Fargo Rock City
I’ve read this book before (entry missing due to db hacker)
Klosterman’s aim with this book was, to quote, ‘to show why all that poofy, sexist, shallow glam rock was important’. You know what? He totally failed
Klosterman is a talented writer with a witty personable voice that makes it feel like he’s talking to you one on one.
The major flaw with the book is that while he obviously loves his metal, he’s also deeply insecure about how unhip it is to like it.
Maybe it’s his position as a music critic (a profesion full of hipper-than-thou people) that’s made him so defensive, I don’t know. He spends too much time trying to defend the genre with regard to sexism etc., using incoherent, poorly thought out arguments when he should just acknowledge that it existed. Of course it existed. However, a lot of the point of metal for it’s creators and fans over the years has been that it pisses people off. That’s all he really needed to say.
The book works when it acts as a biography and talks about how the music soundtracked his life and he should have spent more time on that.
One point that continues to hack me off is his bizarre snobbery about 80’s underground music that appears in the epilogue. He gets all het up at the notion that you had to be a bit more adventurous to discover the stuff than metal. It’s just fucking true. These bands sold next to nothing, had minimal radio play and ended up meaning a bit too much to the people who loved them. Get over the fact that you liked popular music. Embrace the idea.
I’ve watched two documentaries about the history of metal and the metallica doc recently and this book doesn’t do it’s subject any justice compared even to those deeply flawed projects.
The book is frequently funny, it’s just that it’s frequently wrong-headed too. Go in expecting that and you will get the best out of it.