An online news group for CREEM magazine devotees has a nice, short review of RJR:
"Just got it, and it is every bit the hoot I expected," said poster "Captain Spaulding."
"Finally we have Reek's blatherings in one place where we can wallow in his hilarious and outrageous trough of piss and vinegar views on life in the bloato-hype years of hippies, Reagan and TV culture. Welcome back Reek.
"It's the Rick Johnson Reader: 'Tin Cans, Squeems & Thudpies', published by BookSurge for Mayfly Productions, edited by Bill Knight, and available from Amazon.com, Borders.com and other online sources, plus select retail outlets via wholesaler Baker and Taylor. Get yers today and amaze yer friends with obscure quotes from the pen of America's wiliest rok critique!"
http://groups.msn.com/BestOfBoyHowdy/general.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=437&LastModified=4675614817474712217
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
Kudos from 'Hell Raisin' in her 'overlooked portrait'
The verbalrubble.com blog posted an energetic review of ... Tin Cans, Squeems and Thudpies by Hell Raisin (AKA Rodeo Sappho), who writes her #1 portrait entry in "Camera Obscura: Portraits of the Unfortunately Overlooked" -- "a randomly-published series calling your attention to the fascinating, talented, uncompromising, funny and unforgettable individuals lost within the yawning vortex of mediocrity and almost buried by the turdalanche of time."
In its entirety, she sez:
"What more can a music review do besides report the relative worthiness of an album for our consumer dollar? Well, if you've never read a review written by Rick Johnson, you may be as hard-pressed as a preacher in a cheater for an answer. It's not your fault. We all know most professional music reviewers suck because they're so... professional. It's simply good business to purvey the gooey glitterature of hype, regardless of the qualilty of the album. Toothless, truthless reviews are written in an age-old ploy called the ruthless grab for your wallet. There are a few musicologists still kicking out intelligent and fairly accurate critiques, but still, aside from the "bottom line", what else is there to a music review?
Well, if you're up on your Rick Johnson, there's bloato hype, gerbiltones, and smellbags, for starters. And squeems. And thudpies.
Johnson's main claim to fame (what precious little there is of it) was his 1975-1988 gig writing for Creem Magazine. It was there Rick continued in the gung-ho gonzo tradition of Lester Bangs, warping the paradigm of music review as mere consumer measuring stick. In his hands, a record review became something of a party. The question of a record's purchasability acted as a string of lights hung over the festivities, providing some ambience, but certainly not detracting from the hotwired hijinks that constituted Johnson's approach to the, er, art of the critique. Some examples:
* On Peter Frampton: "His voice whines like an overheated egg. His guitar playing is whiny as well. In fact, when he trades off his vocals with his guitar, it sounds like two extremely tired waitresses discussing a particularly obnoxious customer."
* On Lou Reed: "Lou Reed is the Fonz of rock comedy."
* On The Bee Gees: "Fuck the Bee Gees."
His comedic genius extended beyond mere one liners, and it seemed the more he hated an album, the funnier the review would be. His review of the Split Enz album True Colors is an epic account of his quest for the "certain types of lighting" recommended on the holographic album cover for its optimal visual impact. The album ends up burning in the barbeque and the review ends with "Also included are two instrumentals."
This is a guy whose review of a Cheap Trick album was the word "bam" 65 times. He could have easily also been the guy who wrote the two word review "shit sandwich" for Spinal Tap.
His irreverence and inventiveness (he was a consummate creater of new words defined only by their context) is an inspiration for any writer who aspires to the sort of "freedom and fearlessness" (as Rich Stim of the band MX-80 puts it) that was Rick's calling card. For music lovers, Rick was a constant reminder that rock is supposed to be fun.
Rick Johnson passed away last year, but his work lives on in collected form in the book Rick Johnson Reader: 'Tin Cans, Squeems & Thudpies'.
