Nerd Girl Rocks Paradise City: A True Story of Faking It in Hair Metal L.A. - Hardcover

Soffee, Anne Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1556525869 ISBN 13: 9781556525865

Verlag: Chicago Review Press, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

After college, Anne Thomas Soffee journeyed to Los Angeles to start a career as a rock journalist and small-time heavy metal flack. This hilarious peek into the early years of the hair-band era reveals the hierarchy of fishnets, bustiers, and chicks with the Holy Grail—a backstage pass. A taste for other people’s prescriptions and too much beer edges her freelance journalism work right off her schedule. She struggles with not being thin enough, pretty enough, or cool enough when, in the midst of the L.A. riots, Soffee is offered a coveted slot in Virginia Commonwealth University's MFA writing program. Determined to pull herself out of current habits, Soffee starts turning her life around, making a stop at rehab before she heads off to graduate school. Her quarter-life crisis is packed with offbeat characters that prove that fact is often funnier than fiction.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Anne Thomas Soffee is the author of Snake Hips: Belly Dancing and How I Found True Love. She has an MFA and is a semi-professional belly dancer.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Nerd Girl Rocks Paradise City

A True Story of Faking It in Hair Metal L.A.

By Anne Thomas Soffee

Chicago Review Press Incorporated

Copyright © 2005 Anne Thomas Soffee
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-55652-586-5

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, 
PROLOGUE "That Girl Has a Ring in Her Nose" Hipster Backlash and Metal Without Irony, 
1 "I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone" King-Sized Beds and the King Himself on the Road to L.A., 
2 Confessions of a Reluctant Danzig Bimbo "Sorry, Kid, We Don't Speak Irony", 
3 Strippers, Clown Rooms, and Danzig Among the Mangoes Day Jobs and Night Moves on Hollywood and Vine, 
4 Payola Means Never Having to Say "You Suck" Where Everybody Knows Your Name Except for the Girl in the Leather Bra, 
5 Idle Worship Getting Punk'd Ten Years Before Ashton Kutcher, 
6 I, Industry Weasel Gabba Gabba, We Accept You, We Accept You, One of Us, 
7 There Goes the Neighborhood The Smell of Hairspray Gives Way to Teen Spirit, 
8 Last Call L.A. Throws Me the Least Festive Farewell Party Imaginable, 
EPILOGUE Tattoo Me What the World Needs Now Is Olallaberry Pie, 

CHAPTER 1

"I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone"

King-Sized Beds and the King Himself on the Road to L.A.

Since I was in middle school, I dreamed of becoming the next Lester Bangs. Just in case you weren't greedily devouring music rags like I was in the 1970s, Lester wrote for everything I read as a teenager — CREEM, New York Rocker, Rolling Stone, you name it. He was gonzo and edgy and passionate about the music and the words he used to describe it. As close as you could get to being a rock star while still being an English nerd — as in the subject, not the nationality — Lester was just as likely to turn up in the gossip columns as he was in a byline. I hung on his every word, and when he died in 1982, I felt destined to pick up the mantle, as I'm sure plenty of other little punk rock nerds like myself did all across the country. I got a jump on the other would-be Bangses by getting my foot in the door at ThroTTle, where they published me far more often and with far fewer edits than they probably should have, subjecting Richmond readers to my teenage would-be gonzo musings on everything from MTV to Chick Tracts to Soldier of Fortune magazine. So when I graduate from William and Mary I already have a sizeable portfolio of press clips, some pretty damn good and some cringeworthy, but each bearing my name in smudgy black ink on the byline, which is what matters in the end, right? Clips in hand, I immediately begin searching for my jumping-off point to music journalism greatness, mailing my resume and portfolio to every single rag on the newsstand that sports a bare-chested guitarist on its cover.

Q:Lester Bangs. Lester Bangs. The name sounds familiar, but not being a punk rock nerd, I can't really place it.

