Author Bio
I grew up in New York State. When I was seven, entranced by the three tom-tom thumps that announce the chorus of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," I started playing drums in rock bands. My first rock concert was Three Dog Night — my grandfather took me. I got into punk rock on May 8, 1977, the day I got both Television's Marquee Moon and Talking Heads '77; that summer, a friend came back from a vacation in England with a big pile of singles by bands like the Clash, the Sex Pistols and the Damned. My life was never the same.
Then I went to college in New York City, where I got a degree in Latin, a language which has served me in good stead in my professional life in many ways.
After goofing off for a few years I eventually blundered into rock journalism, and wound up writing a couple hundred articles for Rolling Stone while writing for MTV News and a bunch of other magazines. A professional highlight was interviewing Ray Charles on the phone and making him laugh. Then I wrote Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana, published in 1993. After a satisfying foray into the dot-com side of things, I started writing my current book, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991. Now I'm thinking about what book to write next.
Oh yeah, be sure to check out my band, the King of France.
SOME OF MY FAVORITE MUSIC BOOKS
African Rhythm, African Sensibility -- John Miller Chernoff
Bat Chain Puller -- Kurt Loder
Black Monk Time -- Thomas Edward Shaw and Anita Klemke
Great Pop Things -- Colin B. Morton and Chuck Death
Hit Men -- Fredric Dannen
Lennon Remembers -- Jann S. Wenner, ed.
Mystery Train -- Greil Marcus
Night Beat -- Mikal Gilmore
Noise -- Jacques Attali
Please Kill Me -- Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
Rock and the Pop Narcotic -- Joe Carducci
Rock Encyclopedia -- Lillian Roxon
The Mansion on the Hill -- Fred Goodman
Top 40 Hits -- Joel Whitburn
Trouser Press Record Guide -- Ira Robbins, ed.
SOME OF MY FAVORITE BOOK-BOOKS
A Handful of Dust -- Evelyn Waugh
At Swim-Two-Birds -- Flann O'Brien
Between Meals -- A.J. Liebling
Everything That Rises Must Converge -- Flannery O'Connor
Exercises in Style -- Raymond Queneau
Frankenstein -- Mary Shelley
Invisible Cities -- Italo Calvino
Lolita -- Vladimir Nabokov
Pale Fire -- Vladimir Nabokov
A Remembrance of Things Past -- Marcel Proust
The Baron in the Trees -- Italo Calvino
The Master and Margarita -- Mikhail Bulgakov
Up in the Old Hotel -- Joseph Mitchell
Waiting for Godot -- Samuel Beckett
Walden -- Henry David Thoreau
Anything by P.G. Wodehouse