Cooder-White-Skaggs at Toronto's Massey Hall (April 11, 2016)

Ricky Skaggs, Mark Fain, Sharon White, Joachim Cooder & Ry Cooder in NYC in Nov. 2015. (Photo: Chad Batka)

There was something going on at Massey Hall in Toronto last night – something physical, and something decidedly spiritual. It wasn’t your ordinary concert. Although Massey Hall has hosted more than its share of special shows, there was something different about this one. Everyone knew it. The anticipation ran high. My friends on Facebook were posting last week about how excited they were, how they felt "like 12-year-olds waiting for Christmas." When I sat down in my seat you could hear folks all ‘round talking about how they had been counting down the days. Then, at 8:00 on the dot, as is customary at this hallowed hall, Ricky Skaggs, his wife Sharon White, and Ryland P. Cooder came onto the stage. They were followed by Ry’s son Joachim, Sharon’s sister Cheryl, their dad Buck White and Ricky’s longtime bandmate Mark Fain. It was truly a family affair.

Of Wire and Wood: Two New Albums from Borealis Records

Tom Taylor, Shari Ulrich and Barney Bentall, a.k.a. BTU, have a new album with Borealis Records, Tightrope Walk.

"...a guitar is made of wire and wood ...it’s just a tool when pushing comes to shove..."

Those lines come from a song I wrote a few years ago, but in essence it’s a true statement of how I feel about guitars. They are tools to make music with. In the hands of a gifted player, a guitar can bring an almost endless variety of emotions from both player and listener. On Friday night, Feb. 26, at St. Catharines FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre, Ron Sexsmith used his Taylor to display his incredible skill at songwriting. The following Monday night, Feb. 29, at Hugh’s Room, Simon Townshend owned the small stage, passionately attacking three different axes and a mandolin, and he had The Who’s guitar tech on hand to tune up. There’s no denying it: a guitar is a potent instrument, and probably the one thing that gives me the most pleasure in life apart from my family. That’s why these two new albums from Borealis Records are worth having around.

BTU is not British Thermal Units. It stands for Bentall-Taylor-Ulrich. That’s Barney Bentall, ex-Legendary Hearts, who after spending a few years as a cattle rancher has recently been hyperactive on the Canadian folk scene. Last year saw him release a solo album Flesh and Bone and take part in The High Bar Gang (a gospel bluegrass band whose debut album was one of the year’s highlights. Shari Ulrich was also part of the High Bar Gang, and she released a quality solo CD last year as well.) Tom Taylor hails from Vancouver where he was part of the band She Stole My Beer. Together Bentall-Taylor-Ulrich have crafted a folky new CD entitled Tightrope Walk.

2015: My Cultural Year in Review

Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons in the second season of Fargo.

It’s been a long year. We’re coming close to the end. As Mr. Lennon said, “So this is Christmas, and what have we done?” Well we’ve listened to a lot of music, and read a lot of books. Watched some movies. And some TV. Maybe my favourite TV show has been Fargo, Season 2 of which I have just finished, and I have to say I loved every minute of it. The first season was interesting, had a few surprises, like when Officer Molly got shot but the second season was where we found out just what happened at the Sioux Falls massacre. The concept of going back twenty years to explain this was sheer genius. If you haven’t watched Fargo, I recommend you start from the beginning. See the movie first and marvel at the work of Joel and Ethan Coen. Next try the first season to see how beautifully the television producers have translated North Dakota and environs to the small screen. Billy Bob Thornton was the perfect villain, and Allison Tolman as Molly Solverson was extraordinary. Her expressive eyes just captured the viewer and never let you go.

Buffy Sainte-Marie: She's Still Rocking!

Buffy Sainte-Marie's 18th album, Power in the Blood, was released in May. (Photo by David Gahr, 1960)

What can you say about Buffy Sainte-Marie? She appeared on the American game show To Tell the Truth in January 1966. Panelists Tom Poston, Peggy Cass, Orson Bean and Kitty Carlisle questioned the three contestants for ten minutes and guessed which one was the real Buffy Sainte-Marie. The questions were a bit insipid. “Do you have any musical training?” “Are there any more Indian singers?” “Where does Joan Baez live?” When they voted, Bud Collyer asked the panel to “Mark [their] wigwams.” Mr. Bean actually drew a cartoon war bonnet on his numeral 3. They were different times. I remember watching the show when it first played, and you can still watch it on YouTube. The best part is when Buffy does “Goin’ Up to Cripple Creek” accompanying herself on mouthbow, and then she picks up her guitar and sings “Until It’s Time For You To Go.”

