"Off The Record"

Rating:
Summary: Tommy, Can You Hear Me?
Review: David Menconi has collected a few reviews from mostly fellow music writers--not bad for a print-on-demand title--and those reviews which I have been privileged to read (mostly because Menconi provided the links) have been superficial at best. Yes, this novel about the music industry meat grinder is a fun read, and yes, it makes a slightly exaggerated statement about the insidious workings of the "star-maker machinery." But this work begs for deeper scrutiny than the average rock critic could pack into a few paragraphs.
This is not just a book about musicians and the music industry; it's centrally about TRUTH. Not THE truth, but truth in general and in its many forms. You can't point to one main character, but the artistic focus of the book is on left-handed rockabilly guitar prodigy Tommy Aguilar, who in a backhanded way represents truth. The truth about Tommy is that he lies to himself and others about his life history--and about the depth of his drug problem. But his music, he insists, never lies. He and his band mutate from local club favorites into a symptom of the plasticity and artifice of the music business: the way it can hijack someone's creative output, tart it up with synthetic rhythm tracks, and present it somehow as authentic; the way it can purchase good reviews from the music press, or blackmail good reviews out of the major magazines. In pop music, as in war, truth is the first casualty. Menconi illustrates this phenomenon in a depressing yet satisfying story.
Menconi's characters are as real as they get in this subgenre. As a bass player, I'm particularly drawn to Tommy's bassist, Michelle Rubin, who's a classically trained cellist but no delicate flower, a true musician who brings out the best in Tommy as they constantly challenge each other on stage. The descriptions of Tommy's three-piece band playing hyper-speed rockabilly with a heavy dose of improvisation rings very true. The dialog can get a bit too cinematically correct, especially that spoken by the manipulative ... concert promoter Gus DeGrande. The ending is a little over the top and a little too tidy, but endings are very hard to write.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I picked up "Off the Record" after reading a review in the Austin Chronicle and noticing that it bears the Writers Club Press imprint--as does my own novel "A Small Town for Its Size" (also available through Amazon).

Rating:
Summary: Between Lester Bangs and Raymond Chandler
Review: For starters I should make one thing clear: I know David Menconi. David Menconi and I have reviewed concerts together. And David Menconi is no Jack Kennedy. But I've known for years that David is an excellent writer, and I would have thoroughly enjoyed Off the Record even if I had no personal connection to its author. Drawing together some vividly rendered, memorable characters, an insider's knowledge of the music business, and a few nods to rock legends great (Gram Parsons's cremation at Joshua Tree) and small (a masturbation incident at a national magazine), David creates a compelling first novel that falls somewhere between the best works of Lester Bangs and Raymond Chandler.

Music fanatics will love Off the Record, but I suspect it will play equally well with people who just like good fiction with a noirish edge. I've been reading a lot of Carl Hiassen lately, and I found myself drawn into Off the Record for some of the same reasons I like Hiassen: crisp, witty prose with a few laugh-out-loud moments; a complex story with several distinct threads; the noir thing; and characters who fit the particular milieu David places them in (the rock & roll scene, from nightclubs to stadiums) as well as Hiassen's fit theirs (the parts of Florida that never show up in tourism commercials). David's characters aren't quite as cartoonish as Hiassen's, but that's more an observation of stylistic differences than a judgment of either author.

It's not a perfect book. The stars of Off the Record, the Tommy Aguilar Band and its namesake frontman, sometimes resemble the people in a couple of real bands (Nirvana and Whiskeytown, the latter a North Carolina band David has written about extensively in his job as rock critic for the Raleigh News & Observer and as a freelance writer) too closely for my taste. Then again, the fact that I've known David so long and seen Whiskeytown so often made the resemblance more obvious to me than it probably would be to 99 percent of David's readers. And I thought the band's rise from nightclubs to stadiums happened way too fast -- to me, that's the least believable aspect of a book that also includes a little murder, kinky sex, heinous betrayals, and exhilarating musical moments.

But those are minor quibbles. David knows what rock & roll feels like, and he knows how to write about it without getting overly technical or bogged down in mundane details. And he reveals the music business as the grotesque, heartless carnivore it is. In Off the Record, David stretches well beyond the limitations of newspaper journalism to create a great read that, for me, started as an obligation to a friend and fellow writer and ended as a page-turner I couldn't wait to get back to and didn't want to end.

