by Martin Popoff
Jizzy Pearl - I Got More Crickets Than Friends
(www.kingjizzo.com)
No secret I thought Love/Hate's Wasted In America was one of the top four or five records of this
decade, so I was quite interested when I heard that the band's rock troubadour bad-ass lead
screecher Jizzy Pearl had himself a book. Good for him. And it's a trashy good time fer sure,
adequately well-written, routinely peppered with hilarious insights, uneven, profane, and
ultimately well worth yer dollar. Coursing through this collection of short stories is the
down-luck anti-heroic tale of a struggling drug-and-booze-hoovering rock fan turned surprise
performer. Of course, the tragedy comes from just how awesome Jizzy is as a rocker, and how
America spits on guys like him. Although to be fair, he deserves much of it, admitting his
selfishness, his devilish glee at seeing nice houses destroyed by partying cretins from the trash
side of the tracks, his heartlessness toward women. Play the outlaw and you will be outlawed. The
stories that are essentially fantasy/fake/dream/magical pieces don't quite fit, but there are few
of these amongst the hapless side-splitting revelry of being Zeppelin on the cheap. Bottom line:
you'll be paying about as much for this for a CD, maybe less, and you'll get way more out of it,
especially if you were (are) a hopeless teen metalhead like us freaks who now review the works of
guys like Jiz.
Rating 7
Rob Zombie - American Made Music To Strip By
(Geffen)
Rob has become the poster child for this remix crap, having hit gold with another whole Load of
it, White Zombie's fatigue-causing Supersexy Swingin' Sounds being at least a little grittier than
this latest cash-faced bunch of permutations of no consequence. And I'm getting a little tired of
his increasingly dumbed-down graphics. This booklet is for video game junk food teens, not me, and
it used to feel different, hungrier I guess. And the music? Who cares? It was annoying (though
occasionally groovy) in its original over-processed form, and here it's just disposable.
Rating 1
