Book Review: Light & Shade - Conversations with Jimmy Page by Brad Tolinski

Grandma Romeo had given me some money for my birthday.  I can't recall exactly how much or even which birthday it was.  And I'm not sure if I ended up in the music section of Caldor or Bradlees, but I do remember one thing clearly.

My brother recommended using my precious funds to purchase my first record.  I probably was only five or six years old, come to think of it, so the record had been out for a few years already.  The record was Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy.

I spent the next few years enthralled by what we'd now call Classic Rock, a term I despise as it evokes a radio programming slot rather than the power it imparted to many a young mind.  The same way RunDMC would grab me a decade later, and U2 shortly after that, Led Zep, along with Aerosmith and Black Sabbath and their ilk, allowed me to dream beyond the confines of ordinary life.

As a young guy, I preferred the more poppy tunes on the album: Dancing Days, D'yer Mak'er (the title of which I didn't get for many years).  Now, the solemn, driving No Quarter and the moody Over the Hills and Far Away appeal more.  But Led Zep shine has never faded in my heart and ears though my tastes have shifted away from rock n roll as I pass from youth to middle age.

Brad Tolinski's interview-based biography of Jimmy Page was, for me, then, like drawing back the curtain on the wizard of my childhood, but, unlike Dorothy, finding that there really was a wizard back there working the controls.  Tolinski himself is an avowed fan, so if the book has any fault, it would be his unremitting praise even for some of Page's lackluster post-Zep projects, but I suppose we can forgive him that much if it buys us passages like this:

Q:  While "Immigrant Song" is built around a very straightforward, pile-driving riff, it's the subtle variations in it that make it more than just another hard-rock song.  For example, toward the very end of the song, instead of playing a straight G minor for the accents, you play this very astringent inversion of that chord that really adds some bite.  Where did that come from?
A:  It's a block chord that people never get right.  It pulls the whole tension of the piece into another area or another dimension just for that moment and a bit of backwards echo makes it a bit more complete.  It's putting all these elements together that makes the music have depth. ... So to answer your question, where did that unusual G chord come from?  I didn't have that chord when I started writing the "Immigrant Song," but it suddenly appeared while we were working together, putting on a massive brake to this machine.  You know those old brakes where you clutch them and it just pulls out again, pulling it back in - that's how I see the function of that chord.

Great to know that there really is magic in this world.

Book Review: The Queen of Katwe

It would be easy to dismiss Tim Crothers's The Queen of Katwe as just another feel-good, underdog triumph tale.  And, make no mistake, it is exactly that - but it's a darn good one all the same.  If a person can live in the most abject poverty and disadvantage imaginable and yet rise to junior chess champion of her continent, maybe we all can dare to hope.  Maybe we all can take inspiration from Phiona Mutesi and do something with our lives, accomplish something during our brief stay on earth.

As you'd expect, though, the book lacks nuance and complexity where it needs it most.  The author states in the epilogue that, upon writing a magazine article on Phenomenal Phiona, he knew he must expand it to book length and tell the whole story.  Now, the book will only do good for Phiona (and possibly others in Katwe), but the story (at least as Crothers relates it) should have remained in the periodical realm.

He spends the crucial second chapter telling the rather confusing life story of the man who came to run the program that introduced Phiona to chess, and many other parts drag on as filler to take a rather simple story to book length.  At the same time, Crothers pays no attention to the political realities of Uganda that foster the slums which make Phiona the rare exception to the rule of degrading and desperate poverty.  He mentions Idi Amin in passing several times as if he were simply a former president, like Gerald Ford, and not the Uber-African despot.  In the end, the book reads like an overlong magazine fluff piece, when it could have been a serious book about not only an exceptional girl, but also about the world which makes a successful girl something to marvel at.