A major disappointment from a well-known authority on jazz. Gourse (Sassy: The Life of Sarah Vaughan, 1993, etc.) starts with a noble premise: that women are becoming increasingly visible in contemporary jazz, despite lingering prejudice against them as performers, particularly as instrumentalists. However, this hodge- podge, which appears to be assembled from old interviews, barely does justice to the many fine female performers whom Gourse hopes to celebrate. The book is divided into three sections. In the first part, Gourse discusses the general status of women in jazz today, jumping from player to player and anecdote to anecdote, making for at best a jumbled narrative. In part two, she profiles specific players; many of these chapters read like magazine profiles or liner notes, some several years old, with updates tacked on like Post-it notes. The final section is a catalog of women performers, some profiled in the book, some not, serving as a kind of mini- dictionary of jazz players. Despite the book's pro-female stance, Gourse manages to repeat several old myths from the male-dominated jazz press, including such whoppers as ``few women play jazz guitar because it takes such strength to play'' (based on two false assumptions: that women lack strength and that it takes enormous effort to play a modern, amplified guitar). And although Gourse is celebrating women as musicians who can compete head-to-head with men, she insists on describing each performer's physical attractions, as if this were a Miss Jazz America contest (``Men in the audience were particularly charmed by the slender, attractive multi-instrumentalist who could also sing'' is her description of baritone saxophonist Carol Sudhalter; stride pianist Judy Carmichael is described as ``a slender woman with cascades of blonde ringlets and a peaches-and-cream complexion''; even elder stateswoman Marian McPartland is complimented on ``her trim figure''). Gourse fails the very women to whom she is attempting to pay tribute. (32 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-508696-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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