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TRIPLE BOOK REVIEW: Punk Bands, Town Drunks, And Others
More Barroom Transcripts, Featuring Tony Straub
Rich Stewart and Tony Straub, 2001, Craphouse Press, craphousepress.com
Tales of a Miscellaneous Man
J. Berk, 2001, Craphouse Press, craphousepress.com
Amped, Notes From a Go-Nowhere Punk Band
Jon Resh, 2001, Viper Press, viperpress.com
Whattayasay we take a little time out for some fun, ok?
I’ve had it with towel-headed dingdongs, living in some godforsaken hole in the ground that doesn’t even have shitpaper, waving their moronic fists in the air and shouting, “Death to America.” I got news for you, assholes: When it comes, it’s gonna be Death FROM America. We’re big enough and bad enough that we can kick your sorry asses back to the stone age (wait a minute, you guys are still IN the fucking stone age, so I guess we’ll just have to kick your sorry asses back to the Precambrian or something) and get drunk and party like hell at the same time. So fuck you.
Now, where were we?
Oh yeah, fun.
Gotta love fun, right? Well, except for all you butthole towelheads.
Are there any fun-loving towelheads out there? Hey guys, if it’s true that some of you like fun, let us know. Tell us about your wild and crazy high jinks. As opposed to high JACKS. Boogie with Osama. What a concept.
Now guys like Tony Straub, Jon Resh, and J. (c’mon J., tell us what it stands for, ok?) Berk know how to fucking PARTY! Big time. And, lucky us, they can either write about it themselves (Jon and J.), or have somebody hanging around with them that can (Tony).
Deranged, psychotic, megaloony partying.
Each of these books approaches the subject from its own unique perspective. And each one seems to enhance and feed off of the other two in a delightfully synergistic way.
More Barroom Transcripts continues the tradition of Barroom Transcripts, which I may have been a little harsh on in my review of it. So fuck me. Straub and his drinking buddy/chronicler Rich Stewart just sort of hang out in the sleazy end of town in the local deadfalls and watch it all swirl around them. When they’re not swirling right along with it themselves. The series of essays starting on page 52, detailing the crazed activities surrounding nocturnal visits from deranged friends, laughing gas, sex, drugs, alcohol, and god knows what else, is just a fucking PRIZE. I can’t even begin to properly describe it, but it’s good. And, as a special bonus, the copy of the book I’m holding right here jumps from page 72 to page 82 and then runs BACKWARDS, back down to page 73 where it then skips directly to page 83 as if nothing at all had happened. I can’t imagine this was deliberate, but then again maybe it is. This book likes to fuck with your head I guess.
Amped is a, more or less, straightforward accounting of the birth, life, and death of a certain punk rock band, Spoke, as told by one of its members in a lovingly hilarious style. Bloodied dummies in the road attracting throngs of police and rescue units, lawn gnomes taking clandestine trips across country, going on tour and PUSHING a broke-down VW van six MILES down an interstate to the next offramp, and on and on and on. Ripping good stuff!
Tales of a Miscellaneous Man is the hardest of the bunch to categorize, which is actually a good thing. It too includes tales from the peregrinations of a punk band, but there’s so much more. What I did with my summer vacation, a stint in Africa, gonads getting shaved by a girl who’s tripping, people going through plate glass doors, oh hell, there’s no end to it. All of it obnoxious and hilarious as hell.
None of the above descriptions even begins to APPROACH adequacy, but it’s the best I can do. I say read all three of these things. Not in any particular order. Or even switching back and forth between them as you go.
Then maybe use‘em as the subject for a book report in English class, just to see what the teacher says.
It’s all just for fun anyway, right?
A lifetime resident (despite having travelled all over the damn place at one time or another) of Central Florida, James MacLaren took a four-year degree in death thrills riding giant waves on the North Shore back in the 70's. Wound up in the inconvenience store following a lay off from the Cape, where he was involved with the construction of the Space Shuttle launch pads, among other things. Father of best son in the world.
