Sunday, November 29, 2015

JAMBEAUX by Laurence Gonzales

Finished Sa 11/28/15

This is one of my novels and I finished it the first time in 1996. I don't know when I bought it, but there is a review from the Chicago Tribune, Su 1/20/80 taped to the inside flyleaf.

Unfortunately the book is very dated and clearly does not in any way reflect what the music industry of today, however, it was still a fantastic read.

It's kind of an amalgamation of The Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and possibly "Traffic"( the Butch character on reeds made me think of the more jazzy sound of Traffic).

Page- writer guitarist; the novel is told from his point of view.

Link- bassist and served in Vietnam with Page

(The Vietnam experience is presented as a kind of metaphor for the band's assault on 'The Music Industry')

Butch- keyboards and sax

Scoop- lead guitar and friends with an albino guitarist, Sonny (obviously modeled after The Winter Bros)

Blye- the English drummer. Possibly the wildest man in the group.

Perry- The engineer and manager of the group; Bill Graham/George Marin/Steve Albini

Jill- Perry's contact with the band. She is Page's lover, but, in the end, can't commit to him. She is too attached to her career.

Steve- Page's brother. The novel begins with Page, alone on his ranch in Michigan. He's visited by Steve who wants him to reform the band. It's not revealed until the end, but Link has died from an overdose, and this is probably the biggest reason that Page has withdrawn. And, the novel ends with the possibility that Jambeaux might reform with Steve playing bass with the original lineup.

I was looking for a more modern presentation of the music industry and saw a novel called 'Powder' on the English Amazon. It was only a penny, but almost twelve bucks in shipping.

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