The Boy Who Cried Freebird

February 26, 2007
Music writer Myers is knowledgeable not only about rock but also about blues, jazz, country, folk, metal and electronic sounds, and he is also extremely funny—a potent combination that makes this collection of essays an insightful and entertaining look at popular music culture. Three of his best narratives include the decidedly mixed results of Black Sabbath's song "Paranoid" becoming the world's only defense against alien invaders; the adventures of a teenage Grateful Dead fan from 2069 who time-travels back to 1969 to see his heroes play in San Francisco; and a man driven to shout "Freebird" at every concert he attends. But Myers also displays excellent straight journalistic skills in looks at artists ranging from Doug Sahm, whose legendary psychedelic-country-rock-Mexican fusion, Myers shows, helped shape modern Texas music, to saxophonist Albert Ayler in an elegiac study of how his "hovering, stream-of-consciousness meditations" made him one of the most brilliant musicians in the 1960s free jazz movement. Also entertaining are his wild fictional scenarios about real artists like Phil Spector and Steve Albini that actually say more about those artists than can be found in much rock criticism.