For the whole post, with graphics and great comments, go here --
http://verbalrubble.com/archives/429
In its entirety, she sez:
"What more can a music review do besides report the relative worthiness of an album for our consumer dollar? Well, if you've never read a review written by Rick Johnson, you may be as hard-pressed as a preacher in a cheater for an answer. It's not your fault. We all know most professional music reviewers suck because they're so... professional. It's simply good business to purvey the gooey glitterature of hype, regardless of the qualilty of the album. Toothless, truthless reviews are written in an age-old ploy called the ruthless grab for your wallet. There are a few musicologists still kicking out intelligent and fairly accurate critiques, but still, aside from the "bottom line", what else is there to a music review?
Well, if you're up on your Rick Johnson, there's bloato hype, gerbiltones, and smellbags, for starters. And squeems. And thudpies.
Johnson's main claim to fame (what precious little there is of it) was his 1975-1988 gig writing for Creem Magazine. It was there Rick continued in the gung-ho gonzo tradition of Lester Bangs, warping the paradigm of music review as mere consumer measuring stick. In his hands, a record review became something of a party. The question of a record's purchasability acted as a string of lights hung over the festivities, providing some ambience, but certainly not detracting from the hotwired hijinks that constituted Johnson's approach to the, er, art of the critique. Some examples:
* On Peter Frampton: "His voice whines like an overheated egg. His guitar playing is whiny as well. In fact, when he trades off his vocals with his guitar, it sounds like two extremely tired waitresses discussing a particularly obnoxious customer."
* On Lou Reed: "Lou Reed is the Fonz of rock comedy."
* On The Bee Gees: "Fuck the Bee Gees."
His comedic genius extended beyond mere one liners, and it seemed the more he hated an album, the funnier the review would be. His review of the Split Enz album True Colors is an epic account of his quest for the "certain types of lighting" recommended on the holographic album cover for its optimal visual impact. The album ends up burning in the barbeque and the review ends with "Also included are two instrumentals."
This is a guy whose review of a Cheap Trick album was the word "bam" 65 times. He could have easily also been the guy who wrote the two word review "shit sandwich" for Spinal Tap.
His irreverence and inventiveness (he was a consummate creater of new words defined only by their context) is an inspiration for any writer who aspires to the sort of "freedom and fearlessness" (as Rich Stim of the band MX-80 puts it) that was Rick's calling card. For music lovers, Rick was a constant reminder that rock is supposed to be fun.
Rick Johnson passed away last year, but his work lives on in collected form in the book Rick Johnson Reader: 'Tin Cans, Squeems & Thudpies'.
For the whole post, with graphics and great comments, go here --
http://verbalrubble.com/archives/429
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
High praise from Australia
The Amazon.com web site not only reports the Rick Johnson Reader moving from #500,000+ to #370,796 (woo-hoo!), but features a review by the Leapster, who has a radio show Thursday afternoons on RRR 102.7 FM in Melbourne, Australia -- the oldest independent broadcaster there.
Here it is in its entirety --
By Leapso
There are a few handfuls of folks who read CREEM magazine back in the late 70s/early 80s who think this guy was one of the best music reviewers/pop culture decoders/plain old 20th Century humourists in the history of the world and portions of Cleveland.
Rick Johnson's gone now, and it seems rugged that he didn't get recognition even fractionally commensurate with his talent and originality during life, but at least there's finally a collection of his work available to remind us how good he was, during the cold Johnson-less years to come.
I should also mention, because Ranger Rick probably would at around this point - lest the tight formal-hire collar of funeral atmosphere choke us into pious reflection - that the funniest thing in the book is probably when his former editor mentions the time Rick was so whacked out, he not only fell down his own stairs, but continued right on and fell down his neighbours' stairs as well.
Rick Johnson had a unique use of language, and I mean completely unique to the point where sometimes it seemed like he'd invented Esperanto in reverse; file cards full of lines from TV and advertising to wield out of context (and yet strangely perfectly IN context) in reviews of albums that never knew what hit them; also used typeface, punctuation and all other print medium tools as weapons; and had the greatest, most genial take on the whole pop/mass culture "flow" - TV, movies, celebs as dingbats, music, packaged supermarket foods, video games - it was all the same to Ranger Rick, and it seemed like it was all fun.
