I love books “written” by rock ’n’ rollers. STEVE TURNER (with Adem Tepedelen) has authored one called Mud Ride: A Messy Trip Through the Grunge Explosion and it’s not unlike most of its predecessors. In common would be: Co-writer who probably acted more as (first) editor, story wrangler and memory coaxer; light ’n’ breezy conversational tone that makes it seem like it was spoken into a tape recorder (or voice memo on a smartphone) and then transcribed (hence the quotations around “writer” above); and lots of photos with sarc-y captions. Check, check and check.
Mud Ride is Turner’s story, he being a “guitarist and founding member of Mudhoney,” the legendary Seattle band that very well may be the father and mother of grunge. The book is, indeed, a very first-person look at the birth of the PNW music scene that spawned a whole lot of monsters, including Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Nirvana – all bands that are considerably better known than Mudhoney. Yet, these guys (Turner and his eventual Mudhoney bandmates) were all there as it was happening, and Steve frequently humbly notes that none of them ever thought things were going to go as far as they did. But if anyone was qualified to tell the story, this guy’s one of a very few.
You definitely get a lot of inside info about what was going on in Seattle and environs in the mid ’80s in this book. And you’ll hear about bands that even those of us who were there had long forgotten about (and whose names I can’t even remember now after having just read the book). Curiously, Turner never mentions Alice In Chains once. Not sure if there’s some animosity there or if maybe Turner & Co. just never really had much to do with them… or if it’s something ultra personal that the author didn’t want to share with Joe Public. Regardless, Turner is respectful and doesn’t dish out the kind of salacious details that some would hope for. (Anything he notes like that is already public knowledge.)
Mud Ride isn’t revelatory. But it’s worth a read if you’re curious about Mudhoney and other bands of the time and how this unique scene became such a celebrated – and sometimes derided – phenomenon. – Marsh Gooch
3/5 (Chronicle Prism, 2023)
Released early this year, I was finally able to get a copy of Complicated Game: Inside the Songs of XTC and naturally devoured it immediately. Being a huge fan of XTC and its two songwriters, ANDY PARTRIDGE and Colin Moulding, this book has been on my radar since before it was announced. I’ve been an XTC devotee since I first discovered their 1980 album Black Sea, and haven’t deviated from that devotion since. XTC is a band that has really matured over the decades and their songwriting is at the forefront of that growth. I fully expected this book to illuminate Partridge’s songwriting and it completely lived up to its subtitle.
If there’s anything that could be improved, it would be the release of a second volume. Partridge has written so many great songs that this one volume (nearly 400 pages) misses many of his best songs. The only other nitpick I have–and this is primarily because of the book’s subtitle–is that it does not include Partridge’s partner in XTC songwriting, Colin Moulding. He may not have written as many of the band’s songs, but Moulding has written some of the band’s best. Witness “Making Plans for Nigel,” “Ball and Chain,” and “King for a Day.” That being said, there’s a way to remedy that. They could come out with a second volume that includes more of Partridge’s songs and some of Moulding’s. Done and done.
NuDisc 