Sic Semper Tyrannis

Whatcha' Readin'?

This morning I finished Chuck Klosterman’s Fargo Rock City, his first book. This is basically a “metal music apology.” Klosterman sees himself as an outcast from mainstream pop culture critics and thinkers because of his genuine love for the music of his childhood—namely, “glam” or “hair” bands like Guns n’ Roses, Cinderella, Skid Row, Motley Crue, the list goes on and on…

His reasoning behind all this is a little murky. While it’s obvious that he legitimately loves a lot of this music, he also realizes the stupidity and vapidity of it all at the same time. While it would be easy to thus pigeonhole him as one of those “ironic detachment”-type hipsters, Klosterman’s childhood identity is too wrapped up with the music for that to be the case. His pleasant retelling of key events in his life and their corresponding soundtrack betrays how important the music really was and still is to him. To me, this is kind of refreshing. While I really don’t enjoy most of the music he is talking about, (big exception being Van Halen), I have to give him props for actually LIKING something, as a person who gets paid to write about music and entertainment. So much of criticism is a recitation of why certain bands or movements or ideas are overrated or subversive, or just crappy in general. Very rarely do you get to hear about a critics’ odd, personal likes—the things that they listen to when they don’t have to impress anyone or worry about deadlines and “trends.”

While this book isn’t as funny as the last book I read, it makes up for it by taking me back to similar points in my life. We are of the same general age range, so I experienced some of the same music growing up, but, as I discussed early on in this blog, my musical education around the same time was a little more eclectic and scattershot. In general, I think I tended to look backwards the older I got, while Klosterman seems to have been purely a man of his times.

I highly recommend this book to Aaron Copeland because Klosterman’s musical home is of the same construction and location as his.

I figure that, since his books are such easy, enjoyable reads, I’ll go ahead and read his other two books. Full report to follow in the near future…

posted by Mike @ 10:21 AM