What this book contains is a handful or two of his CREEM articles, and a large amount of stuff he wrote for some sort of free press type publication (I think) called the Prairie Sun. Although any dyed-in-the-wool Johnson fan would love a well-chosen comp of the CREEM work (or just ALL of his stuff that appeared in CREEM to cut down on thinking time) there's a bonus here for people that have been hoping a book of Rick's material would come out eventually.
Basically unless you lived in the area covered by the Prairie Sun, you never saw this material before, and it includes prime Reeek era "stand-up reviewing" stuff from the late 70s/early 80s. There's some earlier stuff too, which tends to be a little more earnest/conventional but has its moments, and it's interesting to see the guy's style develop.
Most of the book is album reviews, and if you're thinking why on earth would someone want to read curling discoloured album reviews from the previous century, then you don't know Reeek. No-one who remembers being unable to restrain themselves from laughing out loud reading vintage CREEM issues on public transport will have any doubts whatsoever.
In addition to telling us important musical knowledge, e.g., how Peter Frampton's voice and guitar sound like "two extremely tired waitresses complaining about a particularly obnoxious customer", the Johnson material here takes on a lot of the subjects previously mentioned, including packaged foods, video games, and the more disposable end of television, which were trademark Johnson subjects.
There are a couple of nice xtra surprises, in that we find out (if we already didn't know, and we-being-me didn't) that Rick Johnson was a sport nut, and there's some of his writing about sport - still in the trademark all-over-the-shop-and-surrounding-county style - which I'm not sure he ever did for CREEM. Another is a real nice and somewhat ahead of its time piece on some of his fave trashy movies, well before certain sections of the publishing industry became dedicated to woodchipping entire jungles in the name of "psychotronics."
I can't recommend this book highly enough if you: took in a lot of music and popular culture in the 70s-thru-now; ever heard of "Ranger" Rick Johnson; or would just care to fall into a pile of writing by one of the most distinctive and original written humourists ever.
If you (a) tend to the humourless, (b) are a sobersides, (c) have certain sensitivities to language and what they hilariously call on television "adult themes", then you don't want this book.
Everyone else of grown-up newspaper buying age qualifies.
Here it is in its entirety --
By Leapso
There are a few handfuls of folks who read CREEM magazine back in the late 70s/early 80s who think this guy was one of the best music reviewers/pop culture decoders/plain old 20th Century humourists in the history of the world and portions of Cleveland.
Rick Johnson's gone now, and it seems rugged that he didn't get recognition even fractionally commensurate with his talent and originality during life, but at least there's finally a collection of his work available to remind us how good he was, during the cold Johnson-less years to come.
I should also mention, because Ranger Rick probably would at around this point - lest the tight formal-hire collar of funeral atmosphere choke us into pious reflection - that the funniest thing in the book is probably when his former editor mentions the time Rick was so whacked out, he not only fell down his own stairs, but continued right on and fell down his neighbours' stairs as well.
Rick Johnson had a unique use of language, and I mean completely unique to the point where sometimes it seemed like he'd invented Esperanto in reverse; file cards full of lines from TV and advertising to wield out of context (and yet strangely perfectly IN context) in reviews of albums that never knew what hit them; also used typeface, punctuation and all other print medium tools as weapons; and had the greatest, most genial take on the whole pop/mass culture "flow" - TV, movies, celebs as dingbats, music, packaged supermarket foods, video games - it was all the same to Ranger Rick, and it seemed like it was all fun.
What this book contains is a handful or two of his CREEM articles, and a large amount of stuff he wrote for some sort of free press type publication (I think) called the Prairie Sun. Although any dyed-in-the-wool Johnson fan would love a well-chosen comp of the CREEM work (or just ALL of his stuff that appeared in CREEM to cut down on thinking time) there's a bonus here for people that have been hoping a book of Rick's material would come out eventually.
