Pick Up that Guitar and, uh, TAWK TA ME

Earlier this month, Rebecca and I went away to cabin in southern Quebec for our birthdays so that we could relax for a weekend. I had started reading Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome during the week before the trip, but the novel hadn't really grabbed by that point and I wanted something more light fun that I breeze through while sitting in the woods. For whatever reason,* Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klosterman jumped off my bookshelf at me as the perfect choice and I decided to bring it with me, even though I've read it twice before.

*I've been reading the Number Ones column on Stereogum a lot recently, so maybe their discussions of "Love Bites" by Def Leppard, "Bad Medicine" by Bon Jovi, and "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" by Poison were the impetus?

Though it's kind of embarrassing to admit now, I have to admit that the writing of Chuck Klosterman had a huge effect on me as a young man. I hadn't ever read pop culture criticism, so the idea of someone writing a whole book that very seriously examined something as dumb as hair metal (which, due to hours of watching muchmoremusic, I deeply loved) was paradigm-shifting to me. I devoured the book and I think that it immediately affected how I looked at music and pop culture.

After Fargo Rock City, I picked up a bunch of others and enjoyed them to varying degrees,* but also started to realize that his books appealed to me a lot when I was 19 and a lot less when I was 24. He seemed like a one-trick pony and I liked that pony a lot more when it was running on a hair metal race track than when it was just free to run anywhere. However, despite the (in my opinion) dwindling returns on his writing, I still thought that Fargo Rock City was not just his best, but also a good book, because it was so focused and the central idea was something that nobody else had thought of. Hair metal was undeniably popular, but undeniably dumb and critically bad, so why look at the space in between?

I was interested to see what my opinion of the book would be on this read through, as it had been more than 10 years since I had looked at it. I guess what I found was exactly what I expected. There were parts that were absolutely razor sharp and were up with the best pop culture writing I had ever read. There were parts that were absolutely hilarious. This was nice because it meant that I hadn't been a total idiot while I was younger. There were also parts that dragged and didn't really have anything to say. There were parts that, while not necessarily bad or hateful, aged terribly and wouldn't be included today. There was some pretty dumb language about women, even for a book about hair metal. About equal amounts of bad and good.

Having said all this, I think I also need to acknowledge that Klosterman, and this book in particular, are probably the main influence on how I write. Certainly, a lot of IMU is basically crafted in the image of Fargo Rock City. It's something I'm a little embarrassed about, as I would love to have cooler influences that make my writing sound cooler, but this is who I am now and what am I going to do? Remake my narrative voice at age 32?

While reading the book, I thought about trying to write a post that would forward my interest in hair metal as a sort of tribute. I came up with trying to compare Blue Jays players to hair metal guitarists, but only ended up getting as far as Rafael Dolis being C.C. Deville and gave up.

Let us count the similarities:

1. Both pretty much suck.
2. Both have one pretty below average skill (throwing a fastball in Dolis' case, playing hair metal guitar in Deville's) and get by by dressing it up with theatrics and making it seem better than it is (waiting up to a minute in between pitches for Dolis, just throwing a bunch of neon 80s guitar around for Deville).
3. Both play a supporting role in their group.
4. Both have last names that start with D.
5. Both beat out better people suited for their job (any Major League pitcher for Dolis, Slash for Deville).
6. Both somehow charmed me into caring about them more than their peers.

Could you imagine how bad a full column of that would have been?