-year-old Sellers’ “Perfect From Now On,” is a memoir about his obsessive love of all things indie and alternative. While his knowledge and insight into the independent music world is impressive it is hampered by a barrage of redundant anecdotes and obsessive footnoting. When sifting through multiple pages devoted to a single footnote the purpose gets lost. There are funny moments, but after three or four pages of small rambling type, the gag gets old. It seems as if Sellers feels he needs to quantify everything, an effect that breaks the rhythm of his writing and undercuts his opinions and musings.
His tales of devotion to the Manchester, England music scene of the early ’80’s – the scene that gave us Joy Division, New Order and The Smiths — or Dayton, Ohio’s now-retired Guided By Voices is interesting, but I suspect would only be appreciated by the previously converted. For the rest of us, Sellers fails to establish any reason why we should care about these bands.
Before the Legend: The Rise of Bob Marley
By Christopher John Farley
Amistad, 216 pages, $21.95, $9.95 paper
Right now, in dorm rooms across the country, there are posters of Bob Marley on the wall. Marley is either holding up both arms, entranced in song or he is encased in a cloud of marijuana smoke with a carrot-sized joint between his fingers. And just outside of those dorm rooms there are gaggles of dreadlocked white-guys playing hacky sack to Marley’s greatest-hits album “Legend.” But for the vast majority of the world’s population, Marley and his music is of far more substance than collegiate- and marijuana-induced adoration. His life and more importantly, his music is that of sacramental myth and legend.
Christopher John Farley’s “Before the Legend — The Rise of Bob Marley” provides a remarkable account of just where this legend began, a task that according to Farley has not been undertaken until now.
Farley traces Marley’s life from his earliest days in the country to the brink of his international fame. Through extensive research and countless interviews Farley earnestly reconstructs just where and how Bob Marley came to be.
Part historic examination, part philosophical extrapolation, Farley’s reconstruction explores the complexity of Jamaica from the arrival of Haile Selassie I and the roots of the Rastafari religion to the birth of ska and reggae music — all of which stood at the foundation of Marley’s life and would come to define his music.
Through this, Farley is able to both deconstruct and at the same time honor (and in some cases, expand) the legend of Bob Marley. The only shortcomings of Farley’s “Before the Legend” are its biographical brevity. While the latter chapters of Marley’s life have been explored extensively, I think readers would welcome Farley’s version.
AC/DC Maximum Rock & Roll:
The Ultimate Story of the World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band
By Murray Engleheart and Arnaud Durieux
HarperEntertainment, 488 pages, $25.95
If you have been to any sporting event in the last 15 years, you have inevitably heard the song “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC. The song, with its repetitive guitar riff and growling chant, makes even the most lethargic fan want to destroy and possibly dismember the opposing team. In Chicago, this is the song that plays as the White Sox take the field.
In light of some of today’s rock acts, AC/DC appears a bit tame, but during the 70’s and 80’s they were the band that made parents nervous. Through the years they have been called devil worshipers, have been credited as the motivation for a serial killer and sighted by Tipper Gore’s Parents Musical Resource Center as an enemy of moral values.
The bands hell-raising journey from the land down under to become one of the most successful rock acts in history (they have sold over 150 million records) has been painstakingly chronicled in Murray Engleheart and Arnaud Durieux’s “AC/DC Maximum Rock & Roll.” Five years in the making, the book walks a fine line between meticulous research and obsessive fandom.
For any die-hard AC/DC fan, this will be a welcome addition to the chronicles of the band, but for more casual fans the book will read as a long-winded retelling of the chronology. While it does offer extensive history of each of the primary band members, it fails to move beyond superficial insight.
The authors manage to paint an impressive picture of a band with an unwavering work ethic and incredible ability to persevere (on the brink of global success the band’s lead singer Bon Scott died of alcohol poising).
To the general public the band may have seemed like hell raisers bent on blowing eardrums, but on the inside they were (and still are) a hard-working bunch of guys really only interested in playing music.
That said, after reading the 488-page account of this effort, it seems the story of AC/DC is best told by the band itself. In their words — “It’s a long way to the top (if you wanna rock n’ roll.)”
