Suggestaholic! » Books

Do Fifth Albums Usually Suck?

Jeff Kay — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:30:47 +0000

I just finished reading an excellent autobiography by Dean Wareham, ex-leader of Galaxie 500 and Luna. The book is almost as good as the one written by Mark Everett of the Eels. Almost, but not quite.

In any case, Wareham mentions something near the end I’d like to explore a little deeper. Here’s what he wrote:

We made an album called The Days of Our Nights. Our fifth studio album, it is possibly the worst of the seven that Luna made. If you study rock-and-roll bands, I think that the fifth album generally tends to suck. Maybe they all hate one another by this point. Maybe they need new ideas. Maybe they’re trying new ideas. Whatever the reason, the fifth album is difficult.

Is that true? I’d never considered such a thing. Pretty interesting.

So, without cheating and putting advance thought into it, I’m going to just pull a few legendary bands out of my crapshaft, and test the theory. Want to play along?

Wareham goes on to say the Beatles are an exception. In fact, he claims, they sucked until their fifth album. So, I’ll leave them out of our little experiment…

Let’s get started, shall we?

The Clash, Combat Rock Definitely not my favorite, but not as bad as their previous album, Sandinista! Does it suck? No, it does not. But it’s teetering.

REM, Document A great album. Their next two were kinda weak, but this is about fifth albums, isn’t it?

The Replacements, Pleased to Meet Me Ha! One of the best albums ever released, on Earth anyway. My favorite record by one of my favorite bands.

Van Halen, Diver Down Half the songs are covers, and the whole thing clocks in at just 30 minutes. Certainly not their finest (half) hour, but still a lot of fun. I’d have a hard time using the word “sucks.”

The Police, Synchronicity Their final release, I don’t think the Police had any bad albums. And this one is pretty darn solid.

Led Zeppelin, Houses of the Holy This is the album I reach for, on the rare occasion I’m craving some Zeppelin. So, I guess that makes it my favorite, huh?

I know this isn’t much of a sample size. But we can continue our important study in the comments, if you’d like. Test your favorite band against Dean Wareham’s “Fifth Albums Suck” theory.

And to be fair, he starts the paragraph by saying sucks, and ends it with the more nuanced difficult. And if you look at my list of bands above, most were indeed in the middle of some sort of upheaval at the time their fifth albums were released.

The Clash and Police broke up immediately afterward, the Replacements had just fired their iconic lead guitarist, REM was about to leave their longtime label, and that Van Halen album displays evidence of creative arrest.

So, maybe Wareham is on to something, after all? What do you think? Tell us about it in the comments.

Dean Koontz Snobbery

Jeff Kay — Tue, 20 May 2008 08:01:44 +0000

I took a fiction writing class when I lived in California, and the teacher was a big fan of Dean Koontz. At the time I didn’t know much about Koontz, but I had opinions about him. Snobby, snobby opinions.
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I mean, he was always on the best seller lists, his books were mass market paperbacks, and every yahoo at the beach was reading him. He had to suck, right? Well, of course he did.
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But our instructor told us Koontz should be an inspiration to us all. He told us the man wasn’t blessed with great natural abilities, but learned the craft through determination and hard work, and is now one of the best in the business.
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He’s the Pete Rose of novelists!
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At first his speech didn’t cause me to be more interested in the writer, it worked the other way around. I thought the instructor must be cursed with really bad taste, and didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. I didn’t think better of Koontz, I thought worse of the teacher.
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But as the weeks passed, I saw that our instructor was no hack; he knew his stuff. He had strong opinions about fiction writing, and they seemed sound to me. I wrote detailed notes during each class, trying to bottle his knowledge for later use.
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And I went out and bought a Dean Koontz book. I believe the first one was Lightning, and I liked it very much. It wasn’t a horror story, as I’d expected, but more of a suspense novel. It was, as they say, a page-turner, and the characters and dialogue seemed especially real.
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So I bought another one, and enjoyed it as well. I realized Koontz wasn’t trying to create High Art; I’m almost certain he wasn’t competing with Cormac McCarthy or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I believe he was simply trying to tell exciting stories, and succeeding, big-time.
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And what’s wrong with that?
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Since taking that class I’ve probably scarfed down a baker’s dozen Dean Koontz novels. And they’ve all been expertly crafted, filled with characters that live and breathe, and a blast to read.
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Hey, my snobbery is usually right on target, but occasionally the calibration is slightly off. You can file a lawsuit if you’d like.
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Buy Midnight.
Buy Odd Thomas.
Buy Sole Survivor.

