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 Caught in the Carousel "There will be music despite everything"
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Getting in Tune, by Roger Trott
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Mingering Mike, by Dori Hadar
New York Dolls, by Bob Gruen
Red Album of Asbury Park, by Alex Austin
Satchmo: The Wonderful World And Art Of Louis Armstrong, by Steven Brower
Stone Roses, by Alex Green
Three Wishes: An Intimate Look At Jazz Greats, by Pannonica de Koenigswarter
The Vinyl Princess by Yvonne Prinz
Getting in Tune
Roger Trott
Coral Press
Paperback, 300 Pages
"And so I now sat on the top row of the bleachers in my white coveralls and black work boots, Pete Townshend angry in my head, trying to figure out why those four parts of me wouldn't come together," Roger Trott writes in his new novel Getting In Tune. Set in 1976 and focusing on twenty-year-old Daniel Travers and his ragtag band of punk upstarts who make up the fledgling, yet fumbling Killjoys, Trott's novel captures the speed of adolescence, the rush of backstage strategies and romances and the frustrations of being an aspiring musician. Daniel is a bit of a mess—he's downing pills like sweet tarts, he's fed up with his band and he's haunted—or is it guided?—by the spectral voice of Pete Townshend, who dispenses bits of advice that come in waves of subconscious choruses. There are dingy nightclubs, people named Kitten, Yogi and Nita, and late night revelations about life and love and all the music in between. Daniel loves The Who and Townshend's elliptical advisements may be a self-confected byproduct of his drug ingestion or divine rock and roll intervention—either way, the formula works. "My path was my own, just like Pete Townshend's was his," Daniel ruminates in one scene: "That's what he had been telling me; He was leading me to the Real Me, and I was almost there. Trott's novel is set in the mid seventies at the beginning of punk's ascension, but he references the last four decades of rock and roll—one tip of the hand to the eighties comes in the form of a booking agent named Rick Astley, who works for a company named Big Country. It's heartfelt, clever and fast paced—like all good punk songs should be.
—Alex Green
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