Rating:
Summary: the last great escape
Review: I read this book over the weekend after the bombing of the world trade center...I won't say that it's the greatest book ever written, but damn, I needed an escape...being from seattle and seeing nirvana in their early stages, and also being a huge whiskeytown fan, this book took me away...to a place that i needed to go at a time I didn't want to be anywhere...this probably makes no sense...but buy the book and dig it.

heff

Rating:
Summary: Off The Record, A Book About The Music Buisness
Review: Off The Record is a book about fictional band TAB, Tommy Algular Band, a Nirvana like trio with a lot of country and blues mixed in. The book details the swift rise and rapid flame out of TAB, when they go from strugling bar band to overnight sensation when taken under the wing of promoter Gus DeGrande. The characters and plot are written very well, and with a sad, but surprising conclusion. If you didn't beleive that the music buisness was corrupt and greedy, you will after you read this book. If you didn't beleive how the biz tares people apart, you will after you read this book, paricturally with the resemblence of Tommy Agular, the bands lead singer/songwriter, to Kurt Cobain. And if you didn't beleive where the money goes, how it goes, how much doesn't go to the musicians, and how creatity and art is sacrficed to marketing and spin control, you will after reading this book. I give Off The Record my highest recomendation because it deserves to stand up there with books like High Fedilty as being one of the best books to come out about the biz in some time.

Rating:
Summary: Off The Record, A Book About The Music Buisness
Review: Off The Record is a book about fictional band TAB, Tommy Algular Band, a Nirvana like trio with a lot of country and blues mixed in. The book details the swift rise and rapid flame out of TAB, when they go from strugling bar band to overnight sensation when taken under the wing of promoter Gus DeGrande. The characters and plot are written very well, and with a sad, but surprising conclusion. If you didn't beleive that the music buisness was corrupt and greedy, you will after you read this book. If you didn't beleive how the biz tares people apart, you will after you read this book, paricturally with the resemblence of Tommy Agular, the bands lead singer/songwriter, to Kurt Cobain. And if you didn't beleive where the money goes, how it goes, how much doesn't go to the musicians, and how creatity and art is sacrficed to marketing and spin control, you will after reading this book. I give Off The Record my highest recomendation because it deserves to stand up there with books like High Fedilty as being one of the best books to come out about the biz in some time.

Rating:
Summary: It's a page turner
Review: Off the Record is terrific, a real page turner. It's a big bucket of popcorn that you can't stop munching on. Gus De Grande is one of the most dedicatedly, and deliciously, evil characters I've run across in a book in a long time. I couldn't help thinking of Uriah Heap (or Fagin) while flipping through the book to see what horrible thing De Grande might do next.

It felt small for a 400+ page book. Usually, I'm all in favor of cutting in a book, but in this one I felt like I wanted more. I can see this book as a movie (with Daniel Benzali as De Grande).

Rating:
Summary: Whiskey(town) before beer, never fear!
Review: The I-go-back-to-the-top-of-the-slide "history" of the Tommy Aguilar Band is a fictionalized version of every "Behind The Music" tossed into the merry-go-blender with Ryan Adams, Kurt Cobain and Paul Westerberg. Great characters, plus a plot with a dramatic arc that hinges on a berserkazoid cover of "Holidays in the Sun," makes this a fantastically fun read, especially for anyone who's ever gotten close enough to the brass ring to singe their fingers. And talk about prescience: ya gotta love the way "TAB" has become shorthand for the sheet-music version of the .mp3 file format. The first rock novel that deserves its own soundtrack.

Rating:
Summary: It's Wild, man...Wiiiild!
Review: While Menconi take liberal liscence with actual events (those who are familiar with his job as the Raleigh News and Observer critic, and the rise of Whiskeytown and the Raleigh "No Depression" scene would be more privy), he keeps things crackling along at an engrossing pace. Very layered, and with interesting chracters, David takes his love of music and illustrates deftly all aspects of "the business". The instrumental play of TAB, the gregarious promoter, and the seen-it-all nightclub owner are all deftly used aspects of the story. Behind all the dirty dealings, and disappointment, there is a genuine reverence for the music that Menconi hides in the darkness. Nick Hornby on line one! Menconi is a great writer and a pretty swell guy to talk to. Pick up this book if you want a good yarn.