[kj] Killing Joke book idea?

[pr 001]

well one thing is for sure alex it won't be a short book!

while i agree that the subject matter (ie jaz) is a rich seam to be tapped 
sadly i must say i think the publisher has an all too valid point about the 
potential market. maybe a book on rock nutters (or perhaps "troubled genii" 
would be a more intellectual way of putting it) with a disproportionately 
large section on jaz would be one way around this problem? publishers would 
surely love a pitch like that (unless there are too many such books 
already). particularly after of the success of ozzy and his famliy on mtv 
(which i happened to think was sad, staged and (like all reality tv) dull 
but let's face it it was a massive hit).

it was andy that was working on the book. i think unforseen circumstances 
resulted in him having to "shelve" the idea.

>From: "Alexander  Smith" <vassifer@earthlink.net>

>"keep me posted how it goes..."
>
>Well, let's not all get our hopes up too soon. I have a few friends who've
>been trying to brow-beat me into doing a book for some time (not 
>necessarily
>about Killing Joke, though that always seems like the first idea), but my
>problem is not really understanding how to go about it. My friend Sean is
>writing a memoir about his life in and out of reform schools (a troubled
>youth, our Sean was) and has a publishing deal and an agent and all that,
>and he is most insistant at my undertaking a simillar project. He and I 
>were
>kicking ideas around, and I blithely mentioned that no one -- to my then
>knowledge -- had ever written an authoritative book about Jonathan Richman
>and the Modern Lovers (a band as seminal to the constructs of proto-Punk
>Rock as the Stooges and the Velvet Underground, yet much less heralded). 
>I'd
>postulated that since Richman himself is such an eccentric, quasi-reclusive
>character, a book on him could be interesting to even the passive 
>layperson.
>Sean jumped out of his chair with excitement and said he'd talk to his 
>agent
>about it. A day later, he called me back saying his agent loved the idea 
>and
>would love to get together and discuss the options. Great....wheels set in
>motion.
>
>Over the next couple of days, before meeting with this guy, I did a little
>sniffing around. Turns out, as fate would have it, someone *HAS* written a
>thorough book on Richman,....and it came out as recently as 2000 (on a tiny
>British publishing house called Peter Owen Press, but not so tiny that I
>couldn't find the book on the shelves of my local bookstore). The lynchpin,
>however, is that the writer (a British dude named Tim Mitchell) didn't get
>any cooperation from Jonathan Richman. Jonathan wished him well, but 
>refused
>to be interviewed (apparently, Richman isn't in the business to be lionized
>in this manner). Regardless, the book is admirably pretty exhaustive
>otherwise,....rendering the concept of *ANOTHER* book on the man rather 
>moot
>(even if we managed to somehow convince Richman to cooperate). So, flush
>that idea.
>
>To be honest, I was quite relieved. While I think that the first Modern
>Lovers record (with Jerry Harrison and David Robinson, later of the Talking
>Heads and Cars, respectively) which features such classics as "Roadrunner,"
>"She Cracked" and "I'm Straight" is a fuckin' storming, wall-flattening
>record that sounds as vital today as when it was recorded (a jaw-dropping
>1973), I have precious little time for his later work, which can range from
>cutesy precious through insufferably twee. I can't imagine devoting the 
>next
>couple of years of my freetime devoted to his music. I'd have to open a 
>vein
>at some point and end it all.
>
>So, I talked with the agent before meeting him and told him the news. He 
>was
>bummed, but still encouraging -- saying that where there's one good idea,
>there are bound to be more. He still wanted to meet up. So, this past
>Wednesday, I went to an "idea breakfast" with the guy. He turned out to be 
>a
>little more of a slickster than I was hoping/expecting, and prone to
>dropping lots of names from the literary congniscentti that I'm only
>passively aware of (and if I wasn't married to a very literate woman who
>works in publshing, I dare say I would've been completely in the dark.) I
>ran a couple of more ideas by him, all of them music-related.
>Dissapointinly, this guy wasn't as versed in music as I'd have liked, and
>wasn't entirely familiar with some of the concepts I was suggesting. I did
>suggest a book exclusively about New York City bands from the early 80s
>through today (something between "Please Kill Me" and "Our Band Could Be
>your Life," concentrating on bands from the Swans and Pussy Galore through
>the new shit like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, to bring it up to date). He sniffed
>that he wasn't impressed by Azzerad's book (which I loved) and that he
>thought: "maybe 5,000 people would want to buy that book!" That sounded
>promising to me, but not to him (too small....this guy wrangled the deal 
>for
>the recent Neil Young biography, which just came out in paperback). He then
>suggested -- rather incongruously -- that I write a book about REM's MURMER
>album and how significant it was, seemingly obvlivious to the fact that
>there are already waaaaaayyyy too many books about REM out at the moment
>(and I neglected to mention that I didn't share his enthusiasm for the 
>album
>in question).
>
>To counter that, I suggested an authoritative, detail-exhaustive book about
>Killing Joke. While he recognized their name, I think he was only familiar
>with maybe the "Love Like Blood" single. I went in for the kill,
>highlighting Jaz's storied career as a musician coupled with his 
>notoriously
>colorful antics as a man driven by all stripes of strikingly diverse
>philosophies. Call me biased, but I think a book on Jaz Coleman's life 
>alone
>would make for interesting reading. I mean, he's the perfect amalgam of
>brilliance, madness, will and vision. He belongs right up there with Klaus
>Kinski, Werner Herzog, Jackson Pollack, etc. etc. etc. I then layed my case
>for the broad-sweeping but as-yet under-recognized influence of Killing
>Joke's music on genres ranging from Punk to Metal to Dub to Industrial to
>Pop to Goth to Trance and beyond. Top that off with anecdotes about manic,
>sudden flights to Iceland, cows hearts on journalists desks, death threats,
>the occult, recording sessions in the great pyramids and more intra-band
>plot-line dramas that any soap opera would kill for and
>*****BANG******....you got yourself a page-turner! Julian Cope be damned,
>this would be the real deal!
>
>The agent wasn't that enthused, citing the "select audience" angle. He's 
>got
>a point, but I'm thinking it isnt' my idea that's wrong, but rather my
>choice of representation. I should start smaller (this guy was looking for
>the next Jonathan Franzen....which he ain't going to find in me). At the
>very least, he was very accomodating and offered to act as a sounding board
>for future concepts. So, we'll see.
>
>Am I wrong in thinking there is someone else on the list who has been
>kicking a book idea around as well? Please speak up if so.
>
>Alex in NYC

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