Book Review: 33 1/3 Use Your Illusion I & II




Dear Eric Weisbard,

If you hate a band, why write about them? This wasn't some forced album review that you *had* to do. Rather than discuss, as the series suggests, the importance of a record, or how it was made, etc., you took apart the UYI albums.

I didn't expect it to be the dribbly fan prose my personal reflections on the book would have been, but I also didn't expect you to be so self-righteous. Why do I know more about your married life (you have a kid, you're married to a girl you used to listen to one track of GNR with repeatedly) than the album or what it meant? Apparently this album (for the author) heralded the end of rock. I get it, you're bitter. Clearly you wanted to write the review of Pearl Jam's "Ten" and didn't get the gig. Suck it up.

-LG

--
So we have to listen to him rag on the band's persona (rather than their songwriting). He blathers on, and I found myself checking how many pages were left (the book only rings in at a hefty 125, but it feels like War and Peace the way he writes).

He even gets as arrogant as to talk about if *he* had ordered the tracks, what order he would have done, and what he would have kept. You know what *I* would have done, Eric Weisbard? I would have hired an editor for you. :)

But that's not the worst of it. At one point early on he refers to an art critique and decides to bite the style and review the albums WITHOUT LISTENING TO THEM. then, in the final chapter, we're supposed to be grateful that he did so and pour over his pontifications. EXAMPLE GIVEN - this is one gem I dog-eared in my book to share with you all:

"Also, if you hit the same note at the end as you had in the beginning, just more torn and frayed, then nothing has moved forward. Gothic imperatives that have long counterposed Puritan skepticism to the smiley faced motto of American revivalism: "all may be saved"".

If any of you understand what the hell he's on about (this was in reference to the song "Don't Cry", which the author has particular disdain for, lemme know. Great use of your SAT words, Eric my boy.

This book McSucked. Goodreads, can you add zero stars to the options? Thanks.

In closing, I'd like to quote the great William Bailey and tell Eric Weisbard to GET IN THE RING M***********!

I spent the next 2 hours watching a G'nR dvd to wash the taste of this book out of my mouth. Ptooey.

1 comments:

feeling entropy said...

it saddens me that someone published this.

wait, did someone?