SONIC COOL

The Life and Death of Rock And Roll
A book by Joe S. Harrington

book review by Steve Prygoda

Rock critic Joe Harrington’s new book Sonic Cool is, simply stated, bigger than life. It is a grand gesture, a massive undertaking, a maelstrom of hubris and pondering on the long, strange trip of rock music history as it hurdles toward an unknown future where “everything’s been done” (except bluegrass hip-hop). A tough job, but somebody had to write the handbook.

Being a longtime Bostonian, Harrington is especially fond of the local bands which were prototypes for national movements, such as chick-factor indie rock (Fuzzy), grunge (Dinosaur Jr.), post-punk (Burma), and this entry on the alt-country-ish Buttercup:

“The twang has been present for a while now. If there’s one band that has effectively incorporated countrified musical attributes with post-REM ironic statements, it’s Buttercup from Boston. The twang became more pronounced on their second album Love, which, true to it’s name, was one of the most candid explorations of human emotion heard in many a year. Their follow-up was equally brilliant, albeit much more subtle. Unfortunately, genius has had to serve as it’s own reward, as they’ve pretty much been left to vanquish in obscurity.”

  - From Chapter 15, “Post-Everything”

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The first time I met author Joe Harrington was late one summer night in '94 at his shady East Boston apartment. At the time, Harrington was working a government job by day but his true calling was a rock journalist. His stuff began popping up in the Seattle Stranger and the Phoenix, and later, weekly columns in the New York Press and hip glossies like Ray Gun, Magnet and the underground 'zine Roller Derby. I was blown away by his intrinsic knowledge of punk/rock/jazz/blues music, but more so by his passion for music originators. This passion, combined with his “always drinking but never drunk” mantra, established a new level of coolness for me.

In his bathroom were toilet paper rolls covered with sentences. This, I was told, was a novel in progress, something about the “real” history of rock-n-roll. Stacks of vinyl climbed the living room walls. A kitchen cabinet holding nothing but empty whisky bottles was called the 'trophy case.' On the kitchen table was a grocery list: ketchup. Yet next to the trophy case was 2 unopened bottle of ketchup, so why was it on the list? This guy is completely out of his mind, I thought. I was right. I was in the presence of demented greatness. I stole his grocery list.

I also tried to steal his words: sitting in his dark living room listening to Sabbath, Anti-Seen, Love Child....I jotted down some mad rambling that would make a good song lyric. Harrington slapped the pen out of my hand. "That's in the book - you can't have THAT! Write your OWN GODDAM BOOK" he ranted. I crumbled like an empty beercan. Shit, this guy is nuts. Nobody ever gets published, what does he care?

Well, Sonic Cool is finally out, and clocking in at 600 pages, that’s a lot of toilet paper rolls! Sonic Cool is the full breath of the rock music genre, still going strong after half a century of innovation, explosion, and reconstruction. This is not so much a factual dictionary, but more of an exploratory journey through the dirt roads, dark alleys and smoky clubs where rock was born and raised. Major players in the original wave are noted, but not dwelled upon. Among those who get full chapters devoted to them are Elvis, Dylan, Beatles, Stones, Punk, the 80’s, and my favorite chapter, Post-Everything.

Weaving through careers quickly and loosely, Harrington operates more like a fiction writer than a stoic regurgitator of facts and dates. He takes the time to explain why things happened and the impact they had on the kids and the culture (the payola scandal, Altamont, movies, etc.) Flipping the pages is like rifling through the vinyl at an underground record store, complete with a wise-cracking sales guy ala High Fidelity. The author’s encyclopedic knowledge of the coolest and most obscure bands is one of the book’s strengths and a credit to his record collection, But the most appealing aspect of Sonic Cool is the way Joe writes; he writes like he talks, a manic slurring of imagery, returning to themes in the text for emphasis, to drive his point home, just as a friendly drunk does when he's talkin' your ear off at the bar. In both cases (Harrington or the local drunk), their view on a particular subject is not the word-perfect truth, but it’s that much more engaging because it's coming for the heart, not just the head.

Sonic Cool is, finally, just plain hilarious. The jabs and off-the-cuff slurs are pointed and brash, but should be taken about as seriously as a Mad Magazine (one of Harrington’s self-confessed inspirations). Sonic Cool is not the first book on the rock music phenomenon, and it surely won't be the last, but dam it feels good to know that people who love music are taking the time, energy and risk to share their life-long passion with the rest of us.

Steve lives in Boston and plays guitar in My Own Worst Enemy, an ELIS EIL Recording Artist.

Reach out and touch him at steve@myownworstenemy.net

This review originally appeared in The Noise.

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“WET” “HOT” “AMERICAN” “SUMMER”

video review by Patrick Penta

“Hilarious” “Grade A” “Made me laugh harder than any other movie this summer”

These were the raves in quotes covering the DVD back and cover of Showalter and Wain’s summer camp comedy, Wet Hot American Summer. Think of it as three parts Meatballs, and one part Caddyshack. The genre they have selected for this star studded farce, the summer camp comedy, is by no means new ground and they have done as much as possible to make sure it stays that way. Meatballs got their first and better, oh so much infinitely better, despite the fact that Meatballs is no Casablanca. Christopher Meloni’s part as the insane Vietnam Veteran was superbly defined in 1980’s Caddyshack by Bill Murray. Meloni is quite possibly the only chance the film had at funny. I’m sure the director breathed a sigh of relief in at least capturing some genuinely funny scenes with him. Like Carl from Caddyshack, he is out of touch with reality threatens at any moment to bring the roof down over the other’s heads with a crazy, out of control violence and deviance lurking above and below the surface.

