Nick Tosches

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Sure, Esau Smith is obviously a rip. But the other profiles, I'd like to think they are accurate. Yeah, I like Meltzer's style better than I like Tosche's style.

― eddie hurt (ddduncan), Monday, 28 June 2004 19:05 (nineteen years ago) link

Come on, those other profiles are pure myth making and gossip. They're fun as hell because the writing's great but you can't seriously take any of those as historical fact. His main objective is to make these folks bigger than life.

― danh (danh), Monday, 28 June 2004 19:10 (nineteen years ago) link

Have you ever read But Beautiful by Geoff Dyer?
It's a more openly fictional take on a bunch of jazzbos. Not as puerile as Tosches, but definitely the same sort of myth-making/affirming stuff.

― Huk-El (Horace Mann), Monday, 28 June 2004 19:23 (nineteen years ago) link

i don't really turn to tosches for factual accuracy. i would suggest that anyone wishing to cite a "fact" from one of his books on music do some cross-checking. that said, i think his "country" book calls to renewed attention certain features of the country music story that had been (and would be again) neglected in the era of nashville/countrypolitan/etc. not quite a counter-tradition as much as lively activity on the margins. i think tosches really overstates his case, though, and makes a lot of stuff seem wild and crazee that really wasn't so wild and crazee (like the cover photo of riley puckett, a blind and unusually homely guy, which seems to try to invoke some kind of unhinged result of hillbilly inbreeding--when puckett's music is actually notable for its jazz-like virtuosity on the guitar and his sonorous voice). but at least tosches at his best is a genuinely good prose stylist-- i think. i like him more than bangs, marcus, and all the rest in that regard.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Monday, 28 June 2004 19:25 (nineteen years ago) link

"puerile" is a good word for the sort of overstatement i was trying to describe just now.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Monday, 28 June 2004 19:25 (nineteen years ago) link

wasn't there at least one artist featured in unsung heroes who turned out not to exist?

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 11:49 (nineteen years ago) link

yeah "esau smith"

― duane, Tuesday, 29 June 2004 12:21 (nineteen years ago) link

though it's not like, uh, y'know, it was a that big of a hoax...

― Huk-El (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 13:39 (nineteen years ago) link

what about ming and ling, did they exist?

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 13:59 (nineteen years ago) link

I believe so.
You can always cross-reference with http://www.rockabillyhall.com/
they cut a pretty wide swath.

― Huk-El (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 14:02 (nineteen years ago) link

or the Bear Family catalogue

― Huk-El (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 14:03 (nineteen years ago) link

(his worst article IMHO, a lecture on tolerance from a guy in a "last of the white 'n'" t-shirt.)

Tho to be fair he admits that from the get-go.

― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 14:17 (nineteen years ago) link

or the Bear Family catalogue
-- Huk-El (handsomishbo...) (webmail), June 29th, 2004 8:03 AM. (Horace Mann) (later) (link)

if you have a bottomless trust fund...

― amateur!st (amateurist), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 14:55 (nineteen years ago) link

I didn't mean actually buying from it, I meant looking through the actual catalogue booklet, or its interweb form, you crazy assumer.

― Huk-El (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 15:00 (nineteen years ago) link

yeah but Tosches in "Unsung Heroes" is out to bring the facts about pre-Elvis rock and roll to our attention. He prides himself on this, so I think accuracy counts. Now I think "Unsung Heroes" is really funny and well-written, sure, but that's not all one looks at, I don't think. "Country" is for sure a valuable and groundbreaking book, but same thing...anyone who cites so many facts should be held to a standard of accuracy. Even given his (to my mind) overdone love of Faulkner and his "license-taking."

― eddie hurt (ddduncan), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 18:33 (nineteen years ago) link

The funniest thing about Tosches is his bitterness at the publishing business--considering that the publishing industry, from critics up to publishing houses, has kissed his alcoholic ass for years. The guy can't sell any books but he still gets six-figure advances. He's got NOTHING to be bitter about (at least when it comes to publishing).

― shookout (shookout), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 18:44 (nineteen years ago) link

"Dante" wuz supposedly a national bestseller!?

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 22:20 (nineteen years ago) link

I've yet to see (or hear) a single shred of evidence that Ming and Ling ever existed outside the pages of Unsung Heroes...

― Andrew L (Andrew L), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 23:04 (nineteen years ago) link

everything Mr. Torschlees write about me inaccurate.

PS. Ming dead.

― Ling, Wednesday, 30 June 2004 00:26 (nineteen years ago) link

Ming & Ling are mentioned (and just mentioned) for their recording of "Milk Cow Blues" on the Rockabilly Hall of Fame page. Whether this corroborates or merely stems from Unsung is none of my business.

