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Rock and Hard Places: Travels to Backstages, Frontlines and Assorted Sideshows by Andrew Mueller
jan603dd's review
4.0
It can be difficult to read and fully enjoy any collection of essays since, when consumed en masse, the stylistic idiosyncrasies that seem witty when viewed in isolation can seem grating or lazy - "I demand maximum linguistic variance", you cry!
Andrew Mueller has plenty of idiosyncrasies, but his style is funny, his topics engaging and varied, and the essays such a length, that when the end of each piece arrives you wish for a little more - appropriately for a book half-filled with music pieces this reminded me of albums I found too short on which I found myself hitting REPEAT once the final note sounded - Arcturus "The Sham Mirrors".
Two things of note in the book are, one, the change in style for the last piece, which concerns Mueller's own musical endeavours. Still funny and engaging there's a (not-unsurprising) lack of journalistic detachment and tenderness that's not always present in other pieces - this is not a criticism, but an observation, and in comparison a small sign-post of good journalism and what makes the other pieces work.
The second thing is a quote from Bono whose words, of all people, I would never have thought would touch me, but who when talking about taking artistic risks says (emphasis mine) "I think one of the things I found difficult in the '80s was this din of voices telling me 'But you can't fly, you arsehole'. But that's the kind of thinking that results in restrained, reasonable music - or, for that matter, restrained, reasonable writing. You must not find yourself tiptoeing."
Andrew Mueller has plenty of idiosyncrasies, but his style is funny, his topics engaging and varied, and the essays such a length, that when the end of each piece arrives you wish for a little more - appropriately for a book half-filled with music pieces this reminded me of albums I found too short on which I found myself hitting REPEAT once the final note sounded - Arcturus "The Sham Mirrors".
Two things of note in the book are, one, the change in style for the last piece, which concerns Mueller's own musical endeavours. Still funny and engaging there's a (not-unsurprising) lack of journalistic detachment and tenderness that's not always present in other pieces - this is not a criticism, but an observation, and in comparison a small sign-post of good journalism and what makes the other pieces work.
The second thing is a quote from Bono whose words, of all people, I would never have thought would touch me, but who when talking about taking artistic risks says (emphasis mine) "I think one of the things I found difficult in the '80s was this din of voices telling me 'But you can't fly, you arsehole'. But that's the kind of thinking that results in restrained, reasonable music - or, for that matter, restrained, reasonable writing. You must not find yourself tiptoeing."
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