SPOILERS GALORE!!! Sing Backwards and Weep, a Memoir (2020)
May 8, 2020 2:04:51 GMT -5
mickyjesus, primosanteria, and 1 more like this
Post by username2500 on May 8, 2020 2:04:51 GMT -5
Ok so, on the Sing Backwards & Weep thread someone asked should we start a spoilers thread and someone else did a neat trick where they hid their spoilery parts, you had to click on it to reveal, but I don't know how do do that neat trick. So here goes.
First impressions of Sing Backwards and Weep. Spoilers galore!!! So be warned!!! I told you!!!
1) Damn. His mother was mean. Why was she so mean? Abused herself? A cycle? An alcoholic? Mentally ill? Emotionally ill? I thought of friends in my life: some didn't get along great with their mothers but none were treated so terribly by their mother. And then I read a review a day or two later (after finishing the book) and was reminded of the detail: his mother as a 6 year old child saw her father shot dead on her front lawn (p 4). Holy s**t. Well that's not a detail in many family histories! What's the backstory there? It's not explained in the book. It must have been traumatic for his mother.
2) Oh wow, so he didn't drink or do drugs for 5 years in young adulthood/ early Screaming Trees time. Think around age 19-24. Screaming Trees were not on my radar when they existed so I only read about them after the fact/ after the band had uh, disbanded. I thought, from what I'd read of Screaming Trees, that Mr Lanegan had a drinking problem before moving onto drugs and there was no break there. But no, per Sing Backwards and Weep: five Screaming Trees years of sobriety.
3) A pretty straightforward telling of events. Not as literary/ philosophical as I expected it might be. (Two years of expectation. Book announced c. April 2018 and released April 2020). That said, it was well-written, a compelling read. Flipping through pages now, I'd say it's very descriptive. Lot's of adjectives. Idioms. And such.
4) Wow. So, by a certain point, he was a drug dealer when at home and a 'rock star' i.e. singer, when on the road. Mark has said this before in interviews but the book moves it from an abstract or general idea to more specific.
5) hahahahahaha Josh Homme as a narc. Cop. So white boy clean. In his polo shirts (that nugget, polo shirts, gleaned from utube vids of the tour at the time, not from the book). Innocent in all this. Learned lessons/ about the world/ hard knocks, from ML, in following him around in one evening's errand of seeking drugs while on tour.
5b) There's a line there somewhere that I wish I could find to quote; I can't find it so will have to paraphrase by memory: Josh Homme playing with the band on their tour (1996-1997), brought a musical proficiency to the band that the Conner brother, in all their years of playing, hadn't mastered. Josh was at another level beyond the Trees. (It might be somewhere in Ch 40, Ice-Cold European Fun House)
6) Wow, Mark really intensely hated Liam Gallagher of Oasis. (Ch 38 See You in Miami, Mate)
7) That revelation at the end. Epiphany. Oh my. "God, change me." A plaintive plea. (p 329 Ch 43 Psychic Storms, Epiphany, and Rebirth) (Year was 1997 or 1998) So I guess the quitting stuck...
8) Oh no, it didn't. His (ex) wife said in an interview, he went into a Queens of the Stone Age 2005 Spring tour “clean and sober, and came out of it very not" [Magnet Magazine Winter 2008]. We need a book to get us from 1998 to 2012, release of Blues Funeral. Pretty sure that's not happening, though.
9) Couple of Randoms: the thing about junkies is they do it to themselves. It's a self inflicted pain. And here another one says, 'a junkie was my hero'. Lanegan mentions Junkie by William S Burroughs. Jerry Stahl in Permanent Midnight and Scott Weiland have also said junkies were their heroes. It's like, geez dude, get a better hero. So Van is the nice brother and Gary Lee is the prickly one. They've always struck me as interchangeable, I've never kept 'em straight. Got it now.
