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Post by Tarzan on Jul 4, 2007 15:13:00 GMT -5
Jodi, forgve me for being a month behind, but I really enjoyed your Petal Pusher review. Excellent!
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Post by Tarzan on Jul 6, 2007 21:05:51 GMT -5
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Post by Tarzan on Jul 6, 2007 21:57:04 GMT -5
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Post by nowwesayitoutloud on Jul 7, 2007 6:15:50 GMT -5
if it's gonna be trouble, here's the text ... Reverb Petal Pusher A Rock and Roll Cinderella Story Laurie Lindeen Atria: 320 pp., $24 By Erika Schickel, Erika Schickel is the author of "You're Not the Boss of Me: Adventures of a Modern Mom." - July 1, 2007 JUST because you've lived an interesting life doesn't mean you're home free in the memoir department. With "Petal Pusher: A Rock and Roll Cinderella Story," Laurie Lindeen has the raw material for a first-rate saga: disaffected, Broadway-musical-obsessed Wisconsin girl dreams of rocking the house, drops out of college and rides the Minneapolis proto-grunge wave of the early 1990s to semi-stardom with her all-girl band Zuzu's Petals. Add the specter of multiple sclerosis as well as the experience of dating alterna-hottie and certified rock genius Paul Westerberg (she ultimately married him) and how can you go wrong? It's one thing, though, to sit on a barstool, regaling friends with tales of your misspent youth, and quite another to ask readers to relive it. You have to be willing to do the necessary work of good writing: organizing your narrative, showing-not-telling, avoiding cliché and making sure your story has a point. Lindeen seems not to have learned these basics while getting her MFA at the University of Minnesota. "Petal Pusher" is a meandering, often repetitive catalog of road trips, gigs and thrift store coups. Lindeen meticulously recounts her 10-year journey through the rock 'n' roll wasteland, detailing every vintage stage outfit and scuzzy club, but the story plods under her unpracticed, three-chord prose. "Playing several nights a week, living by the seat of our pants," she writes, "applying nail polish to the tips of our sore fingers for protection, being constantly together, laughing, smoking, drinking, eating, rarely showering. Reader, we rock." Even cranking your Marshall to 11 can't cover up this kind of sloppy playing. Lindeen's prose is most irksome when it comes to MS, which first struck when she was in her 20s. On the way out to a club with friends, she suddenly became paralyzed on the left side of her body. Yet in describing this terrifying moment, Lindeen whiffs completely: "It was like an invisible god stole my good side. Or an enemy with a voodoo doll just cut me in half. I don't have the apt words to describe it." Don't have the apt words to describe it? Then you have no business writing a book. It's surprising that a musician-turned-writer doesn't grasp the importance of voice. But voice takes effort and engagement, and Lindeen is evasive and detached. In describing a painful abortion, she goes so far as to switch into third person, blatantly putting us at arm's length. As for being a girl trying to make it in a boy-band world, she gives no consideration to Third Wave feminism, even as she rides its updraft. She dismisses the Riot Grrls as "a bunch of girl power complainers," adding intellectual and political lassitude to her failings here. Lindeen's story culminates with the predictable wilting of Zuzu's Petals. She admits to phoning in the band's second and final album. A review calls her songwriting "cloudy, loaded with lazy references, and a little too much emotional distance." The same, unfortunately, must be said of this book. |
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Post by kgp on Jul 7, 2007 9:03:22 GMT -5
I have to steal that.
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Post by Kathy on Jul 7, 2007 12:34:10 GMT -5
That's my new favorite word! |
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Post by Kathy on Jul 8, 2007 13:23:31 GMT -5
Washington Post review:
The Writer Within
How a rocker survived the punk earthquake.
Reviewed by Chrissie Dickinson
Having crisscrossed the Midwest and East Coast in a rickety van in the indie-rock 1980s and early '90s with my own all-female punk outfit, I'm surprised I never crossed paths with Laurie Lindeen and her all-female trio, Zuzu's Petals. No matter. Reading Lindeen's coming-of-age band memoir of that era, Petal Pusher, I was hit by the shock of recognition on nearly every page.
It's all here, in real time, correct as it happened: the dive bars, the booze, the barfing, the thrift-shopping across the country, the synchronous menstruation, the bad gigs with three people in attendance, the amp malfunctions, the sleazy promoters, the rehearsal spaces that ranged from dank basements to abandoned boxcars. There's even this vivid archetype that will resonate with any female musician of that time who attempted to rock in a man's world: the condescending, mullet-haired, male music store clerk in a pukka-shell choker explaining, "You need a pick, it's used to strum your guitar."
Oh, those really were the days. Lindeen gets them right, in all their pre-MySpace, pre-cellphone, ragged, clumsy glory. And most of all, Lindeen's whip-smart mind and massive heart make them shine. You don't have to have lived this story to be moved by her unsparingly honest -- and wickedly funny -- recollection of a young artist in search of herself.
Lindeen's tale kicks off in 1984, when she's a 24-year-old college drop-out in Madison, Wis. Dreaming of starting an all-girl band, she moves to Minneapolis, home of indie-rock anti-heroes the Replacements and Soul Asylum.
With her pals Co and Phyll, she forms Zuzu's Petals. The dream is strong, the reality tough. Lindeen slings hash in diners for a living. The band weathers lineup changes and evolves from outright amateurishness to genuine ability. The Petals hit the road, guided by punk's great hallmark: the do-it-yourself, or DIY, aesthetic.
