Nick Tosches: yay or nay?

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I was going to post this on ILM, but he's not really a music writer anymore, and I thought I might get better responses here.

I'm reading Unsung Heroes of Rock'N'Roll right now and thinking it fab. The intro is the best "modern music sucks" thing I've ever read, even if it's totally wrong.

Is Country as good as everyone says?

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Friday, 24 January 2003 23:30 (twenty-three years ago)

haha doesn't he say the only good band after like 1961 is the doors?

country is as good as i say it is

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 24 January 2003 23:33 (twenty-three years ago)

that's all very well Mark, but you haven't told us how good you think it is. (Justyn goes off and wastes $18 or whatever of his hard-borrowed money on a book with a really ugly cover only to be informed "I meant that it was no good at all!! ha!!")

if the Doors are his favorite band it's no wonder he gave up on rock after 1961, since they are the antithesis of everything good about rock. (=he never liked rock at all!)

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 25 January 2003 00:11 (twenty-three years ago)

Everything he touches is gold: his novels too, or at least Cut Numbers.

And his anthology which has the best interview q: ever. he starts his thing with Patti Smith by asking

"Patti, were you a horny teenager?" and it just gets better.

The Hemmingway of rockwrite.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Saturday, 25 January 2003 00:13 (twenty-three years ago)

Country is excellent.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Saturday, 25 January 2003 00:20 (twenty-three years ago)

So is Unsung Heroes, which was my introduction to him.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Saturday, 25 January 2003 00:20 (twenty-three years ago)

I got bored with Country really easy it was just fact after fact after fact. I mean.

― Cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 25 January 2003 00:55 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm going to look it out in a minute, though.

― Cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 25 January 2003 00:55 (twenty-three years ago)

if the Doors are his favorite band it's no wonder he gave up on rock after 1961, since they are the antithesis of everything good about rock. (=he never liked rock at all!)

What?! I don't see how you can say that. The Doors are the seminal (in the true sense of the word) influence of the Brechtian sphere within rock - and I'm not talking about the Alabama Song.

― Girolamo Savonarola, Saturday, 25 January 2003 01:07 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah, all the knee-jerk Doors dissing is just totally lame and not thought out. Whatever. I'm sick of trying to defend one of the great groups of the 60s to people who have already shut off their ears. Name me one other band that incorporated Bossa Nova, Kurt Weill, beat poetry, modal jazz, Chicago blues. ANd that's all just on the first lp! There's a reason why people like Tosches, Meltzer, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith all had there heads blown off by these guys.

Anyway, currently reading Nick's newest, In the Hand of Dante. It's pretty damn great. He's writing with more of a chip on his shoulder than ever. At the same time it's got some of his ugliest (the mobster) and most beautiful, evocative prose (14th century Italy). It reads like it may be his last work though. There is something fatalistic and resigned about it.

Saw him read from it a few months back, shook his hand. Nice guy.

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Saturday, 25 January 2003 02:27 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't really want to turn this into a Doors thread. Suffice to say I haven't "shut off my ears": I've been trying to like SOMETHING about them for like five years, just because I feel hopelessly left out whenever I hear people going on about how great they are. I've certainly given them far more of a chance than most other bands I dislike. The only song I really like is "Moonlight Drive," and even there Morrison's unbearably PHONY vocal tone comes close to ruining it for me.

Oddly enough I find Iggy's blatant Morrison rips on the first Stooges album very entertaining, even though he's copying all the stuff I think I hate (sour croon, idiot macho stance and dumb lyrics). So it's really as much a mystery to me that I don't like them as it is to you.

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 25 January 2003 03:01 (twenty-three years ago)

Sorry, Justyn, that was a really cranky response. I dunno what I was thinking. Long week. It's just that one always does encounter these sort of knee-jerk reactions, "eww.. the doors ... that Morrison .. nice 'poetry' har har har". I mean, I am the FIRST one to admit his poetry sucks and is way lame. And he wasn't much of a human being either. I guess you kind of have to have a little imagination to like the group. I dunno, they sorta opened up new vistas of what rock could be ... theatrical, confrontational, recombinant. I mean, way more exciting than what was simultaneously going on up in SF.