WET

Meatballs, though arguably a turkey, attempts to be touching. WHAS can find little gag potential in being touching and instead focuses on any and all sexual escapades they can pack into the script including a bizarrely graphic homosexual sequence which is, I think, supposed to come across as “Whoa, two guys having sex in a summer camp movie? That’s crazy; people are going to freak out.” Perhaps the filmmakers thought it would add edginess to the films slumped shoulders. It does not. It is gratuitous in the extreme and would be out of place in even the hackiest of student films. Since the film spends most of it’s time on the straight exploits of the counselors maybe that’s where they should have looked for exploitative value. And while we’re on the subject; Molly Shannon’s character at the films close announces she will be marrying a small boy camper and earlier, another teenage camper woman is caught making out with a very young boy?! If the sexes were reversed would it be too morbid and unacceptable? It seems they intended both sequences to be funny, but they are certainly not, nor are they particularly interesting. Am I being a tad harsh? I haven’t even started!

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HOT

In Meatballs, Murray spends much of the film bumptiously courting a fellow counselor all the while building the morale of loner misfit Chris Makepiece. WHAS is a study in degradation by comparison. The lifeguard in the film, Andy, is so villainously written that any hope of interest in him is stunted from the get go and stays there for the remainder of the film. His final dis by Katie at the close is lifeless and boring. Lacy Underalls in Caddyshack, comes off, if nothing else, as sexually emancipated, unlike the pathetic teenage drips WHAS creates. And Lacy Underalls is seriously intended to be sexually appealing to the viewer in a real way. It is almost as if the filmmakers of WHAS would do anything to avoid this with the exception, of course, of the aforementioned gay bit, in which they gleefully indulge themselves. And what’s with the gay marriage? I guess they wanted to assure you that their hearts are in the right place. Do not be fooled, they are most certainly not. They missed a great opportunity to focus more on Jeanine Garafalo’s character and instead allowed her to do the cynical bitch routine, a task she does remarkably well but finally is dull, dull, dull. David Hyde Pierce’s character is given a chance, which is in turn relegated to the slag heap of a script with the sci-fi escapade of saving the camp from a chunk of Skylab. And the D&D jargon spat by the films grotesque notion of a nerd from way back in ’81 is simply awful. Anyone who actually played the game at all would not be convinced. That kid is least of the films worries, however.

AMERICAN

Of the more memorable moments in Meatballs, there is a peanut poker game with Murray and Makepiece where they both lustily swig club soda and Murray teaches Makepiece how to belch and speak at the same time. Makepiece wins a huge pot and Murray plucks one of his hats off the wall and helps the young camper collect his winnings. A very simple scene underlining one of the core principals of the film: The camp counselor hero spending quality, albeit goofy time with his campers. Compared with the puerile antics of the counselors in WHAS, how delightful! WHAS shows the counselors riding into town and indulging in the most lame-brained drug imbibing this side of Reefer Madness. They are seen in a ramshackle drug den shooting heroin in a sequence which can only be described as idiotically misguided. Was it supposed to be a fantasy sequence? Who knows? Who cares? They arrive back at camp and the gag is forgotten like warm stale beer found in the after party clean-up.

SUMMER

WHAS takes place in the remote past: 1981. Why didn’t they set their film in the present? Would they be more accountable then to depict events and characters that live and breathe, unlike the retro automatons they instead constructed? The guy who scores with all the girls and is a complete asshole: Did his type exist only in that era? Were all the chicks as hot and ready to make out with anyone at least Hollywood ugly? Is this film at heart a sentimental frolic to the simpler past of its creators? While watching the film I thought that if I saw one more counselor with a stereotypical late 70’s/ early 80’s hairdo I was going to hurl. In every time period people are in step and out of step with the times and that’s part of what makes a story interesting and dare I say, real. Parading actors in front of the camera with costumes and hairdos plucked from one or two days of on-line research is inexcusable, even by this film’s lowly standards.

WHAS makes sure to pad the score with all the latest hits and it comes off sounding like they borrowed a K-Tell music collection from the new hits of 1981. My own memories of 1981 recall the music of the 70’s as still being the prevailing soundtrack. There is one exception which I found particularly asinine, the newly scored “Beth” by Kiss, sans lyrics, during a sports sequence. I suppose that was the film’s attempt at folding a little of those crazy wild 70’s into their amazingly underwritten film. At least Meatballs had original music scored for the film: “Meatballs” and “Are You Ready for the Summer.” Caddyshack introduced “I’m Allright” to its audience. Maybe not great tunes, but at least crafted for the films which were made in their own time and not chock-a-block with borrowed moods from another era. Another summer.

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