Brian Boone’s book of rock ‘n’ roll lists more than a bathroom read

book-cover-i-love-rock-n-rollIn his new book for Perigree Books, I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll (Except When I Hate It): Extremely Important Stuff About the Songs and Bands You Love, Hate, Love to Hate, and Hate to Love, author Brian Boone‘s history as an editor for the long-running series of Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers shines through. The book is full of clever lists and witty commentary, and pointed barbs directed at pretty much every genre and artist of which you could think.

Unlike those Uncle John’s books, however, Boone’s book uses a little bit more “adult” language. It’s not filthy, but I’m sure that the other series would opt away from “skank.” I’m definitely sure they’ve never used “asshole.” It’s not used gratuitously, it just makes the whole affair seem a bit more cheeky than it would otherwise. A book of lists can drag, and the occasional bit of profanity certainly does well to perk things up a bit.

I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll is ostensibly organized around various themes, and the chapters kind of set everything up, but the various subsections of each chapter could easily be shuffled about with little effort. Nothing ties “Let’s Try Something Else” – a bit about bands completely switching up their rather successful sound for something that flopped – to the “Lapses In Judgment” section except the whim of the author. It could just as easily be in the “Band On the Run” chapter, which is “About Musicians and Such.”

There are a few quibbles to be found in every book of lists, of course. My chief complaint is that when discussing Jimmy Buffett’s merchandising empire with his Margaritavilla chain of restaurants, Boone completely ignore the fact that Buffett has a second chain, Cheeseburger In Paradise. If one restaurant based on a song written in the late ’70s is greedy, two must be ridiculously so, right?

Still, Boone knows his material, and it’s the little nods that left your reviewer chortling and snorting so hard, he frequently had to retire to somewhere not around people to read further. The section on concept albums features, of course, a brief bit on Queensryche’s Operation: Mindcrime. The biref interjection of Mindcrime! into the midst of the paragraph nearly made me wet myself. These asides that pepper the book are what make it worth reading. The fact that Boone isn’t just retyping details he found on Wikipedia and in other books, and is instead presenting the reader with something clever and interesting and new, is what really makes I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll such a pleasure to read – on the john or anywhere.