A highly entertaining account of one of rock’s most colorful tours.
Alderman, the author of Get Off: The Sordid Youth and Unlikely Survival of a Queer Junkie Wonder Boy (2020), describes his long-shot attempt to launch a tattoo-themed rock tour in this memoir.
Staging a festival that combined heavy metal and the art of tattooing was not on Alderman’s bucket list back in 1998. He had some tattoos of his own, and he’d previously worked as a promoter and club owner, but he describes the impetus of the Tattoo the Earth tour as a moment of crisis during a period of stress rather than a long-held vision: “I thought it might be an aneurysm, or my head rocketing completely off my shoulders, but what came out was the idea for Tattoo the Earth.” At the time, tattooing had not yet become a ubiquitous form of expression—it had only just become legal again in New York state in 1997. With his friend and noted tattoo artist Sean Vasquez, Alderman set out to recruit other luminaries of the art form, including Filip Leu and Bernie Luther. The hardest part, though, would prove to be booking the bands: Alderman set his sights on the biggest names in heavy metal, including Metallica, Slayer, and, later, a new group whose debut album, in 1999, went platinum: Slipknot. Alderman had no idea just what it would take to turn his late-night impulse into a reality, but the resulting ride, during which he struggled with a health scare, was a wild one, and the Tattoo the Earth tour finally launched in 2000. The author’s prose is red-blooded and energetic, as in this passage in which he describes his enthusiasm over the Bernie Luther–created sleeve he got while recruiting artists for the tour: “My tattoo made me feel like I had a bionic limb, and I held it awkwardly and stared at it, trying to get used to its power.” Over the course of the book, the author offers some typical but still diverting music memoir escapades: celebrity encounters, industry negotiations, and carnivalesque episodes from the pit and backstage. It’s most notable, however, for offering readers a rare chronicle of the era in which tattooing went from an underground activity to a part of the mainstream—a shift that Tattoo the Earth can lay claim to having energized.
A highly entertaining account of one of rock’s most colorful tours.Pub Date: March 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-578-34424-9
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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