BOOKS THREAD

Murderers run wild in Maine. Just ask Jessica Fletcher.

 

Their music might have been heavy and serious but I always knew the guys in Rush didn't take themselves too seriously. And that's pretty apparent on the vast majority of the pages in Geddy Lee's entertaining new memoir, My Effin' Life. As a Toronto guy who grew up on the band there's a lot of great stuff here on their fledgling early days gigging around the city (I was way too young to see them but their debut is one of the first albums I ever heard in its entirety courtesy of the high school aged guy next door who played the shit out of it not long after it came out) and their early days as a recording act which of course took a whole different direction once Neil Peart joined the band.

While Peart's books (all of which are highly recommended) dealt with a lot of things aside from his life in Rush, Geddy lets the reader in on the how the band functioned in the studio and onstage including the inside jokes, nicknames and occasional friction that developed.

It's not all rock and roll fun and games, there are some heavy sections, particularly Lee's detailed look at his parents' experience in WWII concentration camps and Peart's death.

One thing that I would have liked to seen: more on Lee's baseball fandom which saw him amass a huge private memorabilia collection.

 

The local sports morning drive show (they came from rock radio) would have Geddy Lee on and he was always friendly and funny. Not like I imagined a prog rock singer would be.

 

I’ve long maintained that their music is pretentious, and they aren’t.

Does Geddy mention his high school friendship with Steve Shutt?

 

Longmire’s little piece of Wyoming is an absolute magnet for the worst of the worst.

 

He does, yes.

 

Oxford in England is particularly dangerous I've been led to believe by Inspector Lewis.

The difference in the murder rate in England and what Britbox would have you think is a factor of a thousand.

 

I just picked this up ... it's been 25-plus years since I read it in HS.
How a translation of 'The Iliad' into modern language reinforces its relevance

 

Will definitely be reading this one soon.

Also saw that Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth has an autobiography out, or coming out soon. The online take on it is Moore focuses almost entirely on music and not much on other topics … such as how he torpedoed his marriage to Kim Gordon.

I still think it will be a good read for us early 1990s rock fans.

 

P.S. — If I haven’t mentioned it here previously, Kim Gordon’s memoir from the 2010s, “Girl in a Band,” is an interesting and entertaining read.

 

Phillip Norman has tackled the Beatles before: this history of the band (Shout) and outstanding bios on Lennon and McCartney and now he looks at George Harrison in a new bio subtitled The Reluctant Beatle. (I am sure it is the subject of a 200-page thread on Steve Hoffman.)

Serviceable is about the only way to describe this, the bulk of it is taken up with his childhood and Beatles days which have been chronicled in dozens of books and documentaries so there's little new here. (Though I don't ever recall reading that George had been to the US before any of the rest of them when he went over to visit his sister, who lived in Illinois, in 1963 or something.) His thesis, that George was undervalued as a songwriter by John and Paul, is not exactly earth shattering. The only new interviews seem to be with his ex-wife Pattie and guys like Eric Idle and Michael Palin.

His post-Beatle days were taken up with albums of varying quality and fighting with the others (and a sketchy business manager ) but there's some good stuff on the Traveling Wilburys, his involvement in the film business with Monty Python and others and the home invasion that almost cost him his life.

 

Just read this one. Seems kind of crazy how fast the concert was put together with absolutely no planning. Amazing that things didn’t turn out worse.