books + ANYONE CAN PLAY GUITAR
Joaquin Phoenix Reef Younis catalogues the failed music careers of mega celebrities. Illustrated by Josie Sommer. / From grainy clips of a flapping freestyle at a 2008 show in California to a drunken, almost inaudible appearance at a club in Las Vegas, and the more infamous footage of his ‘performance’ at Miami’s upscale LIV club, Phoenix’s gruff, beatchasing delivery certainly provoked ridicule but also provided an essential touch of craft that made the ruse last as long as it did. Yes, it was bad, but it was also believably bad, falling somewhere between a young Youtube MC’s hurried wordplay and your friend who genuinely believes he can freestyle if someone just gives him a shit beatbox. Fast-forward a few years and it seemed like Phoenix’s rap career was rising from the flames, this time as a producer. With Pusha T returning from his own hiatus in 2013, a Phoenix/Kanye double-act was reported to have created the beat behind ‘King Push’ but, sadly, it turned out to be a misunderstanding after he’d merely passed the beat on. Still, when a supposed collaboration with Kanye West and Pusha T needs credible investigation to be disproven, you have to wonder when art imitates life. Either way, as the stories surfaced, I hope Phoenix stepped back and whispered to himself: “I’m Still Here.”
In 2009, you might have seen a dishevelled Joaquin Phoenix sat mumbling and gum-chewing his way through a car-crash interview on The Late Show with David Letterman. Bearded, man-bunned and brilliantly apathetic, for every sarcastic barb Letterman sent his way, a monosyllabic Phoenix oozed indifference; the ebb and flow of the conversation dying despite there being a pretty sizeable elephant in the room. Phoenix had announced that his most recent film, ‘Two Lovers’, would be his last, and that he was quitting acting to pursue a career in hip-hop. Letterman’s curious delight and confusion set against Phoenix’s apparent Hollywood delusion made for cult viewing, as did the subsequent mockumentary, I’m Still Here. But while Phoenix’s proposed new career ultimately proved to be a brilliantly elaborate hoax that saw a host of A-Listers maintain the charade for the big screen, beneath the full frontal nudity, the faeces, and satire of the film, the beauty that both excited and confounded those paying attention to the unlikeliest of rap game entrances was that Phoenix actually stepped up to the mic as well as the camera, although one was considerably more inglorious than the other.
b y ja nine & L ee b ullm a n
Tim Book Two: Vinyl Adventures from Istanbul to San Francisco by Tim Burgess
Under the Big Black Sun: A personal history of L.A. Punk. by John Doe with Tom De Savia
faber & faber
de capo
Tim Burgess makes music, but music also makes Tim Burgess. He is to be found often hunched over, flicking through a box of vinyl in the hope of finally scoring that Elodie Lauten seven inch or another mint copy of Eno’s ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’. He’s on a quest to track down the albums recommended to him by musical friends and heroes, and the vinyl recommendations are then the jump-off point for ruminations on the music, the shops, the people, the gigs, the laughter, the tears, and the past, present and future. It makes for a fantastic book – required reading if you’ve ever lifted a twelve-inch square of plastic from a dusty rack with a smile that could be seen from space.
Ever since Louie Louie had to go, punk rock has bounced back and forth across the Atlantic. At the end of the ’70, in Hollywood’s back alleys and dive bars, punk meant Black Flag and The Germs and the journey to the Sunset Strip. And it meant X, the band John Doe plays bass for. The Californian punk scene of the time has since passed into legend. Outside of the records and some flyers and fanzines, very little documentation survives of what was obviously a vibrant, sleazy, dark and shiny moment. In Under the Big Black Sun, Doe collates recollections of some of the people whose grit, determination and glamour made the whole thing happen.
loudandquiet.com
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Porcelain by moby faber & faber
Prior to conquering the world with his album ‘Play’, Moby had paid his dues in the famously hedonistic environments of New York nightclubs like Mars, Palladium and Limelight. Even in a nocturnal world of misfits, Moby, a tee-total Christian vegan, stood out. In Porcelain he tells the tale of how a skinny kid from Connecticut survived the dance music underground.The New York of the time comes alive here, as Moby’s by turns funny, sad and always honest telling of his story shows us a city where artists could survive on next to nothing and take the time to find their sound. Eventually, the skinny Christian kid would go on to help make dance music ubiquitous; Porcelain shows us what he had to go through to do it.