Basically unless you lived in the area covered by the Prairie Sun, you never saw this material before, and it includes prime Reeek era "stand-up reviewing" stuff from the late 70s/early 80s. There's some earlier stuff too, which tends to be a little more earnest/conventional but has its moments, and it's interesting to see the guy's style develop.
Most of the book is album reviews, and if you're thinking why on earth would someone want to read curling discoloured album reviews from the previous century, then you don't know Reeek. No-one who remembers being unable to restrain themselves from laughing out loud reading vintage CREEM issues on public transport will have any doubts whatsoever.
In addition to telling us important musical knowledge, e.g., how Peter Frampton's voice and guitar sound like "two extremely tired waitresses complaining about a particularly obnoxious customer", the Johnson material here takes on a lot of the subjects previously mentioned, including packaged foods, video games, and the more disposable end of television, which were trademark Johnson subjects.
There are a couple of nice xtra surprises, in that we find out (if we already didn't know, and we-being-me didn't) that Rick Johnson was a sport nut, and there's some of his writing about sport - still in the trademark all-over-the-shop-and-surrounding-county style - which I'm not sure he ever did for CREEM. Another is a real nice and somewhat ahead of its time piece on some of his fave trashy movies, well before certain sections of the publishing industry became dedicated to woodchipping entire jungles in the name of "psychotronics."
I can't recommend this book highly enough if you: took in a lot of music and popular culture in the 70s-thru-now; ever heard of "Ranger" Rick Johnson; or would just care to fall into a pile of writing by one of the most distinctive and original written humourists ever.
If you (a) tend to the humourless, (b) are a sobersides, (c) have certain sensitivities to language and what they hilariously call on television "adult themes", then you don't want this book.
Everyone else of grown-up newspaper buying age qualifies.
Friday, June 1, 2007
Beckola unleashes (non-bloato hype) praise
Reek compadre (and RJR: Tin Cans, Squeems & Thudpies contributor) Mick Beck in various web venues extols the virtues of Ranger Rick's Rock Ritings.
It's "every biy the hoot I expected," he writes. "Finally, we have Reek's blatherings in one place where we can wallow in his hilarious and outrageous trough of piss and vinegar."
Read all his short, scalding screeds here --
http://www.last.fm/user/mgbeckolas/journal/2007/03/19/372998/
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=60801546&blogID=242482581&MyToken=db615918-fcb3-4a26-aa7c-bca1682c4d07
http://groups.msn.com/BestOfBoyHowdy/general.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=437&LastModified=4675614817474712217
It's "every biy the hoot I expected," he writes. "Finally, we have Reek's blatherings in one place where we can wallow in his hilarious and outrageous trough of piss and vinegar."
Read all his short, scalding screeds here --
http://www.last.fm/user/mgbeckolas/journal/2007/03/19/372998/
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=60801546&blogID=242482581&MyToken=db615918-fcb3-4a26-aa7c-bca1682c4d07
http://groups.msn.com/BestOfBoyHowdy/general.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=437&LastModified=4675614817474712217
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Ranger Rick: required reading: review
"The Rev." Keith A. Gordon praised Tin Cans, Squeems & Thudpies in a terrific online review featured on Associated Content/The People's Media Company.
"Some of his best, brightest and funniest work," writes Gordon (one of the dozens of friends who helped key in decades-old Reek reviews).
"An example of how good music writing can be," he continues, "the Rick Johnson Reader: Tin Cans, Squeems & Thudpies should be required reading for every hopeful rock critic, and most current so-called writers."
Read Gordon's entire piece here --
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/232146/book_review_rick_johnsons_tin_cans.html
"Some of his best, brightest and funniest work," writes Gordon (one of the dozens of friends who helped key in decades-old Reek reviews).
"An example of how good music writing can be," he continues, "the Rick Johnson Reader: Tin Cans, Squeems & Thudpies should be required reading for every hopeful rock critic, and most current so-called writers."
Read Gordon's entire piece here --
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/232146/book_review_rick_johnsons_tin_cans.html
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
National news service covers Ranger Rick
A national news tip sheet recent ran a short piece from WIU's University Relations office.
