Tim Brough's Black Leather Bookshelf

Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick
3 Out Of 5 Stars

Landing somewhere in the middle of The Flaming Lips' catalog is "Hit To Death In The Future Head," which has long felt like a transitional album in their continual chameleon-like career. The shift seems to be in a move away from the acidic psychedelia into psychedelic Beach Boys. Kinda like goodbye Sonic Youth, hello Beatles' White Album. This most easily found as the lazy roll of "The Sun" or the peppier, undeniably catchy "Gingerale Afternoon." Wayne Coyne is also exploring the possibilities of his singing voice; this is the first Lips CD where his singing really shines all they way through.

It may be also worth noting that "Hit" was the last Lips album to feature guitarist Jonathan Donahue and drummer Nathan Roberts were aboard. Donahue contributes plenty of guitar freakouts, like on "Frogs" and "The Magician Versus The Headache," along with all the whacked out sounds mixed into the CD's half-hour "bonus" track of cacophony. (Shades of 1997's Zaireeka, anyone?) There are plenty of epic moments to be found here, but the follow-up album was the powerful "Transmissions From The Satellite Heart," the Lips' artistic and commercial breakthrough. As such, "Hit" is a cool listen, but not the place to start of you want to discover why Flaming Lips can be such a magic band.

Oh, the perils of Music Geekdom
4 Out of 5 Stars

I picked up "Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life" after hearing author Steve Almond on some NPR show giving a hilarious interview about the lifespan of, in his words, a rock and rolling "drooling fanatic," and how one becomes one, lives as one, and eventually writes about being one. The salient points of the interview readily established him as a man roughly my age (likely younger) and his on-air self profile rang eerily close to my own musical maniacism. Indeed, he was a fellow traveller! I had to have this book.

Which makes it hard to recommend it to anyone but a middle aged fellow traveller. On a personal scale, I give it 5 stars, but for those for whom musical hero worship is utterly alien, "Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life" is more a 3 star book, so I rate it 4 to split the difference. Almond's musical journey is intensely personal and oft-times extremely snarky (and even for a lefty like me, the constant Bush-slaps got in the way when they should have been edited away).

His snark occasionally turns back on himself, and that gives the book a few of its best moments. His exegesis on why Toto's "Africa" is genius is a riot, and the secret confession of being a Styx addict and loving "Paradise Theater" in spite of his older brother is almost worth the price of the book. On the other hand, Almond falls into the trap most rock writers fall into, and that is believing your favorite obscurity is Godhead.

In this case, the object of his desires is one Bob Schneider, a Texas singer songwriter. Almond takes this to an extreme, tracking the man down at his home and engaging him in a sadly painful dialogue, revealing another pitfall of artist worship, when your idols break your heart. Sadder still, they break your heart because you've jammed them into a corner that they can never work out of. I actually felt sorry for both Schneider and Almond by the end of the chapter. (And just as geekifically, I promptly went out and bought Schneider's "Lovely Creatures" after. Very Sneaky, Mr Almond.)

Which underlies the attraction and distraction of "Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life." Unless you're the kind of "DF" who would be naturally stoked to find out what Bob Schneider (or Joe Henry, Aimee Mann, Nil Lara and a series of other artists Almond is hot for) does to merit such magnificent praise in this book, you might wonder what the commotion is all about. Not me. Because as Almond himself accurately predicted, as soon as I saw the words "free CD" in the introduction, I put the book down and hit his website as fast as I could. Because I am that kind of person.