A Man & His Cat, book 6, by Umi Sakurai. Square Enix Co Ltd.

The sixth volume of A Man & His Cat finds Mr. Kanda cat sitting Fukumaru’s littermate while her owner, Hibino, is on a concert tour. Hibino is, of course, Kanda’s old competitor, but their cats have brought them together. There are many vignettes of Fukumaru and Marin, playing and eating together, with Fukumara dealing with some jealousy when Marin gets too close to Kanda. There is also sibling rivalry on the human front, between two young musicians. Meanwhile, on the human front, a young instructor at the music school where Kanda also teaches, has his rock band get a gig- and all his bandmates don’t show up. Hardly a moment passes before the older musicians, including Kanda, get up from the audience and join him on stage, managing (to great acclaim) to play rock even though it’s not their normal genre. This is a breakthrough for Kanda’s PTSD induced stage fright. There is a lot more human stories in this volume than in the previous ones, but it’s still interesting.

 

A Man & His Cat, book 5, by Umi Sakurai. Square Enix Co Ltd.

In this volume, Fukumaru and Mr. Kanda face the situation that every pet owner fears: Fukumaru gets out the door as Mr. Kanda enters, and doesn’t come back. The book breaks into multiple threads at this point. We follow Mr. Kanda and his friends as they search for days for Fukumaru, while another thread is Fukumaru himself, wandering the city, lost and fearful. There are also a couple of other side threads; Moja, who lived in the cage next to Fukumaru at the pet store is on the streets, too, and Moriyama deals with problems with his band. Interspersed with the heavy stories are one page vignettes of life with cats, including one where Fukumaru starts heaving and Kanda tries (fruitlessly) to get a newspaper in front of the cat before he vomits. We’ve all been there! Five stars, despite a few glitches with the art.

 

This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You, by Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas. W.W. Norton & Co, 2022

I found this book very interesting- the main author was a recording engineer for years (working with such people and Prince and Bare Naked Ladies) and has many stories about how creating an album works. After being an engineer, she went back to college and became a neuroscientist, specializing in how music and sound works in people’s brains (Ogas, her co-author, is also a neuroscientist that works in sound). So she understands music and sound from multiple angles. She explains what seven different aspects of music are- lyrics, melody, rhythm, timbre, novelty, realism, and authenticity- and how they work. She talks about doing ‘record pulls’, where multiple people bring out their favorite music and share it, and how, if you like a certain musician, you’ll probably like musician “X”, also. It’s a really educational read.

But- there is always a but- at no point does it tell you what the music says about you. Well, I did learn that my complete lack of rhythm is genetic and there is nothing I can do about it, sadly. I was kind of expecting something that told you how empathetic you were or if you were forward thinking. So, I enjoyed the book- lots of anecdotes about working in the music industry and lots of neurology information- but the title is a little deceptive. Four and a half stars.

Beautiful Music, by Michael Zadoorian. Akashic Books, 2018

In 1969, Danny Yzemski spends most of his free time in the former coal storage bin in the basement, building model cars. He is already into music, as is his father, although their tastes run very differently. Danny likes rock, while his father likes “beautiful music”- modern songs covered by an orchestra. To better hear his Muzak, he buys a stereo unit for the basement den. Through the years, he teaches Danny to drive in his huge car, and they haunt the record stores together. Then his father suddenly dies, and life changes for him. His mother is alcoholic and mentally ill, and her sudden widowhood seems to precipitate a psychotic break. She drinks, smokes, and watches TV. That’s it. Everything else is Danny’s problem. He gets a job, drives without a license, learns about hard rock and deep cuts, and actually gets a friend.

It’s a coming of age tale, from ages 10 to 16, told in first person, sometimes in letters to his dead father. Music is what gets him through a really tough adolescence. It brings him out of his loner shell, and gives him something to sooth his emotions. It says things he thinks, but better. Surprisingly, there is no girlfriend; most coming of age books have a girl/boy who really, really understands the subject like no one else. Danny stands on his own, with some help from his friend. It’s very well written; it brought back a lot of memories of my teen years and the music from it and how it felt to have a song say exactly how you feel. Five stars, for making a Dickensian adolescence seem perfectly believable. 

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This is Memorial Device, by David Keenan. Faber & Fabruer, 2017

In a sort of literary “This is Spinal Tap”, this is a (mostly) gentle parody of a small town music scene of the 80s. Memorial Device is a post-punk band in small town Scotland, a scene where everyone is working class and no one gets famous except in the local area. Told in typical music bio form, the story unfolds though 26 interviews with various band members, friends, family, and hangers on. I’ve read a fair number of books about musicians and music scenes, and this oddly structured novel is spot on in tone and form. I had a hard time following who was who for a while, but Appendix C lists every character and tells who they were. Yes, the novel has four appendices, one of which is a thorough index (the other two are a discography and a list of the bands in post punk Airdrie). The book has a subtitle that’s damn near a chapter in itself: “An Hallucinated Oral History of the Post-Punk Scene in Airdrie, Coatbridge, and Envirions, 1978-1986” - that pretty much tells you what the book is about.

There is pretty much no plot, but the characters drag you in- even when you know they will come to a sad end. They are pretty typical of rock memoirs; hard drinking party animals who have myriad sexual adventures and are trying to become punk rock stars in the vein of Iggy Pop. But the band members are committed; they aren’t just in it for the chicks, so to speak. It’s not just parody- and it’s not laugh out loud funny, more OMG I recognize that character funny- it’s also coming of age for the teen fans. It’s not the easiest book to read; the format is choppy and a character’s story may unfold through a number of chapters by people, at various places in the book. It very much captures the feel of fanzines from the era. I very much enjoyed it! Four stars.        

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Neither of these things influenced my review. 

Everybody Had an Ocean: Music and Mayhem in 1960s Los Angeles, by William McKeen. Chicago Review Press, 2017

While this book covers the Los Angeles music scene of the 60s, the backbone of the book is the story of the Beach Boys. Beginning with their early teen days of using music to keep their brutal, abusive, father from beating them, to the days when they worked with Jan and Dean, and then the LA studio musicians that were known as the Wrecking Crew (a crew that included Glen Campbell and Leon Russell), the book takes side roads through music other than surf pop. The Greenwich Village folk scene that spawned Judy Collins, Bob Dylan, and Cass Elliot. The “race music” that black musicians were putting out, mainly in the south. The various permutations Crosby, Still, Nash and Young, including bands before, during, and after. Frank Sinatra, which rather baffled me, although he was producing music that got played on the rock stations (and a chapter on how his son was kidnapped). Phil Spector and his Wall of Sound. The sex and drugs. How Charles Manson drifted around in the music world, living in Dennis Wilson’s house with his who knows how many girls, and getting a recommendation from Neil Young (the producer passed). Through the various chapters, the story returns again and again to the Beach Boys. The final chapter updates us on what happened to all those people, ending, as it began, with Brian Wilson.

I picked this book up as being of just passing interest; I was never into the surf and car music of the early 60s. But I saw that it was about more than that, so I figured I’d give it a try. I ended up not being able to put it down. It seems like the entire rock music industry was interconnected. It’s well written, entertaining (albeit depressing a lot of the time, but that’s what happened), and apparently well researched. This isn’t a memoir from someone who was there; McKeen is a professor of journalism, so I assume he takes a neutral approach to the material. Five stars. 

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This in no way influenced my review.