But as any punk-rocker who has slopped her way through a music career can tell you, DIY can also serve as a rather heroic euphemism for SOTPI (seat-of-the-pantsing-it). Lindeen is brutally up front about her whacked-out career trajectory. Zuzu's Petals recorded two albums but never made it big. Perhaps, Lindeen surmises, it wasn't the smartest idea to cancel a showcase at the tastemaking music industry festival South by Southwest in favor of an opening gig on the "comeback" tour of her college idol, washed-up new-waver Adam Ant.
Lindeen doesn't flinch when it comes to revealing the somber aspects of her life. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis ("a harsh toke at twenty-four"), she pursues her rock dream beneath this ever-present shadow. Her band memoir is also interspersed with flashbacks to her childhood, adolescence and college years, with an emphasis on the fallout from her parents' divorce.
But the most riveting aspects of the book are her band days, which lasted until the '90s. She takes up with Paul Westerberg, her future husband and former front man for the critically acclaimed Replacements. Early in their courtship, Lindeen corresponds with him from the road. Responding to the depth of her letters, Westerberg encourages her: "You're a writer, you should write."
Despite his support, Lindeen quickly discovers it's not easy being an aspiring female musician hooked up with a legend. As she walks off stage after a triumphant gig, she's accosted by a Westerberg fanatic who demands to know, "What's it like going out with God?"
Pretty normal, as it turns out. Lindeen, then at the height of her on-the-road, party-till-you-drop phase, finds the former alt-rock wildman to be a newly sober stay-at-home. A serious songwriter with a rigorous work ethic, Westerberg eats fruit in the morning, bikes around the lake and dons pajamas, robe and slippers at night. The increasingly road-weary Lindeen finds herself deeply attracted to Westerberg's healthy domesticity and begins to question the draining reality of the rock-and-roll dream she has pursued with such fervor.
In this memoir of indie-rock youthquake, Lindeen tries to make you laugh out loud. To paraphrase the title of a Wilco song, she is also trying to break your heart. She succeeds on both counts. As it turns out, God -- or was it Westerberg? -- was right all those punk days ago: Lindeen is a writer. ·
Chrissie Dickinson is a writer, musician and songwriter based in Chicago.
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Post by nowwesayitoutloud on Jul 8, 2007 17:16:39 GMT -5
Westerberg encourages her: "You're a writer, you should write." comma splice enabler To paraphrase the title of a Wilco song, she is also trying to break your heart. Chrissie Dickinson is a writer, musician and songwriter based in Chicago. A gratuitous Wilco reference is required of any writer, musician and songwriter based in Chicago. |
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Post by brianlux on Jul 10, 2007 23:20:40 GMT -5
PETAL PUSHER- a slice of life in rock and roll life. A little heaven, a little hell, a little everything in between.
I read Lindeen's book this weekend and it worked for me. If the definition of a good book is one that draws the you in and leads you to think about some things, then- for me- this book succeeds in both ways. Maybe not for others, but that's literature. Win some, lose some.
Lindeen's writing is full of hooks and idosycracies and it seems to me a little, dare I say, "trendy" or "fashionable", but shouldn't it be? This is rock 'n roll she's talking about- that and the joys and travails of life on the road with friends- doing something creative. It fit just fine for me. Sometimes it's winsome, some times it's loose... and sometimes it's just pain tough.
And most of all, it's an honest book. A favorite writer of mine (I won't say who- it would seem too incongruous here) said "a good book should be an honest one". Kurt Vonnegut Jr. said "a good writer is someone who has something on his or her mind." PETAL PUSHER is honest and Lindeen certainly has somethings on her mind worth sharing and she shares them well. This is a fine book.
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Post by nowwesayitoutloud on Jul 11, 2007 0:02:29 GMT -5
Sometimes it's winsome, some times it's loose... and sometimes it's just pain tough. I'm surprised PW hasn't done something with "win some/winsome/lose some" in his lyrics yet. |
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Post by brianlux on Jul 11, 2007 22:55:51 GMT -5
Sometimes it's winsome, some times it's loose... and sometimes it's just pain tough. I'm surprised PW hasn't done something with "win some/winsome/lose some" in his lyrics yet. Thanks for catching the word play, nowwesayitoutloud, only I hear in my head Ms Lindeen yelling, "Hey, whose book are we reviewing here anyway!" And she does have a way with words herself. Maybe someday a Lindeen song called "Winsome, Lose Some"? |
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Post by Kathy on Jul 22, 2007 11:09:43 GMT -5
This isn't a review of "Petal Pusher" but I figured this was the best thread for it. For those who read the book, you remember it started out with Laurie hitchhiking on Martha's Vineyard and getting picked up by Carly Simon, and being a little disconcerted that Carly played her own music in the car. So I was reading the travel section of the paper today and they had a feature where Carly Simon took the author on a tour of her favorite places on the island and she drove them in her car: "We're soon off and Simon is in the car singing along to Bill Withers 's classic ballad, "Ain't No Sunshine." She had earlier done some singing to one of her own songs, which she expects to put on a Brazilian-flavored album she's planning to release next." So I guess it's par for the course when Carly Simon is at the wheel. Also, found a YouTube clip of her reading at the Turf Club: |
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Post by kgp on Aug 9, 2007 11:37:39 GMT -5
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Post by kgp on Aug 14, 2007 11:34:47 GMT -5
I think this is a slightly less edited version of that interview. She talks briefly about Paul's quitting drinking for the second time. |
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