Chrissie Hynde: Reckless Indeed

Chrissie Hynde performing at the Irving Plaza, New York City, 1994. (Photo by  Ebet Roberts)

“The idea of me writing anything at all was ludicrous. My head was disorganized, a tangle of crossed lines. I couldn’t conclude a thought on a postcard… I wasn’t a poet. I wasn’t a writer. To begin a paragraph and find my way to a conclusion – Gretel tracking a breadcrumb trail would fare better… My only qualification, had I required one, was that I was as frustrated as the rest of them – a frustrated musician (the cliché of music journalism), opinionated, hungover, illegal in the workplace, devoid of ambition and, if I couldn’t find a word in my dumb guy vocabulary, I would make one up.”

This is Chrissie Hynde describing how she approached being asked to write rock criticism for NME circa 1974. It would be a few more years before she stormed the charts herself in a band called The Pretenders. The self-evaluation holds true though, even today. The quote is from page 147 of her 312 page autobiography Reckless: My Life as a Pretender (Doubleday, 2015). I laughed when I read it, because it echoes what I was thinking as I plowed through the book. It seems like she scribbled thoughts on scraps of paper and then pasted them together in more or less chronological order. Characters are introduced and then disappear, their ultimate relationship to Ms Hynde left undescribed, or maybe hinted at in a vague way.

Share The Music: The Hugh's Room Tribute to The Guess Who

A week ago Friday, my friend Michael Wrycraft, designer (of album cover art) extraordinaire, organized another of his infamous tribute shows. The venue? Hugh’s Room, one of the best sounding clubs in Toronto. The performers? We’ll get to them in a moment. The people being paid tribute? Canadian all–stars The Guess Who: Burton Cummings, Randy Bachman, Jim Kale and Garry Peterson. They’re the originals, the four guys who stormed out of Winnipeg playing rock’n’roll with a decidedly Canadian flavour. Sure their first big song was a cover version of Johnny Kidd & the Pirates' hit “Shakin’ All Over,” but we Canadians didn’t know that. We didn’t even know who this band that had captured the airwaves was. The label just said “Guess Who?” Little did we know it was a way to introduce Chad Allan & the Expressions. So the label added the definite article and the band was born. Chad Allan left, replaced by pianist/lead singer Burton Cummings and the rest is history. Hit after hit, The Guess Who dominated the Canadian charts for years. They survived the loss of Randy Bachman, his replacement[s] Greg Leskiw, Kurt Winter, and eventually Dominic Troiano and their legend survives reunion concerts, and artificial bands touring in their name. Why? It’s all because of the songs.

Mailman, Bring Me No More Blues: Five New CDs

Doug Seegers

My mailman is fascinated by the packages which come regularly to my house. “You get a lot of CDs dontcha!” Sometimes, if I happen to be home when he delivers, I’ll open the package with him there, and show him what’s there. Usually a selection of little known artists, whose label is trying to promote them. Once in a while there are gems. Doug Seegers was a “frequently homeless” singer-songwriter who released this (his first album) at the age of 62. He’s been a drunk, and a John Lennon wannabe, but now delivers a positive Christian-based message in a pure country style. Influenced by Gram Parsons, The Byrds, Emmylou Harris and others, Going Down to the River was produced by Will Kimbrough and championed by Buddy Miller. Recorded in three days at Cowboy Jack Clement’s legendary Sound Emporium the album sounds great. Pedal steel from Al Perkins, a duet with Emmylou Harris, and a clutch of gospel songs and Seegers own lived-in voice produced an album that is almost a classic. I’ve had this title for sometime when it got lost at the bottom of a pile, but listening to it now I am wishing I’d listened to it a lot more when it first arrived.

Tales From the Dark Side: The Lust for Vinyl

The last time I wrote about buying vinyl, it was after a Record Store Day. I sent off early in the morning cruising a variety of shops to score some of the exclusive discs that are especially created one day in April for music hungry fanatics like myself. There’s another such day coming up in November. They call it Black Friday. Vinyl is black, you see. Although many of these special releases are pressed on coloured, even multi-coloured vinyl, to draw the rabid collector in even further. But somewhere back in the collector’s history there must be a beginning where this craving began. We all understand cravings these days. The proliferation of vampire and zombie stories, with their creatures’ cravings for blood and brains is just what makes people of a certain age, and bent, to wander the streets searching for a way to satisfy that vinyl-lust. I started to think about the first record stores I ever visited to see what it was that drew me into this dark world in the first place.

