Mini-Reviews: Back In My Day

I just wrapped up two reads that were the literary equivalent of injecting nostalgia directly into my veins and while I had a good time with both of them, I'm not moved enough for full scale reviews which means, yes - it's time for another patented round of Auntie Wendy mini-reviews!

Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock's Wildest Festival by Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour is an oral history, featuring interviews from multiple people who were there (musicians, promoters, agents, you name it...), for the music festival that helped kick alternative music and "grunge" into the mainstream. The book covers 1991-1997, when Perry Farrell was heavily involved, with the rebirth of the festival (2003) getting touched on in what serves as an epilogue chunk of chapters.

I never attended the traveling music festival (which is what made it very unique when it launched in 1991) despite being the key demographic for the middle years.  This was a real nostalgic trip for me for my formative late teens / early twenties and a stark reminder of how gross the 1990s could be. This was the era that gave us the notion of the "romantic" heroin addict musician after all, with a fair amount of misogyny tossed in for added flavor.  And don't get me started on the freak show thing - I got feelings y'all. 

Despite all that, I enjoyed this, especially all the behind the scenes stuff.  That first year felt very much like "hey gang, let's put on a show!" and the fact that this band of misfits managed to not only pull it off, but make it a success is a perfect example of stranger than fiction. At turns funny and tragic, a window to a different time - when you could attend a day-long festival for around $30 and see up to nine bands just on the main stage (a second stage was introduced in year 2).  I listened to this on audio and it took a moment to get my sea legs given the oral history format, but really enjoyable from start to finish.

Grade = B

Smoke on the Water by Loren D. Estleman is the 32nd adventure for Detroit private investigator Amos Walker, and look you just can't think too long or hard about these books. The character has aged (a bit) but has largely stayed frozen in time. I mean, the first book in the series debuted in 1980 and even if you put Amos on the young side back then, this guy should now be in his 70s - assuming he'd even be alive (I'm talking a lot of concussions folks, in real life this guy would not still be walking around). 

I read Estleman because he's one of the last guys writing old school gumshoe noir, plus his atmosphere and sense of place is always pitch perfect. This go-around he ups things a notch with a post-pandemic Detroit and smoke blowing across the river from the Canadian wildfires. Honestly, it's great stuff.

Amos is hired by a law firm who need him to track down a case file that's gone missing. It's an important enough file that the lawyer who was in charge of its safe-keeping turns up dead thanks to a hit-and-run, and the bodies continue to drop once Amos, fool that he is, agrees to take the case. 

For Book 32, this stands alone reasonably well, but character development is minimal and certainly the relationships between some of the characters isn't going to be entirely fleshed out for newcomers. At this point I feel like these books are for the fans - which honestly you can say about 99% of all long-running series.

Estleman doesn't write mysteries in the true sense of the word, these are very much crime stories and the plots can sometimes stray into vague or convoluted (which it does here), but it's not why I'm reading these books. Besides being the last of a dying breed, Estleman is what I call "a professional writer." If the book contracts dried up he'd probably write ad copy for breakfast cereal. He's a pro, and I like reading books by pros. They can spin a yarn and turn a phrase. Estleman's added bonus is that he cracks wise and I love the way he writes about Detroit. If there's a next book in this series, I'll be reading it.

Final Grade = B-