A:I'll bet I know why. While checking some facts for this book, I was heartened — and actually a little misty — to note the number of teenagers and twenty somethings in the online communities who list "Lester Bangs" among their generally less cool interests. I was misty and heartened, that is, until I checked further into their little blogworlds and found that it wasn't the real Lester Bangs they admired, but the fictionalized portrayal of him — by a suave, unpudgy actor — in the movie Almost Famous. You know, kinda like all those kids who like "Lust for Life" because they heard it on the Trainspotting soundtrack. Only more horrible.

Even though my dream of being the next Lester Bangs is alive, the rock journalism industry is terminal, bordering on critical. Some of the magazines to which I'm applying are so poorly written I am almost ashamed to be seen buying them. "Vince Neil met his wife Sharise at the club she was a mud wrestler at," one caption in Metal Edge blathers, its preposition sticking out almost as far as Sharise's muddy tits. It makes me wistful for afternoons spent in my bedroom, poring — or "pouring,"as Metal Edge would say — over the latest issue of CREEM. Not just a music magazine, CREEM was challenging reading, stuff that made you think. Even the letters to the editor (mine numbered three, thanks) were filled with clever asides and obscure musical references that made you fairly tingle just by knowing you were one of the select few who caught them. You were as likely to find Miles Davis as Van Halen in Robert Christgau's record reviews, and irony was the order of the day. CREEM stopped publishing in 1988, leaving me high and dry when I finished college the next year. Ladies and gentlemen, Boy Howdy has left the building.

Naturally, when one's dreams are dashed by the newsprint gods, the only logical rejoinder is to gift wrap a ham. Allow me to clarify. At this point I have finished college, I have no plans for my future, no destiny to fulfill, and no money in my pocket. Figuring I can address two out of these three with a pick-up job while I ponder the third, I take a stylin' gig at the mall making gourmet Virginia gift baskets for people with a lot of money and a desire for more salt in their diet (a lot more salt — consider that the two main ingredients in the top-selling basket are Virginia Diner peanuts and Smithfield Ham). Living on sample peanuts and food-court lunches, I spend my spare time sending clips and queries to music magazines and drinking beer at Newgate Prison, Richmond's only metal bar — and the less said about it, the better. All of this excitement follows the year's main event, which was me following the East Coast leg of the Rolling Stones' Steel Wheels tour in a perfectly adorable used Hyundai my dad gave me as a graduation gift. I have a feeling if he'd known what was coming, he would have considered a nice savings bond or something.

Q:Did the Stones tour come as a result of some great journalistic opportunity? Was this not the assignment of a lifetime?

A:No, it was not. It was the culmination of a decade of fandom bordering on sick obsession. Not that I didn't try to get some kind of sponsorship, press credentials, something, anything — but come on. These are the Stones. Even magazines like Rolling Stone itself reserve that assignment for the big names and celebrity guest writers, the Dave Marshes and Stanley Booths, not peons like me with a few local bylines and a deep and abiding love for side one of Exile on Main Street. But yeah, I came, I saw, I sang along. It fucking rocked.

As if it isn't demeaning enough to be a shop girl instead of a jet-setting rock journalist, I have to swallow the bitter pill that is the fact that my William and Mary nemesis, the director of the college radio station, is now writing for Rolling Stone. Even though I know that she had to pay her dues at Wenner-owned US magazine before cracking the RS nut, just seeing her byline rubs three hams' worth of salt into my Rolling Stone-byline-less wounds — and it stings. Honestly, I don't even like Rolling Stone; it's too mainstream and dry for my journalistic taste, and probably sour to boot. My resume has been sent to the smaller, more creative rags, like Alternative Press, Spin, and, of course, Rip. And I haven't gotten so much as a form letter back from any of them. Eventually I grow desperate and start sending resumes to every music magazine on the stands (except...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Chicago Review Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1556525869
• ISBN 13: 9781556525865
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 242
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar