Netphoria Message Board - Billy Corgan Writing 'Spiritual Memoir' About Smashing Pumpkins

Quote:

Originally Posted by vixnix (Post 4242442)

Are you joking?? Bestselling books in Australia last year were 2 books written for kids (72 Story Treehouse and another instalment of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series) and in the adults literature category...colouring books were #1, followed by cookbooks.

Sales overall were still poor and in decline.

Books are dead.

australia is not the stick by which anything literary will ever be measured

although according to Harvard there is apparently no available method to calculate overall book sales, I think a lot more people still buy books than buy music. We still have actual bookstores all over the place and while their numbers have shrunk, there are no more music specific stores. Wait and see, there's a reason every vaguely recognizable figure in music has a memoir out now, and it's not cause they all love writing so much. There's $$$ to made.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fuzzyroes (Post 4242550)

I dunno dude, it was one of the most scatterbrained, longwinded rock bio's that I've ever read... And I don't have a problem with long-winded really (I loved Clapton and Keith Richards books. a lot of my acquaintances didn't bother getting thru those).

Although I did start reading it in the summer when I had a lot more going on... Maybe I just didn't sink my teeth into it enough. But still, it seemed all over the place with a kind of stream of consciousness approach which I didn't find all that enduring.

I mean one minute he's rambling on about pono, then he's telling some old yarn about touring, then he's rambling on about model trains. He's got a charming way of explaining stuff, but it's a grind

I'm generally not interested in what musicians have to say past stage banter or interviews, usually things can only go south when they are left to their own devices. But I love Neil Young so much, I couldn't not read the book. I've never read any other rock bios so I can't compare, I was just really fascinated by it. Some of the stories are so gold, like when he got (maybe Frank Sinatra's daughter?) to come home with him and his cat had taken 500 shits all over his house.

I wished there had been a bit more about actually writing and recording music, but his primary focus was the relationships and his life and that was cool.