Er, right, this is a Tosches thread... I'm sorry...

Like I say, In the Hand of Dante really is good!

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Saturday, 25 January 2003 03:18 (twenty-three years ago)

I've never read his fiction, but Hellfire, Country, Unsung Heroes of Rock & Roll, and are all obsessive in the best possible sense. His writes at a break-neck pace, with great passion for his subjects. His personal feelings enter into the story in the form of dramatic embellishments when recounting factual occurences (e.g. Jerry Lee Lewis sitting outside Graceland drunk with a gun threatening to blow away Elvis)...he is still mythologizing those aspects of music history he enjoys...but his personal feelings always seem to elevate rather than obscure the figures he profiles without sacrificing complexity or contradiction...a problem I sometimes have when reading Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus, etc.

― Ryan McKay (Ryan McKay), Saturday, 25 January 2003 06:08 (twenty-three years ago)

...and Where Dead Voices Gather

― Ryan McKay (Ryan McKay), Saturday, 25 January 2003 06:09 (twenty-three years ago)

Name me one other band that incorporated Bossa Nova, Kurt Weill, beat poetry, modal jazz, Chicago blues.

Apologies if I'm dethreading but - why would this be an accomplishment? Why would it be worth listening to?

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Saturday, 25 January 2003 07:45 (twenty-three years ago)

I dunno, why wouldn't any listener at least be intrigued by that description? The end result may not be worth listening to if it turned out to suck, but it didn't and I hinted at why in my apology to Justin. As I said, I'm tired of debating it and this ain't the thread to do it. Start one on ILM if you want.

So, what do you like of Tosches?

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Saturday, 25 January 2003 08:13 (twenty-three years ago)

I quite like the idea of the Doors - that is, the idea of a band that incorporated all the soundstyles you mention and tried to make rock more overtly theatrical. I've just been frustrated by the actual records. They probably came across a lot better in person: I once saw a clip of a live performance and thought it amazing (I'd actually forgotten about this until just now), and I remember Meltzer once said that the Doors were his favorite band but he didn't think he could name a dozen of their studio tracks that he liked. (I feel this way about the Who, come to think of it...)

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 25 January 2003 08:24 (twenty-three years ago)

Anyway, I'm derailing my own thread. Has anyone read Tosches' Dean Martin book? (DM is just about the last person on earth I'd want to read a bio about, but when I heard NT said he was the last person he'd ever choose to WRITE about, I figured there must be something good there...)

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 25 January 2003 08:28 (twenty-three years ago)

"unsung heroes" is 1 of my favourite bks & "country" & "hellfire" are great too but i never read any of his fiction, i just got this feeling i wouldn't like it. no i haven't read the dino bk, would like to some time tho.

― duanE, Saturday, 25 January 2003 11:29 (twenty-three years ago)

Also search: any of his contribs to 'Kicks' mag, the Forced Exposure of greasy rock'n'roll, esp. his outrageous piece abt Louis Prima and Keely Smith - too rude to make it into 'Dino', and that's saying something! There's also lots of real gd stuff in 'The Nick Tosches Reader', put out by Da Capo round abt the same time as the Meltzer anthol, esp. the George Jones piece.

Destroy: 'Night Train' - Tosches tips dangerously into self-parody w/ an excess of biblical portents and dark nights of the soul that only a man can understand. Plus he made some exceptionally homophobic comments in an old 'Chemical Imbalance', interview and I don't think he was kidding either (tho' you never can tell...)

― Andrew L (Andrew L), Saturday, 25 January 2003 12:13 (twenty-three years ago)

I read Trinities recently, a mob novel, and it was pretty good.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 25 January 2003 12:18 (twenty-three years ago)

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