Official Truth: 101 Proof: The Inside Story of Pantera by Rex Brown

A decade after they were torn asunder, super metal group, Pantera, has more than seven million Facebook fans. Numbers like would be a major feat for an active group, never mind an essentially dead one. And make no mistake, though three of the original four bandmembers are still alive, Pantera is no more, nor will it be. That much is clear from Official Truth: 101 Proof: The Inside Story of Pantera (DaCapo).

Of course, the pivotal moment in Pantera’s story comes near the end. It’s a part that was documented in Zac Crain’s very compelling Black Tooth Grin: The High Life, Good Times, and Tragic End of “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott.

Abbott was the founder of Pantera, an act that seemed as turbulent and fraught as the decade that gave the band its biggest success. Pantera was metal in the age of grunge and they were unapologetic.

What helps give Official Truth its authentic ring is the voice of co-author Rex Brown, the bass player who joined the band in 1982, just a year after the mercurial Abbot brothers put the outfit together. The fact that the voice grates at times is apparent almost from the very beginning. And though he’s earned -- he can walk that walk -- Rex Brown’s rock god arrogance can be a little hard to take.

Though it doesn’t sound like life in Pantera was ever much of a party (other than the very nastiest kind),
in 2004, Darrel Abbot was killed by a deranged fan while he was onstage, putting a dramatic finale on a story that seemed headed for tragedy almost since the very beginning.

Official Truth is a proper rock biography, but it’s not for the faint of heart. Some readers will find it a little too gritty and a little too real and, certainly, the F-bomb gets thrown around sometimes more than one would ever have thought possible. But it’s a portrait, of sorts. And if you ever thought the world of a rock god was sexy and golden, read Official Truth and think again. ◊


Lincoln Cho is a freelance writer and editor. He lives in the Chicago area where he works in the high tech industry. He is currently working on a his first novel, a science fiction thriller set in the world of telecommunications.

The Best Music Writing of the Year!

One of my personal treats around this time every year is a copy of Best Music Writing of the year, published annually by Da Capo. It’s a particularly well produced and thought out book. It’s not a beauty contest (although it easily could be). And it’s not about the biggest artists or the most envied mastheads or anything like that. Rather it does exactly what it promises: it collects the very best writing about music from the year that was. You end up with a beautifully rendered portrait of that year: the highest highs, the lowest lows and just the heartbeat of that moment; technologically, stylistically and, to a certain extent, even politically. This year the book is comprised of 36 terrific and far-ranging pieces. I loved every second.

Ann Powers is guest editor of this 10th edition of Da Capo’s Best Music Writing. She is the chief pop critic of the Los Angeles Times and the author of Weird Like Us, Rock She Wore and several other books.

“Music itself is a call that invites response,” she tells us in the opening to Best Music Writing 2010. “It organized desire, sorrow, and joy into a form both primal ... and intensely communal; in every know culture, some sort of music has been in a constant in every day life.” It is, once again, celebrated here. ◊


Lincoln Cho is a freelance writer and editor. He lives in the Chicago area, where he works in the high-tech industry. He is currently working on a his first novel, a science-fiction thriller set in the world of telecommunications.

The Indie Rock Coloring Book by Yellow Bird Project

This is not so much a review as a mention: a great project for a great cause that makes a great gift!

The Yellow Bird Project is a Montreal-based non-profit organization who have, since 2006, worked with a number of indie rock acts to create T-shirt designs that, in the end, benefit a wide range of charities.

The Indie Rock Coloring Book takes it to the next level, offering up 28 coloring and activity pages by created for the project by UK-based artist, Andy J. Miller. Each page represents an indie icon, including Rilo Kiley, Devendra Banhart, MGMT, The New Pornographers, Broken Social Scene and a bunch more.

A quibble (seems like I can’t not do something reviewish each time out): like the T-shirts, it would have been nice to have seen at least some of these illustrations created by the indie artists themselves. Some of them are multi-talented and would have been up to the task. It’s a small quibble, though: Miller’s illustrations are mostly bright and innovative and would be lots of fun to color.

A foreword, hand-lettered by Rilo Kiley’s Pierre de Reeder sets the tone and the intent: “This wonderful coloring book,” writes de Reeder, “is yours to enjoy and be inspired by, and is a great example of how you can turn your love for music and art into something that can really help.”

The Yellow Bird Project Web site is here.

Precious Metal

Understand going in that this is a book for the already converted. If you -- or the person you’re trying so hard to find the perfect gift for -- is not already deeply infected by heavy metal music, then Precious Metal (Da Capo) is not for you. Or them. But if they are... if they are this is seriously the best gift a metalhead could get.