Simply Chronicling: The History of Canadian Rock by Bob Mersereau

Bob Mersereau is a producer with the CBC. Alongside thousands of reviews for various newspapers and magazines he has authored two of the most entertaining and informative books on Canadian Rock and Roll. The Top 100 Canadian Albums and The Top 100 Canadian Singles are must have volumes for the maple leaf music lover. They are smart, well designed, and just plain fun. Open either of them to any page and you’re drawn immediately into an argument about which single didn’t make the cut, which should have, why is Neil Young so heavily represented, where is Pagliaro in all this. I regularly return to these volumes to remind myself of albums or singles I bought, lost, traded, hated and loved. Unfortunately Mersereau’s new book, The History of Canadian Rock (Backbeat Books), is not the sequel I’d hoped it would be. It’s not his fault, though. It’s incredibly difficult to maintain that level of sport when you’re just chronologically reporting on act after act, single after single. The same is true of The Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll. It was called Rock of Ages and had three authors (Ed Ward, Geoffrey Stokes and Ken Tucker). It dealt with the whole international history of rock & roll (well, essentially American, including the British Invasion[s]), but suffered because you just can’t include everybody.

Send Lawyers, Guns & Money: A Live Concert Tribute to Warren Zevon at Hugh's Room (June 19)

As always, the night begins with a quick trip home, jump in the car and head for the huge traffic jam that is the QEW. Tonight it’s not so bad, and I have my old friend Wayne to keep me entertained with tales of his recent trip to Nashville. Wayne’s a songwriter and he makes a regular pilgrimage to Tennessee to sell songs. He meets all sorts of interesting people down there. This time my favourite is the Vince Gill story! But enough about the car ride. We arrive at Hugh’s Room for a concert tribute to Warren Zevon (curated by A Man Called Wrycraft) and are led to our table. The menu hasn’t changed although they disappoint me by telling me that they’re not serving the chicken pan pesto tonight. OK, the penne with rapini then. There are no bad seats in Hugh’s Room (well…the café tables are not comfortable, but you can still see and hear everything) and we’re up close to the stage in front of the PA board. Perfect. Michael Wrycraft is not in the house tonight. It’s been over a year since he went in to hospital for a foot infection and has been recovering. Hopefully he’ll be back hosting his shows in September. The shows lose something without Michael’s presence, his passion and his stories about the songwriter being celebrated. Tonight Bob Reid is hosting. He reads from a biography of Mr. Zevon written by his ex-wife. He chooses segments which relate to the songs about to be performed. Interesting and sometimes quite funny.

Sibling Rivalry - Ray Davies: A Complicated Life by Johnny Rogan

Johnny Rogan has written about Ray Davies before. He did a biography of The Kinks back in 1984 (The Kinks: the Sound and the Fury), and then in 1998 one of those CD sized anthologies of record reviews, The Complete Guide to the Music of The Kinks. Rogan is nothing if not thorough. His biography of Van Morrison (No Surrender) is the most in-depth study of the Irish songster available. So much so that it was criticized by Kevin Courtney in The Irish Times, who observed: "For fans of Van Morrison's music, No Surrender might seem somewhat blasphemous, focusing not so much on Van the artist, but on Van the not-very-nice man.” One might say that Rogan has taken the same approach in this vast study of Ray Davies.

He calls it “a complicated life” but in fact it’s two complicated lives Rogan is laying bare here. Ray Davies, rhythm guitarist, songwriter, lead singer of The Kinks and his younger brother Dave, lead guitarist, songwriter, back-up singer of The Kinks. You can’t tell one story without the other. Ray, famously tells a story of his life growing up as the only boy in a family of six sisters. On his solo album The Storyteller he recounts how happy he was, until his mother gave birth to a younger child, another boy, and Ray had to share affections with someone else. “When Dave was born, I felt like a little child of two whose parents suddenly go out and buy a dog,” Ray Davies explains, “Of course a kid gets jealous.” Usually a kid grows out of it but this sibling rivalry grew and grew until today the brothers can barely stand to be in the same city. When asked if there will ever be a Kinks reunion they reply, “It could happen, if people behave,” and “It’s time reality took over!” The first response is Ray, the second Dave. It’s unlikely to happen. Long-time drummer Mick Avory wants it to happen, but he definitely wants to be included, and brother Dave stated recently “I don’t want to see the legacy of The Kinks soured by two miserable old men doing it for the money.” No-one does.

