Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

Greg Renoff's compelling biography takes readers on a comprehensive trip through Van Halen's early years as a backyard party band that performed under names like Trojan Rubber Co. and Mammoth. It also covers their initial club gigs through their first stadium tours with luminaries like Black Sabbath.   A good read for Van Halen fans and music biography fans alike, Renoff's narrative covers the tough life of a young band on the rise. I'm not a big hard rock fan and do not care much about their later music, so this one was perfect for me, but there is something for most music fans here. I found the section on David Lee Roth worming his way into the band particularly compelling. Since Eddie and Alex did not like his glam style or singing, he started his band to compete in the party scene, the aptly named Red Ball Jets, which focused more on pure entertainment. Once he convinced the Van Halen brothers to let him join, his marketing chops were integral in helping them become...

 Stardeath And White Dwarfs: The Birth The Birth is a veritable lost psych masterpiece that is possibly on the same level as Easter Everywhere by the Thirteenth Floor Elevators or Forever Changes by Love. If it came out in the seventies, it would rank right up there as a lost classic, though probably never gaining the cache that those two records have achieved in hipster circles. Once Lenny Kaye released the first Nuggets comp, the garage rock genre was redefined, and lesser-known psych and garage bands, mostly famous in their local scenes, gained national recognition. Some of these even became radio staples in the newer “oldies” radio format, even when they didn't break into the charts nationally. If “The Sea is on Fire” found its way on to that classic compilation, it would have found its place in this pantheon. Startled genre fans would have played the tracks over and over again raving about it like it was “I Had Too Much Too Dream Last Night.” Then it would have b...