10) Secret Death Game, you say. Hmmmm.... bwahahahha!!! Ch 37 Secret Death Games p 262 ".... This was a secret death game I was compelled to play as often as possible, but only by myself. It was not to be shared. The only way someone was gonna discover my covert activity was if the stench of my decomposing body brought the cops in someday." Or if it's written in a book and for sale. Damn, that is a joke right? Black humor? Written right there in the page. Leads to the quandary, why write your secrets and publish it in a book? Hmmmm, must mull over ....
11) oh yeah, and that striking point early on in the book. Ch 1 Childhood Fiend pg 13, Lanegan age 18 facing a judge for the latest transgression:
"... the judge ... addressed [Mark] directly.
'Has anyone ever tried to get you help for your problem, son?'
[He] said nothing.
'Looking at this record, it's glaringly obvious that you are an alcoholic and drug addict. Every single one of these charges is drug and alcohol related.'
[He] still said nothing.
'Madam Prosecutor, I find it somewhat difficult to comprehend your willingness to send an eighteen-year-old boy still in high school to prison. I am shocked that it did not occur to you to help this kid.'
12) Second to lastly, I got the impression at one point- whether warranted or not-, it may have been the story of trying to move the amps from the stage during a concert, which gave this impression? ... that Mark was attempting in some instances to set the record straight, or at least give his version of things, on some notable moments (things that made headlines/ were oft talked about) of the Screaming Trees years.
And lastly
13) POV, point of view. I'm glad that Mark went ahead and included Juarez on the debut solo album, The Winding Sheet, despite the misgivings of those with more , shall we say "refined", tastes. "I quickly wrote what I thought was a funny little song to [Steve Fisk's] organ riff. Because of the sad and serious tone of the record, I felt like it needed some comic relief at the end. Jack [Endino] rolled his eyes and [Mike] Johnson outright hated it: 'Why make a beautiful record and then shit on it?' I included it on the album anyway." [Ch 3 Seduced, Fucked pg 52]
It is funny. In a dark and twisted sort of way. It's a gem of a song. A dark, fractured, distinct, not oft heard point of view.... gem of a song. Distinct Point of View valid and valued. Like Gil Scott Heron's The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and his bell-lap album, I'm New Here. Show the guts, the courage, to display what may not be palatable and may not be popular, perhaps even embarrassing and make one uncomfortable. Distinct, point of view.
And as for the cover of the Winding Sheet, in my pov, it's perfectly fine.
First impressions of Sing Backwards and Weep. Spoilers galore!!! So be warned!!! I told you!!!
1) Damn. His mother was mean. Why was she so mean? Abused herself? A cycle? An alcoholic? Mentally ill? Emotionally ill? I thought of friends in my life: some didn't get along great with their mothers but none were treated so terribly by their mother. And then I read a review a day or two later (after finishing the book) and was reminded of the detail: his mother as a 6 year old child saw her father shot dead on her front lawn (p 4). Holy s**t. Well that's not a detail in many family histories! What's the backstory there? It's not explained in the book. It must have been traumatic for his mother.
2) Oh wow, so he didn't drink or do drugs for 5 years in young adulthood/ early Screaming Trees time. Think around age 19-24. Screaming Trees were not on my radar when they existed so I only read about them after the fact/ after the band had uh, disbanded. I thought, from what I'd read of Screaming Trees, that Mr Lanegan had a drinking problem before moving onto drugs and there was no break there. But no, per Sing Backwards and Weep: five Screaming Trees years of sobriety.
3) A pretty straightforward telling of events. Not as literary/ philosophical as I expected it might be. (Two years of expectation. Book announced c. April 2018 and released April 2020). That said, it was well-written, a compelling read. Flipping through pages now, I'd say it's very descriptive. Lot's of adjectives. Idioms. And such.
4) Wow. So, by a certain point, he was a drug dealer when at home and a 'rock star' i.e. singer, when on the road. Mark has said this before in interviews but the book moves it from an abstract or general idea to more specific.
5) hahahahahaha Josh Homme as a narc. Cop. So white boy clean. In his polo shirts (that nugget, polo shirts, gleaned from utube vids of the tour at the time, not from the book). Innocent in all this. Learned lessons/ about the world/ hard knocks, from ML, in following him around in one evening's errand of seeking drugs while on tour.