Life Lessons - Willie Nelson (with David Ritz): It’s a Long Story (My Life)

Willie Nelson’s story has been told before, by Joe Nick Patoski in a book subtitled An Epic Life. Epic! A quick search for a definition of ‘epic’ leads you to this, in the Urban Dictionary “the most overused word ever, next to fail…use them together to form ‘epic fail…everything is epic now. epic car. epic haircut. epic movie. epic album…saying 'epic win' doesn't make you sound any better, either” and you have to agree with them. Everything is ‘epic’ these days, but in Willie’s case maybe Patoski has a point. Willie (and his co-author David Ritz) have opted for something a little simpler, not epic…but just the humble admission, It’s a Long Story. Not as long as when Patoski told it, but long nonetheless. The epic life took 576 pages, the long story only 392 and that includes the index and credits for quoting song lyrics. Willie is good at editing things to fit his own perspective of what’s important in his long life. The book sounds like Willie. It’s written in his voice. Ritz, from the look of it, organized, and provided structure but allowed Willie to be front and centre telling this story himself. You can almost feel him sitting across the room from you as you read. Some pages have the flow and poetry of his lyrics, others just sound like him, exhaling a puff of smoke and a gem of a remembrance.

“A song is a short story,” he begins, “It might have been my buddy Harlan Howard, a writer I met in Nashville in the sixties, who first said a song ain’t nothing but three chords and the truth…the truth should flow easy. Same for songs and stories…the way a mountain stream, bubbling with fresh clean water, keeps flowing…but what you’re holding in your hands is something more than a simple song or a short story. It’s a Long Story is the name of this enterprise…and I’ll need a lot more than three chords.”

Record Store Day: Yea or Nay?

We just celebrated Record Store Day 2015, and for a couple weeks on both sides there have been arguments about whether the concept is serving or hurting the people it’s designed for. The local independent record store and smaller labels. The question from the labels side is whether or not they can get vinyl records produced in time, because the pressing plants are so bogged down pressing bigger orders for the major labels. One might also wonder who actually needs a vinyl copy of the soundtrack for The Darjeerling Limited? For the record stores across the world (yes…Record Store Day is celebrated in other countries too, with appropriate product) the problem is how much stock to bring in, and what to do with whatever you get. The stores can order specific titles but may not receive what they order, due to limited quantities, and arbitrary decisions.

Digging the Roots: Jayme Stone’s Lomax Project & Ken Whiteley’s Beulah Band

Alan Lomax (1915-2002) was one of the great field collectors of American (and international) music. Together with his father John he traveled the countryside in an old car, lugging a 300 lb. recorder to track down the authentic musicians, and capture their songs and performances. Woody Guthrie, Big Bill Broonzy, Muddy Waters, Leadbelly, and many more in the USA and across the sea Elizabeth Cronin, Hamish Hamilton, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger are among the hundreds of names with whom he worked gathering songs and stories recordings of which now reside in the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress. His biography is entitled Alan Lomax: the Man Who Recorded the World and that’s no exaggeration.

Jayme Stone is a Canadian banjo player. He won a Juno Award in 2008 for his instrumental album The Utmost, and another Juno the following year for Africa to Appalachia (with Mansa Sissoko). His records dig into the history of the banjo, its roots in Africa, and the variety of sounds it makes. Now he combines his interest in the sound of the banjo, with a collection of songs from the Lomax bag to “renew this material [nineteen…songs…collected by…Lomax].” The result is startling. These songs were captured on the road with an acetate disc-cutter and cactus needle stylus. Wherever Lomax found a player he stopped, the sounds on his records were full of the surrounding lifestyle of his subjects. Wind, rain, ocean roar, kitchen noise, neighbourly chitchat and intricate finger-style guitar, rough-hewn vocals, tin whistles, whatever. These sounds influenced Stone to bring together some like-minded friends to update this homemade music. It all remains handmade and homemade, (in the studios of Canterbury Music, Toronto and eTown Hall in Boulder Colorado) by friends and collaborators like Tim O’Brien, Eli West and Julian Lage (guitar), Brittany Haas and Bruce Molsky (fiddle), Joe Phillips and Greg Garrison (bass) and a handful of other singers and instrumentalists including Stone’s own banjo.