Its summary is "One of the most astute rock critics and a former Western Illinois University student -- once called 'the funniest and most incisive wisecracking bad boy at CREEM magazine' -- lived a quiet existence in Macomb, Illinois, far from the limelight of the musicians he wrote about for internationally-known rock magazines."
For the whole story, check it out here -- http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/530266/
Its summary is "One of the most astute rock critics and a former Western Illinois University student -- once called 'the funniest and most incisive wisecracking bad boy at CREEM magazine' -- lived a quiet existence in Macomb, Illinois, far from the limelight of the musicians he wrote about for internationally-known rock magazines."
For the whole story, check it out here -- http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/530266/
Monday, May 28, 2007
'RJR' signing, advance story
Four loons who pitched in to help transcribe years of Rick's material for the book project met in Macomb for a reading on May 19, and all were had by a good time.
Bill Paige Amtraked from Chicago, Steve Tarter drove over from Peoria and Tracy Knight ankled it to Macomb's square from his digs on the northwest side of town to join editor Bill Knight, whose Jeep made it despite an impending valve job. Twenty or so folks turned out, along with an acoustic three-piece group that played a couple of tunes after every round of readings (a cool "Here Comes the Sun" and a nice version of one of Reek's faves: "Walk Away Renee").
Bill Paige Amtraked from Chicago, Steve Tarter drove over from Peoria and Tracy Knight ankled it to Macomb's square from his digs on the northwest side of town to join editor Bill Knight, whose Jeep made it despite an impending valve job. Twenty or so folks turned out, along with an acoustic three-piece group that played a couple of tunes after every round of readings (a cool "Here Comes the Sun" and a nice version of one of Reek's faves: "Walk Away Renee").
Pictured above, left to right (mostly laughing at some Johnson line), are Bill Knight, Bill Paige, Tracy Knight and Steve Tarter.
The western Illinois/eastern Iowa public radio station did an advance story on the event, including a 10-minute interview with Knight. Check it out here --
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wium/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1082943
The western Illinois/eastern Iowa public radio station did an advance story on the event, including a 10-minute interview with Knight. Check it out here --
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wium/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1082943
'Buy it or grow up!' cries collaborator
"Pop Culture Gadabout" and cartoonist Bill Sherman featured a terrific review of Rick Johnson Reader this spring, writing, " Collecting a slew of Johnson's music reviews ... – along with a few shorter sections on television, sports, books and videogames – Tin Cans, Squeems & Thudpies catches both an era where rock 'n' roll fans were so starved for good music that they actually paid attention to the likes of Jefferson Starship or Uriah Heep and the more fecund late '70s/early '80s when the world was so fulla good/promising/pop/rock musicmakers that only a rock critic could keep track of 'em all. In both settings, Johnson's trademark skepticism came in handy: He could be just as incisively nasty about the Next Big Thing as he could the fossilized remains of the Rolling Stones. (Writing about an utterly disposable Roger Daltry solo elpee, he notes that 'No member of the Who has ever put out a listenable solo album, and they never will because they're too old and smart to be anything but boring.') But what elevates Johnson's writing above so many once-&-future snarkmeisters is the way that he always holds onto his down-&-dirty Ilini roots. Check out this pithy measure of an infectiously catchy slice of wimp rock: 'It's a great tune to hum while squeezing the day-old Twinkies at the Sunbeam thrift shop.' It's funny because it's apt."
For the whole Pop Culture Gadabout review and Experience, check it out here: http://oakhaus.blogspot.com/2007/03/buy-it-or-grow-up-am-i-gonna-have-to.html
For the whole Pop Culture Gadabout review and Experience, check it out here: http://oakhaus.blogspot.com/2007/03/buy-it-or-grow-up-am-i-gonna-have-to.html
Sun-Times' DeRogatis cuts to the chase
Chicago Sun-Times reviewer Jim DeRogatis (who wrote the Introduction to the Rick Johnson Reader) briefly summarized the collection in an April 22 roundup of rock books: "Some of his best and most gonzo prose."
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