5b) There's a line there somewhere that I wish I could find to quote; I can't find it so will have to paraphrase by memory: Josh Homme playing with the band on their tour (1996-1997), brought a musical proficiency to the band that the Conner brother, in all their years of playing, hadn't mastered. Josh was at another level beyond the Trees. (It might be somewhere in Ch 40, Ice-Cold European Fun House)
6) Wow, Mark really intensely hated Liam Gallagher of Oasis. (Ch 38 See You in Miami, Mate)
7) That revelation at the end. Epiphany. Oh my. "God, change me." A plaintive plea. (p 329 Ch 43 Psychic Storms, Epiphany, and Rebirth) (Year was 1997 or 1998) So I guess the quitting stuck...
8) Oh no, it didn't. His (ex) wife said in an interview, he went into a Queens of the Stone Age 2005 Spring tour “clean and sober, and came out of it very not" [Magnet Magazine Winter 2008]. We need a book to get us from 1998 to 2012, release of Blues Funeral. Pretty sure that's not happening, though.
9) Couple of Randoms: the thing about junkies is they do it to themselves. It's a self inflicted pain. And here another one says, 'a junkie was my hero'. Lanegan mentions Junkie by William S Burroughs. Jerry Stahl in Permanent Midnight and Scott Weiland have also said junkies were their heroes. It's like, geez dude, get a better hero. So Van is the nice brother and Gary Lee is the prickly one. They've always struck me as interchangeable, I've never kept 'em straight. Got it now.
10) Secret Death Game, you say. Hmmmm.... bwahahahha!!! Ch 37 Secret Death Games p 262 ".... This was a secret death game I was compelled to play as often as possible, but only by myself. It was not to be shared. The only way someone was gonna discover my covert activity was if the stench of my decomposing body brought the cops in someday." Or if it's written in a book and for sale. Damn, that is a joke right? Black humor? Written right there in the page. Leads to the quandary, why write your secrets and publish it in a book? Hmmmm, must mull over ....
11) oh yeah, and that striking point early on in the book. Ch 1 Childhood Fiend pg 13, Lanegan age 18 facing a judge for the latest transgression:
"... the judge ... addressed [Mark] directly.
'Has anyone ever tried to get you help for your problem, son?'
[He] said nothing.
'Looking at this record, it's glaringly obvious that you are an alcoholic and drug addict. Every single one of these charges is drug and alcohol related.'
[He] still said nothing.
'Madam Prosecutor, I find it somewhat difficult to comprehend your willingness to send an eighteen-year-old boy still in high school to prison. I am shocked that it did not occur to you to help this kid.'
12) Second to lastly, I got the impression at one point- whether warranted or not-, it may have been the story of trying to move the amps from the stage during a concert, which gave this impression? ... that Mark was attempting in some instances to set the record straight, or at least give his version of things, on some notable moments (things that made headlines/ were oft talked about) of the Screaming Trees years.
And lastly
13) POV, point of view. I'm glad that Mark went ahead and included Juarez on the debut solo album, The Winding Sheet, despite the misgivings of those with more , shall we say "refined", tastes. "I quickly wrote what I thought was a funny little song to [Steve Fisk's] organ riff. Because of the sad and serious tone of the record, I felt like it needed some comic relief at the end. Jack [Endino] rolled his eyes and [Mike] Johnson outright hated it: 'Why make a beautiful record and then shit on it?' I included it on the album anyway." [Ch 3 Seduced, Fucked pg 52]
It is funny. In a dark and twisted sort of way. It's a gem of a song. A dark, fractured, distinct, not oft heard point of view.... gem of a song. Distinct Point of View valid and valued. Like Gil Scott Heron's The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and his bell-lap album, I'm New Here. Show the guts, the courage, to display what may not be palatable and may not be popular, perhaps even embarrassing and make one uncomfortable. Distinct, point of view.
And as for the cover of the Winding Sheet, in my pov, it's perfectly fine.
?.... 