Books I’ve Read More Than Once

Jeff Kay — Tue, 06 May 2008 08:29:02 +0000

If I were to quit my job today, say goodbye to my friends and family, and spend the rest of my life reading in a well-lit room, I couldn’t get through every unread book I currently own.
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I might, barring catastrophic paper cut trauma, make it two-thirds of the way into the stacks, before the dementia finally kicks in and I start arguing with my fourth grade teacher again.
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So I don’t read too many books twice; I’ve got my hands full trying to finish them all the first time ’round.
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Over lunch today I gave it some thought, and believe the titles listed below are the only ones I’ve read more than once. There are plenty I plan to revisit in the murky future (The Risk Pool and Nobody’s Fool are at the top of the list), but so far, I think this is everything. In case you were wondering.
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A Confederacy of Dunces The author, John Kennedy Toole, reportedly became so depressed over the initial (lack of) response to this novel, he killed himself.
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Following the suicide, Toole’s mother began sending the manuscript around to publishers again, and it was eventually released, hailed a masterpiece, and awarded the freakin’ Pulitzer Prize.
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But that’s not why I like it (although it’s a pretty kick-ass back story), I just think it’s hilarious.
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The main character, Ignatius J. Reilly, is one of the most memorable literary creations of them all. He’s a rotund, lazy-as-hell intellectual with a chip on his shoulder, and his monologues and takes on modern society are comedy genius.
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If you haven’t read it, you need to. And if you have, you know what I’m talking about. One of my all-time favorites.
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The Catcher In The Rye Angst-ridden high schoolers and homicidal maniacs love it, and so do I. It is, of course, a great book, and I enjoy it on that level.
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But I’m also drawn to the atmosphere J.D. Salinger creates. The scenes are so vivid it’s almost like time-travel; you’re with narrator Holden Caulfield throughout the novel, experiencing what he experiences, in a fully-realized 1950 (or thereabouts).
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The book packs such a wallop, and is so deceptively simple, it makes everyone who reads it believe they can write a great book too. It’s been said that The Catcher In The Rye is directly responsible for burdening the world with a million bad novels, and for some reason that appeals to me.
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And like Holden, I, too, cannot stand the phonies.
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Time and Again Speaking of time-travel… I’ve already gone on at length about this one. In the past. Maybe someday I’ll go back there, and watch me type it? Wouldn’t that be a wonder?
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Norwood When I think of hilarious books, A Confederacy of Dunces jumps immediately to mind, but Norwood ain’t jumpin’ too far behind.
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Norwood Pratt is another unforgettable comic creation. He’s a Southern hick ex-Marine, traveling a great distance to collect a decidedly small cash debt. Along the way, of course, he has many adventures.
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This is an absurd road novel, written by the mysterious and reclusive Charles Portis. The humor is so dry, you’d better keep some Gatorade handy. And a change of underwear wouldn’t hurt, for when your bowels fail during laughter.
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The follow-up novel, The Dog of the South, has almost exactly the same premise and tone, but is so funny it doesn’t matter.
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Both books are must-reads. Good God are they good.
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To Kill A Mockingbird I was forced to read this in high school, and went into it with a bad attitude. I just knew it would be another exercise in Torture by Literature.
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In my own defense, however, I’d been made to read The Scarlet Letter the previous year, a book I found to be so crushingly dull, I wanted to walk downtown, pick a business at random, and slam my face through their plate glass window. I never finished reading it; I’d just take the zero, screw it.
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But this one was different. It was the first mandated novel I actually enjoyed. In fact, it was probably the first real novel I ever read. At that point in my life I was hung-up on the Beatles and baseball, and stuff like that.
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I was shocked (shocked, I tell you) to realize I was enjoying the book so much. Instead of a black black dread, I actually looked forward to sitting down with it again. I could see it all playing out in my brain, like a really good movie. I had no idea reading could be so… enjoyable.
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Several years later I revisited To Kill A Mockingbird, to see if my fondness for the book was well-placed. And it was.
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The Hoke Moseley Series by Charles Willeford Probably following a re-read of The Catcher In The Rye, I decided I was going to write a novel. The premise, now that I think about it, was very similar to Norwood and The Dog of the South. Huh, wonder if I realized it at the time? Probably not. In any case, one of my preparations (delays), before starting to write, was to read these four books again.
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Charles Willeford had been a writer of so-called pulp fiction. For many years he cranked out cheap dimestore novels, to pay the rent. And during the process, he became very, very good at it.
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The Hoke Moseley Series was written years later, after Willeford had gone legit, but is reminiscent of the earlier works. The four novels (Miami Blues, New Hope For The Dead, Sideswipe, and The Way We Die Now) feature the battered and burned-out Hoke Moseley, a Miami homicide detective, reluctantly working another case.
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The reason I decided to re-read the series, was to pay special attention to the incredible spare language Willeford uses. I don’t think there’s a single unnecessary word in any of those books, they are almost completely fat-free.
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The series is fun, twisted entertainment, but it’s the skill in writing that blows my mind. Like Salinger, Willeford made it look easy. Heck, I could do that, you think. Then you sit down and try it, and realize just how good those guys were.
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The Hoke Moseley series was cut-short at just four books, by Willeford’s death. If he’d continued with it, I think Hoke would’ve become as iconic as John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee. As it stands, the four novels are highly recommended. And recommended again.
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And as best as I can remember, those are the only titles I’ve ever read more than once. What about you? Do you revisit books you especially enjoyed? Tell us about it; use the handy comments link below, won’t you?