Blame it on Hamilton: A Celebration

It’s Tuesday after Juno week in Hamilton. The big poster designed by Tom Wilson still overlooks James Street. Swag bags are emptied though, and the blue boxes are filled with was passed for swag in some of those bags. Booklets, ads, tickets are blowing down the road. All that remains are the memories. Memories of that week when all the clubs were full of people, and music was played everywhere. Even Limeridge Mall had an event. A music event! Not a sale. The libraries had an event, believe it or not. Hamilton Public hosted a concert in the round on their 4th floor. And McMaster Libraries did a demonstration of electronic instruments for attendees! Give your head a shake. I was there, participating, demoing the Makey Makey and my colleagues showed off the Atari Punk Console, the Little Bits Synth Kit and a theremin that was also built from a kit. The theremin was the big draw. After people bought their beer at the bar they were pulled over by the sounds of alien invasion coming from the weird black box. They then stayed to twist the knobs of the punk console or bang away on the banana piano. Yep, it’s a piano with bananas for keys (or forks, or tofu, or even raw meat). Fun wow!

Pop Journalism: Books on Bob Dylan, The Band and Paul Simon

“Definition of rock journalism: People who can't write, doing interviews with people who can't think, in order to prepare articles for people who can't read.”

― Frank Zappa, The Real Frank Zappa Book

This quote from Frank Zappa has always struck me as funny. Funny because, having written several thousand words of music reviews over the years, it might even apply to me. Of course I rarely if ever interview anyone, it’s all just my opinion. I might borrow a controversial quote, like this one, and use it as a springboard into a discussion about something or other. But does Zappa speak for all rock journalism? I just finished reading the third of a series of new books published by Rowman & Littlefield about rock music. American rock music specifically. The publisher has selected a cross section of important American artists and matched each of them with an appropriate author to come up with books on Bob Dylan, the Band, Paul Simon and others yet to come. I have read the Dylan, Simon and The Band books. They stand individually, but they also sometimes lean on each other for support. The first book in the series is Bob Dylan: American Troubadour by Donald Brown. Brown is a theatre critic and book reviewer at the New Haven Review. He also teaches at Yale. His book begins with a timeline contrasting important events in the history of the world (Dec.7 1941 Japan attacks Pearl Harbour) with important dates in the life of Dylan (May 24, 1941 born as Robert Allen Zimmerman to parents Abram and Beatrice in Duluth, MN). A similar timeline appears in the Paul Simon book but is inexplicably missing from The Band volume. 

Canajan Boys

Last summer we were walking downtown in Charlottetown, my wife, my brother-in-law, his wife, and daughter. Just a block from Province House. It was evening, we’d been out for dinner, and to see Anne of Green Gables. We had parked on a side street and were returning to our car, when alongside the church beside which we were parked we saw, to our amazement, a fox. Not just any fox, but a black fox. None of us were ready, with a camera (or phone) so we didn’t get a picture…but all five of us gasped and said, “Look! A black fox!” A man was walking down the road towards us and he declared, “You must be tourists… we see them every day.” Oh sure…I know it’s officially called a ‘silver’ fox, and that they put money in the pockets of poor Islanders for years (and now it’s not politically correct to even suggest that there might be a market for fox pelts…) but, in 1939, 10% of the population of PEI kept foxes. Now the little critters run wild on the main street

Why all this talk about foxes? It’s because Michael Wrycraft’s lovely cover design for Jon Brooks’ new CD features a very distinguished looking fox, not a silver fox… a red one. And this one is not in a city, he’s roaming free in The Smiling & Beautiful Countryside. Brooks is a powerful singer-songwriter who has been well known for his political songs. Songs like “Fort McMurray,” “Hudson Girl,” “Son of Hamas” and “Cage Fighter” (all from 2012’s Delicate Cages CD) dealt with issues as wide ranging as the Alberta tar sands, Quebec language laws, Palestinian suicide bombers, and a mixed martial arts fighter who had been a Bosnian child soldier. The new album, which takes its title from a Sherlock Holmes quote, is something quite different. It’s a collection of murder ballads. Not Ozark murder ballads handed down from generation to generation, but Canadian murder ballads that Brooks has written. Gore, sex, killing, necrophilia: name your poison and it’s here. I saw Brooks play “Delia’s Gone,” another murder ballad, at a Johnny Cash Tribute Show a year or so ago and it gave me a clue as to what this CD would be like. Wrycraft told me then that Brooks wanted to “piss people off” with his new album. This might do it.

