Rating: 
Summary: Vacuously Verbose
Review: Curiosity is why I read this book. After being subjected to Klosterman's sardonic movie reviews and commentary in the Beacon Journal, I wanted to see how he would fill an entire book with that same style. Pretty annoyingly, as it turns out. Klosterman, who seems to think he knows something the rest of us don't, writes about a meaningless genre with the verbosity usually reserved for the bios of former world leaders. If you read between the lines, the real irony comes out: Chuck likes music that degrades women, and he spends 288 pages attempting to justify it.
Rating: 
Summary: Wild and young in the 80's
Review: This book is amazing Klosterman describes the 80's the way many of us, including me, lived it like no one can. It brought a lot of memories back that were somewhere stuck in my brain and got back now that I read this book. A lot of feelings came back and bought a lot of CD's from Amazon that I was reminded of and had sold years back! It is a masterpiece that anyone who was wild and young in the 80's should own and enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: Someone gave a dork a book deal
Review: Klosterman knows a lot about '80s hair bands and metal, but who cares? He fails to connect this vapid musical movement to anything relevant. He's more interested in showing just how much he knows about Warrant, Poison, KISS, Guns n' Roses--he's set on showing off his metal trivia: what band members wore in each video, who replaced whom on guitar before the big record deal, cover art. Too bad. I wanted to like this book, and I read it cover-to-cover, but there's something about a dork who feels the need to spout metal trivia interjected with disingenuous self-effacement that reminds why I always changed the station when Ratt came on.
Rating:
Summary: Read this book
Review: A great look at 80s heavy metal. It combines a lot of facts about the genre ( plus quick, smart comments on other types of music) with good humor and personal recollections on growing up.... Just relax and enjoy a light, fun read. I'd recommend this highly.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but ultimately disappointing.
Review: First, a little background. I graduated from high school in 1986, which was prime-time as far as the music in this book is concerned. I used to spend my weekends with my friends drinking beer, playing videogames and listening to Motley Crue, KISS, Raven, Metallica, and a ton of other bands mentioned in this book. There wasn't a square inch of my bedroom walls that wasn't covered with posters of Dokken, the Scorpions or Def Leppard. When I thumbed through this book at the store, I thought, "Holy cow, someone with taste wrote a book about 80s metal!" After reading the book, however, my opinion is a little different. Chuck Klosterman and I may have listened to a lot of the same music. We may have spent a lot of time drinking. (Chuck, apparently, still does. I quit.) We both think that "Frehley's Comet" by Ace Frehley is a great album. However, his book was, I think, supposed to say that the hair metal and glam rock of the 80s means something more than those "in the know" would have you believe. What his book ends up saying, basically, is you had to grow up with this music to understand its relevance. That's a real eye-opener, no? I could have told you that. Still, if you liked (or still like) 80s metal, then the book is worth a read. It was interesting reading about things I haven't thought about since the late 80s. (What's the difference between "heavy metal" and "hard rock?" Klosterman goes into extreme detail about this topic and, if you weren't around in the 80s, it may seem like overkill, but it was an incredibly important determination when describing a band. Are they "hard rock" or "heavy metal"? It was vital to know and understand that stuff.) I don't know how interesting the book would be to someone who wasn't born between 1965 and 1973 though.
Rating:
Summary: Lived It and Loved It
Review: Klosterman is ON TARGET. If I was writing the story of glam metal in the 80s---it would look a lot like this. It is ironic that I was visiting store after store to find the new Faster Pussycat and LA Guns releases, so I could "rock"---when I stumbled on this book (the store didn't have the albums by the way). The essence of what it was to be a hard-drinking, midwestern,suburban white teenage male in the 80s is captured in such vivid detail that I almost wonder if I've fallen into a time warp. "So, come now Children of the Beast....Be strong..and SHOUT AT THE DEVIL!!!" - Motley Crue Today, I have a "normal" job as a Financial Professional for a midwestern insurance company. And in my office, I have the following CDs that I play constantly: Motley Crue-Shout at the Devil, Faster Pussycat, LA Guns-Cocked & Loaded, Pretty Boy Floyd, Ratt-Out of the Cellar, etc. When I was listening to these as a teenager, I just "knew" I'd one day be a rock star, ya know?
Rating:
Summary: Don't Fence Me In
Review: Maybe you should know this: I'm not impressed with Dave Eggers. Compared to Chuck Klosterman, though, he's a genius. Because Eggers at least has some sense of the purpose of his irony. Even the Cohen brothers (who by now you wish would just make a serious movie after all) are more heady about their by now boring irony. Ultimately, you get the sense from this book that Klosterman may be as hollow as the music of which he writes. Does he like it? Does he write seriously about it but from a mock ironic distance? Does he find in it some important connection between a culture and the music it celebrates at a specific diachronic moment? Does he think there's something important about the merging of Does he really think the music is important? Or, again, does he want to make fun? I think he finds it safer not to say, leaving his options open. That's what irony comes down to, I guess, these days: the refusal to stand behind something you write. That seems to be the tradition this book partakes in. So maybe the best you can say about it is that it's too late. He should have written this book when he was the adolescent; maybe then he'd have had something sincere to say about this music. ps: Lita Ford's "Kiss Me Deadly" is not a good song; it's overpolished, overproduced junk and may actually make Ms. Spears sound edgy. Oh, but maybe Klosterman was joking about the greatness of Ford's tune as great pop.
Rating:
Summary: Amen
Review: I thoroughly agree with Craig Werner, the previous reviewer(who wrote a damn fine book on music himself) on this one. This book reminds anyone who writes or thinks deeply about music that the essential component to any good criticism or analysis is a personal perspective; you gotta come from a real place. Klosterman's book is funny, smart and strangely touching, and while non-fans of metal may find it silly to believe some of his assertions, he argues them eloquently and plainly. Great writing with a real understanding of the subject in all its glory and absurdity.
Rating:
Summary: A Metal Manifesto (or No Apologies)
Review: This funny and enjoyable book is an answer to the pop culture elitists (such as myself!) who dismiss heavy metal as ridiculous junk. By relating the social and personal impact of metal on himself and his friends growing up in rural North Dakota, Klosterman makes a compelling case that this music has an importance and meaning far beyond how it compares musically and lyrically to Dylan, The Beatles, Springsteen, and other ordained members of the Rock Canon. The sprawling text is part memoir, part free-thinking criticism, part record guide, and always hilarious. I guess that FARGO ROCK CITY falls somewhere between Dave Eggers and Chuck Eddy, but it's really too sui generis to be so glibly catagorized. This book is for the "Rocker within us all"! Check it out....
Rating:
Summary: Not Just For Heavy Metal Fans
Review: It may be sacrilege to some, and even laughable to others, but Chuck Klosterman may just filling in the gap in my medulla oblongata left by the death of Lester Bangs. "Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey In Rural North Dakota" is a fascinating, insightful recounting of Klosterman's heavy metal obsession dating back to his days as a teenager in North Dakota. His unabashed love for not just metal, but rock and roll, shines through on every page, and his often hilarious stories of an adolescence seemingly filled with getting his hands on the latest slab of vinyl by his Marshall-totin' heroes may be cathartic to some, not the least of whom is Klosterman himself, who, in the book's next to last chapter, cops to a serious drinking problem. Although at times a tad overanalytical on a subject which probably doesn't warrant it, I still couldn't put it down. In a perfect world, this, and not Shakespeare, would be required reading in America's high schools. I can't wait to see what he comes up with next...
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