And why? These are the untold stories. Okay: that’s not strictly true. These are the selectly told stories, originally told in Decibel Magazine -- the voice of extreme music. The 25 tales collected in Precious Metal are the best of the best of Decibel’s Hall of Fame pieces. As a result, they’re pretty great. If you’re unfamiliar with Decibel’s Hall of Fame and how it works, in the words of editor Albert Mudrian, it goes like this:

Take a classic extreme metal record (as determined by our staff) released at least five years ago, track down and interview every band member who played on it, and present them questions exclusively about the writing, recording, touring and overall impact of said album.

The result is, well... obvious, right? There’s a reason Decibel is simply the best in its field. It pushes itself beyond the readily apparent, beyond the everyday and comes up with stuff like this.

So who did Mudrian determine should be included in this round up of best of the best? Well, as I said, there are 25, so I’ll just hit some of the albums that I feel are the highlights: Black Sabbath’s Heaven and Hell, Morbid Tales by Celtic Frost, Napalm Death’s Scum, Paradise Lost’s Gothic, Eyehategod’s Take As Needed. It’s an incredible list and since it combines not only some of metal’s top stories, but also some of the top writing about metal around, it’s just an incredible win-win.

Precious Metal is an absolute must for the metalhead on your list.

Best Music Writing 2009

2009 marks the tenth anniversary of the Best Music Writing anthologies edited by music journalist and scholar Daphne Carr and published by Da Capo. As befits an anniversary edition, this anthology is stunning with contributions from some of the very top names in music writing, and letters, as well.

As guest editor Greil Marcus points out, Best Music Writing 2009 is not meant to be an almanac:

It is not a record of the best or worst or most important what-happened-in-music of 2008, the year from which all of the pieces here were drawn …. I distrust the notion that something has to happen in any given year that in the future we will look back upon as a portent of something or as an example of something else.

What we have, instead is, quite simply, the best. The most passionate, the most deeply felt, the most well-crafted and stated and sharply rendered. Over 30 pieces reflect all aspects of the music business and all types of music. You’ll recognize some of their names. Jonathan Lethem. Aidin Vaziri. Carrie Brownstein. David Remnick. Stanley Booth.

If you appreciate reading about music, you’ll enjoy Best Music Writing 2009. It does not get better than this.

Biography: Black Tooth Grin: The High Life, Good Times, and Tragic End of “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott by Zac Crain

Unsurprisingly, Black Tooth Grin (Da Capo) begins at the end. December 8, 2004, 24 years to the day that John Lennon died. “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott killed onstage, mid-song. The founder of the metal cover band Pantera, Abbott was not well known outside of his own metal community. However according to author Zac Crain, no one who knew the musician ever wondered why so many people called the act “the 9/11 of heavy metal.”

Of course, Black Tooth Grin doesn’t just tell the story of Abbott’s death. Much more time and detail is spent on the doomed musician’s life. Does D Magazine senior editor and music scribe heavyweight Crain sometimes move Black Tooth Grin towards the maudlin? Maybe only slightly. For the most part, though, Crain seems to hit all the right notes, skillfully blending fact with educated fancy, filling in the blanks and also imagining the what-might have beens and the nearly-weres.

Metal fans will, of course, find Black Tooth Grin to be a must-read but even those who had only barely heard of Abbott will find Crain’s book compelling. It’s a portrait of the music industry exactly as you always suspected it was... and yet entirely different. Fascinating.

Biography: The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash: A Memoir

For those not keeping score, Grandmaster Flash has been to urban music what Todd Rundgren has been to MOR pop. Clearly, both would exist without these important early purveyors, but -- and arguably -- the resulting genres would have been quite different.

In The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash: My Life, My Beats (Broadway), Flash -- with the help of bestselling author David Ritz (Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye, Rhythm and the Blues) riffs through his early life and career with the aplomb one would expect from the man many consider to be the father of contemporary hip hop.

There are times he tells his story calmly: one word neatly marching behind the other in accepted fashion. Other times he shares his remembrances in rhyme and still others when he tells his story in a sweet blend of both. Here, for example, he shares the disappointing result after an early performance:

Maybe my speakers weren’t loud enough. Maybe the people didn’t recognize the jams. Maybe they weren’t in the mood. Maybe they just didn’t understand.

Whatever it was, you could have heard a pin drop in that park, and my stomach was starting to twist. I looked over and saw Miss Rose, Penny, Lilly, and Mom. They could tell I was crushed. I could see them hurting for me, but there was nothing they could do.

Career-wise, of course, things got better from there. Flash’s tale does not end with his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, but it’s close. And though the book concludes on a hopeful note, one gets the feeling a lot has been left unsaid. In some ways, though, that’s OK. On the journey he gives us a taste: the misunderstood talent, the larger-than-life success, the almost inevitable addiction followed by recovery followed by the reevaluation of a life that needs to be richly lived. If the latter years of The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash seem sketchy -- and they do -- it may just be that the book itself is a bit premature. This is a story still in progress with many chapters still to write.