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3.61 AVERAGE
3.61 AVERAGE
Anyone who knows me knows I love Dave Grohl. This book was good; I enjoyed reading and learning more about his life. However, there was a bit of babbling here and there, but otherwise I'm glad I read!
What's so good about Brannigan's portrait of Dave Grohl isn't just that we see some of the fine details within the musician's career, but we also see the environment and the status of the music scene just before Grohl comes upon it. Through these moments of seemingly disconnected pieces of history we can see the style of music and attitude that directly influenced the way Grohl approaches music.
This is a Call was an interesting read, and did provide bits of inside into the life of Dave Grohl. However, it is clear that this is not an authorized biography, the book is packed with 'filler.' Brannigan describes at lengths the development of the US punk-rock scene, which though interesting doesn't directly focus on Grohl. Sometime it seems as though only a few lines in a single chapter actually relate to the person the biography is about (eg. The introduction of Nirvana in the book). Overall, the book wasn't a bad read -- but it felt more like bits of rock journalism stitched together, than an in-depth biography.
I really liked this book and I liked the fact that it's not only about Dave Grohl's life
but it also describes the music scene that took part when a certain song/album was created which gives it a better and deeper understanding. I honestly don't know how I survived the part where Kurt died :'( I swear when it was coming towards the end of Nirvana I almost didn't want to continue reading cause I knew what was coming and I caught my self tearing up a few times...Anyway this book is a really good read for those who want to know more things about Dave Grohl,Nirvana, Foo Fighters and punk rock in general!
but it also describes the music scene that took part when a certain song/album was created which gives it a better and deeper understanding. I honestly don't know how I survived the part where Kurt died :'( I swear when it was coming towards the end of Nirvana I almost didn't want to continue reading cause I knew what was coming and I caught my self tearing up a few times...Anyway this book is a really good read for those who want to know more things about Dave Grohl,Nirvana, Foo Fighters and punk rock in general!
This felt more like 55% the life and times of Dave Grohl (at best) and 45% information about people who created record labels and fanzines and the like from the places Dave Grohl has lived, around the same time he lived there.
I love Dave Grohl...but this is just too hard! Really informative about the punk rock genre, but not enough about the man! Couldn't finish it...
This is more about "the times" surrounding the life of Dave Grohl rather than about Dave Grohl himself. Wasn't what I was expecting but would be really great for those interested in a lot of history about punk and hardcore and Nirvana.
This is a really thorough history of Dave Grohl's life. From Nivana to the Foo Fighters to Them Crooked Vultures. The only thing I didn't like about this book was the first part decribing the really old history of Grohl's family-it wans't very interesting to me.
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
A sweeping history of the history of punk rock to alt rock as traced by the whirlwind path of Dave Grohl, this book certainly ventures out of the strict boundaries of a Dave Grohl biography, but I loved it wholeheartedly. To tell the story of a man who has been making music since age 12, released his first demo at 15, rose to prominence drumming in Nirvana, and then went on to lead his own phenomenally successful band, and jumps in on side projects with some of the biggest names in rock for the hell of it, you've got to cast a wide net.
It helps that I skimmed reviews here first, and was therefore prepared for a heaping side of music history with my main serving of Dave Grohl anecdotes, but I rarely found myself disinterested in any of the "auxillary" notes. He spends plenty of time savoring the various albums and acts that Dave intersected with, and his day job as a music writer is fully apparent, but Brannigan does a good job of tying things back together before too long, and especially for someone like me who knows next to nothing about the environment that forged Grohl's musical sensibilities, they help tell the tale very well.
I was a glad to find that the reviewers that complaints about Brannigan's dwelling on Nirvana at the expense of the Foo Fighters were a bit overblown, in my opinion. Numbers-wise, the book is pretty evenly chunked into three sections: pre-Nirvana, Nirvana, Foo Fighters. So by pages-per-year, Nirvana does get about twice the coverage of Foo Fighters, but I didn't feel like I missed anything. Nirvana and his pre-Nirvana years are pretty important chapters in Grohl's story, and those chapters are closed. Foo Fighters is a story that's still being told, and frankly, it's not as dense in significance and interesting stuff as the first couple phases. We'll get the Foo Fighters bio in a decade or two, but at this point, I think the balance was very well handled.
So anyway, I came away from this book loving Dave Grohl even more than I did - it's a fantastic portrait of a fascinating man, and simultaneously same time a sweeping history of rock in all of its incarnations, with the two threads intertwining to tell each other's story. If you really don't like music criticism, or are going to get bored reading about things that aren't directly related to Grohl, you might want to skip it, but if you think you have space in your reading schedule for some punk rock history along the way, it will be well worth your while.
It helps that I skimmed reviews here first, and was therefore prepared for a heaping side of music history with my main serving of Dave Grohl anecdotes, but I rarely found myself disinterested in any of the "auxillary" notes. He spends plenty of time savoring the various albums and acts that Dave intersected with, and his day job as a music writer is fully apparent, but Brannigan does a good job of tying things back together before too long, and especially for someone like me who knows next to nothing about the environment that forged Grohl's musical sensibilities, they help tell the tale very well.
I was a glad to find that the reviewers that complaints about Brannigan's dwelling on Nirvana at the expense of the Foo Fighters were a bit overblown, in my opinion. Numbers-wise, the book is pretty evenly chunked into three sections: pre-Nirvana, Nirvana, Foo Fighters. So by pages-per-year, Nirvana does get about twice the coverage of Foo Fighters, but I didn't feel like I missed anything. Nirvana and his pre-Nirvana years are pretty important chapters in Grohl's story, and those chapters are closed. Foo Fighters is a story that's still being told, and frankly, it's not as dense in significance and interesting stuff as the first couple phases. We'll get the Foo Fighters bio in a decade or two, but at this point, I think the balance was very well handled.
So anyway, I came away from this book loving Dave Grohl even more than I did - it's a fantastic portrait of a fascinating man, and simultaneously same time a sweeping history of rock in all of its incarnations, with the two threads intertwining to tell each other's story. If you really don't like music criticism, or are going to get bored reading about things that aren't directly related to Grohl, you might want to skip it, but if you think you have space in your reading schedule for some punk rock history along the way, it will be well worth your while.