We will never know what musicians are like in real life. We will never grasp an artist's true personality through interviews because they act as characters, conveying an image or promoting an album. Chuck Klosterman, renowned pop culture critic and author of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, illustrated this notion in a lecture at Brown University on Tuesday. An artful music critic can transcend the artist's "performance" in an interview by capturing not the musician's personality - not what the music sounds like, but what the music feels like. If you want a provocative, stirring read and have a soul for music (so, if you are a human) read Rob Sheffield's Love is a Mix Tape, a book that Klosterman dubs "the happiest, saddest, greatest book about rock 'n' roll that I've ever experienced."
Though Rob Sheffield (who you may recognize from a dozen of VH1 pop culture specials) reigns as Rolling Stone's king of critics, pumping witty and evocative insights into each review and interview, he pierces the soul in Love is a Mix Tape.
The book is a memoir, with recollections dating back to Sheffield's childhood. He begins each essay by describing a mix tape he crafted at each time, then he explains his life in relation to those songs and how they enhanced his life. He writes, "The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with - nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do." From summer camp to the first high school breakup, Sheffield relates events we all endure and enjoy through The Beatles, Duran Duran, Lou Reed, and even Hanson.
But Mix Tape rings with most intensity and pain through an experience we should never suffer: losing a spouse. After only a five-year marriage, Sheffield's healthy wife suddenly fell to a pulmonary embolism; she wasn't even 30. The abrupt defeat punches you in the gut and glistens your eyes. But the compassion and empathy of his mix tapes he made through her death fills him and us with warmth, capturing the cleansing power of music. If you want to know what musicians are like, or at least what compels them to create moving music, read Love is a Mix Tape to believe.
2008 Woodie Awards