― Huk-L, Wednesday, 30 June 2004 00:48 (nineteen years ago) link

Yes, it was a National Bestseller, but that doesn't mean a whole lot. That means the book appeared for a week or more on a 'regional' list (LA Times, Boston Globe), which basically means that the author was in town on a book tour and sold 50 books in a list-reporting store in one location within a short span of time. To put it in persepctive, selling 50,000 to 75,000 albums is a failure for even many independent labels, whereas the same numbers are perfectly respectable for even the most mainstream of book publishing houses. This is not to say that sales are by any means the measure of someone's artistry, but Tosches' screeds about publishing seem odd to me considering how much worse many other deserving authors have fared, critically or commerically.

― shookout (shookout), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 03:11 (nineteen years ago) link

ok now i'm confused. LOTS of deserving authors don't sell well and this is supposed to prove that the industry DOESN'T deserve his screeds!!??

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 03:37 (nineteen years ago) link

hand bite feeds

― Huk-El (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 14:10 (nineteen years ago) link

To put it in persepctive, selling 50,000 to 75,000 albums is a failure for even many independent labels

er, which independent labels? for most, selling 10,000 copies is a real success.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 14:19 (nineteen years ago) link

Guess I'm thinking of bigger ones, like Matador.

Anyway, Clover, the industry doesn't deserve his screeds because he's done really well, considering. He keeps getting six-figure advances and critics keep licking his balls, even if no one reads him. As far as the sad little business of publishing goes, he's done far better than most. So yeah, I think his bitterness probably has more to do with alcoholism than any real valid complaint against publishing.

And one can only blame publishers so much. It's PEOPLE who have stopped reading and buying books. If they ever really did.

― shookout (shookout), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 18:45 (nineteen years ago) link

matador is independant like i write bestsellers.

anyfuckingway alcoholism is the most valid complaint against publishing there is. cf. exley, pace hemmingway.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 1 July 2004 03:39 (nineteen years ago) link

how is alcoholism "a complaint against publishing"?

― amateur!st (amateurist), Thursday, 1 July 2004 04:49 (nineteen years ago) link

have a sense of poetry ams!

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 1 July 2004 04:50 (nineteen years ago) link

cf exley, pace hemmingway.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 1 July 2004 04:51 (nineteen years ago) link

from Dino:
Airs, waters and places had conspired against him. There could be no happiness but in waving away the world; none but in being apart, unthinking, unfeeling. He had heard of Dante and the Commedia, of the hundred cantos that rose toward a paradise of light, love and reason with the breath of a woman at their heart. Pura Luce, piena d'amore. But what was all the light and love in the world compared to a single good blowjob? That was what women did to men, turned them into fucking pazzo poets. And what the fuck did Dante know about hell? Dante Alighieri and Jerry Lewis. Nine years of listening to that mortucrist' wail and whine -- then he really could have written a fucking Inferno. Fuck it all. Fuck all that love, light and reason shit. Fuck Beatrice where she breathed. Fuck the moon in your eye like a big pizza pie. It was a racket, all right. You sang your song, you wrote your poem: a crust of bread, a jug of wine, and thou. It sounded so sweet. But a million bucks, a bottle of Scotch, and a blowjob -- that's what it comes down to. It was like the clown in the opera said: La commedia e finita

― lovebug satyrski, Thursday, 1 July 2004 09:10 (nineteen years ago) link

fifteen years pass...

R.I.P.

― drunk on hot toddies (morrisp), Monday, 21 October 2019 00:23 (four years ago) link

Only 69.

― curmudgeon, Monday, 21 October 2019 04:09 (four years ago) link

I wonder if a mainstream publisher (not sure how big the Stranded publisher was) would print his Sticky Fingers essay today.

― clemenza, Monday, 21 October 2019 15:34 (four years ago) link

rip. that stranded prologue was profoundly influential on my writing though i haven't reread it in ages

― american bradass (BradNelson), Monday, 21 October 2019 15:39 (four years ago) link

rip. Too young.

― Life is a meaningless nightmare of suffering...save string (Chinaski), Monday, 21 October 2019 16:34 (four years ago) link

two weeks pass...

Just got library ecopy of Country and it’s really good, doesn’t seem dated.

― Irae Louvin (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 10 November 2019 23:06 (four years ago) link

There are two editions! Took bits from/added others to the second. Wonder why he took some (might have seemed too ripe, even for him?), but glad for adds.

― dow, Monday, 11 November 2019 03:56 (four years ago) link

Don't have them at hand, so can't list pub. dates.

― dow, Monday, 11 November 2019 03:58 (four years ago) link

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