Time and Again by Jack Finney

Jeff Kay — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 06:39:40 +0000

Since I was young I’ve daydreamed of somehow traveling back in time, and just walking through my hometown for an afternoon in the 1940s; not doing anything earth shattering, necessarily, just having a leisurely look around.

I’m not sure why the ‘40s exactly, but that’s the way the fantasy always goes. Maybe it’s as far back as I can take it, before things become radically different? Any earlier and you start to get the grim clothing, the weird hats, the ludicrous facial hair, the underwear with buttons…

And I can’t have that.

No, I believe the 1940s is as far as I could go in my imaginary time machine, and still feel I have a connection to the place. I think I could blend-in there, with little trouble. I’d just have to remember to say things like “And how!” whenever someone mentioned they were hungry, or whatever.

But decades have passed, and as far as I know they haven’t made even the slightest advancement in time travel technology. Not even that creepy Virgin Records guy in the hot air balloon. Wotta rip-off!

I have a feeling this book is as close as any of us are ever going to get. It’s not the same, of course, but it’s pretty good. Especially when you consider this particular time machine is constructed of nothing but ink and paper…

Time and Again is supposedly science-fiction, but I’m not convinced it technically qualifies. The sci-fi aspect of it really only serves to explain how (and why) the main character, Si Morley, travels back and forth between “modern-day” New York City (the book was originally published in 1970, so its modern-day was almost forty years ago), and the New York City of 1882. Once Si arrives in the past, none of that matters much.

Indeed, the plot isn’t what you’ll remember about the book. And it has little to do with the fact Time and Again has never gone out-of-print, or enjoys an enthusiastic cult following to this day. It’s all about a modern man being dropped into an earlier time, and just having a leisurely look around.

The author, Jack Finney, was obviously fascinated with the New York City of the late nineteenth century, and has his protagonist observe and make note of even the tiniest of details.

Some complain there is, in fact, too much information, that parts of the book are dragged down by it all. Others, including myself, believe just the opposite. Because we recognize in Si Morley the same kind of curiosity we’d exhibit if placed in such a fantastic situation.

I’ve read more than my share of time-travel books, and this one is the most satisfying; it’s simple and pure, and deals with human reactions to amazing discoveries. It’s also atmospheric, and causes the reader to feel they’re along for the adventure. I read it every five years or so, and think of it as comfort food at this point.

The Suggestaholic suggests Time and Again, because it’s as close as any of us are ever going to get.