The Grand Tradition: Danny Medakovic's Jolley Cut

It was the day after life changed in Hamilton, Ontario. On the Friday, there was a giant mudslide onto the highway, caused by a broken water main. Traffic was crazy. It took an hour to get through an intersection! Then Saturday, the McMaster Marauders played in the Vanier Cup. A really, really tall Carabin stood up just as our kicker let fly a field goal attempt that would have put Mac in front with only a minute to go. And on Sunday, an illegal block 10 yards away from the play cost us a Grey Cup when a ninety yard run back for a touchdown was called back. Life stopped. The breath of half a million Hamilton and area Tiger-Cat fans just…stopped. There is no joy in Mudslide-ville. On this…the day after…there’s nothing to do but listen to some good old Hamilton folk music and put all that other stuff behind us.

Vinyl Nirvana: Do Not Sell at Any Price by Amanda Petrusich

I am a collector who has a room filled with vinyl records, those 33s and 45s of my youth—and it turns out that they’re coming back. So when I discovered Amanda Petrusich's Do Not Sell at Any Price (which is subtitled The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78rpm Records), I was hooked. I had to read it. Not that I’m a collector of 78rpm records, although I do have one or two in my collection, but I fondly recall shuffling through the batch my grandparents had stored under their record player. They had none of the “rarest” things that Ms Petrusich talks about, but instead some big bands and The Happy Gang which were all neatly packaged in albums that truly looked like big bound books with page after page (envelopes really) of heavy black discs. My mother had a bunch, too: Stan Kenton, Artie Shaw, and Rosemary Clooney. She only started listening to blues music later when 78s had been replaced by 33s and 45s. Southwestern Ontario was not a place to go searching for old Paramount blues records. Oh, sure, Richard Newell (King Biscuit Boy) had some (probably brought in from Buffalo), but in our neck of the woods it was mainly jazz. The first 78 that I bought myself was a Duke Ellington record, “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.” It wasn’t that I was so much a fan of the Duke’s but I had read a very interesting story about his receiving a royalty cheque for this record, and when I saw it at a flea market I just got carried away.

When Dreams Come True: Joseph O'Connor's The Thrill of It All

Joseph O’Connor is Sinead O’Connor’s brother. It’s true. I just discovered this yesterday when I was nearly finished reading his new book, The Thrill of It All. It’s about an ‘80s rock band called Ships in the Night and it has nothing to do with Sinead O’Connor, except that her name shows up in a later chapter as one of the contemporary rock stars the reunited Ships are hanging with. Why do I mention this at all? Not sure, really. Interest? I’ve read three of Joseph O’Connor’s books now. I picked up Star of the Sea on a whim in a Dublin bookshop because I just loved the cover, and it was written by an Irishman, and there I was in Ireland, so… I thought it somehow appropriate. It was a stunning and totally engaging read. Remarkable. I couldn’t wait to get to a Canadian bookshop and pick up another of his books. Trouble was… no one had any. A couple of years later Redemption Road appeared, to great reviews. I couldn’t really get into it. A disappointment. I’ll try it again now, after finishing The Thrill of It All.

Named after a Roxy Music song from their 1974 album Country Life, The Thrill of It All tells the story of this band of misfits. (Why is it named after that Roxy Music song? You’ll have to figure that out for yourself.) Robbie Goulding is an Irish-born teenager who picks up a guitar, and forms a band with Vietnamese orphan Francis Xavier Mulvey (more about him later). They enlist the beautiful cellist Sarah-Therese Sherlock and her brother Sean, a tradesman who plays the drums. Together they are the Ships. This is their story. The book is structured like one of those rock star biographies that are appearing everywhere these days. Before Christmas, we’ll see Mick Fleetwood, Jerry Lee Lewis, another volume of Neil Young’s ramblings, and more. So why would anyone who cared about the rock’n’roll life read a fictional book over the real thing? Well, because O’Connor is a good writer, and I’m not so sure about Mick Fleetwood. Keith Richards turned out to be a great story-teller, as did Ray Davies and Pete Townshend. If you were in the right mindset Neil Young’s Waging Heavy Peace was fascinating, and Bob Dylan? Well, I can’t wait for Volume Two of his Chronicles, but sometimes these books are a complete waste of time. The Thrill of It All is somewhere in the middle of this milieu. Well written, the tales are completely believable. The inner workings of a band are, hmmm, shall we say labyrinthine A band is put together in much the way O’Connor describes it. Two like-minded guitar strummers jam together in one or the other’s living room until their parents kick them into the garage, or the basement, or better yet the other fellow’s house! They recruit a bass player and a drummer and then they start playing little gigs at the school, or the local pub. I’ve done it and so have hundreds of thousands of other teachers, accountants, and other used-to-wanna be rock stars.