Book Review

The Show I'll Never Forget
50 writers relive their most memorable concert going experience
Sean Manning, Editor

I picked this book up at the library, it looked to be an odd little book. As it turns out, it's an odd little book. One of the benefits and drawbacks to this book is that it is writers who are writing the essays. Some of them just write their stories, and do a pretty good job of it. Some of them are clearly trying to show off how good a writer they are, to varying effects, and some of them just use their time to force in their own agenda. (Only a couple of these, but they were annoying. Also one or two foul mouths.)

Anyhow, the stories of the concerts had the entire spectrum. Not really any classical music, but a broad spectrum of different music was represented, mainly rock and roll. The book was ordered chronologically. Some were absolutely crazy, especially when the time period got to the time when punk was around. Most were about people enjoying concerts and the goings on related to them. A couple of them just had me saying "So anyway..." One thing I thought was pretty relevant to the story was that many of the people had some sort of drug related thing in their stories.

All in all, the book was interesting, and some of the stories were really well written, but I'm glad I didn't spent a lot of my life going to concerts and living the lives that some of these people did...

One last thing. A couple of the essays really were just kind of odd. Out and out odd.