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Black Postcards: A Rock & Roll Romance | 
 enlarge | Author: Dean Wareham
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $10.44
You Save: $15.51 (60%)
New (44) Used (18) Collectible (1) from $10.44
Avg. Customer Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 167525
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 1594201552
Dewey Decimal Number: 782.42166092
EAN: 9781594201554
ASIN: 1594201552
Publication Date: March 13, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: SATISFACTION GUARANTEED! NEW Book! May have remainder mark. Most orders ship within 1 BUSINESS DAY with ORDER CONFIRMATION.
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Product Description
A bewitching account of the lures, torments, and rewards of making and performing some of the most interesting music in some of the most iconic indie bands (Galaxie 500, Luna) in recent memory
What do you do if you're an outsider with a funny accent coming of age in alien bastions of privilege in New York City and Cambridge, Massachusetts? If you're a certain sort of kid, you front a rock band. And if you're Dean Wareham, you end up founding a rock band, Galaxie 500, that continues to enjoy what can be called notable postmortem cult success. And then you start a new band, Luna, which enjoys even more spectacular, albeit still "cult" success (which means they don't play your songs on mainstream radio and you never crack MTV), until, some fifteen years after it began, that band reaches its natural end too. And then you write a book about it all: an unsentimental journey through the great, world-wide indiemusic landscape.
A wickedly honest and unsparing account of a journey through the music world-the artistry and the hustle, the effortless success and the high living as well as the bitter pills and self-inflicted wounds-by a brilliant and fearless participant-observer, Black Postcards is absurdly rich in rewards for anyone who was ever in a band or just took an interest in indie music over the past twenty years-a sort of Kitchen Confidential written by a different species of front man. Black Postcards also captures what has happened, for good and ill, to the entire ecosystem of popular music over this time of radical change, a time when categories like "indie" and "alternative" started to morph beyond all recognition. Rolling Stone called Dean Wareham's band Luna "the greatest band you've never heard of " and named its album Penthouse one of its 100 greatest rock albums of our time. Black Postcards is also about what it's like to have to pretend to be civil as you answer the same helpful question over and over again, "Why aren't you guys more famous?" Why indeed?
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| Customer Reviews: Read 18 more reviews...
 Smart and funny. July 30, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
I love a good Rock & Roll autobiography and this one is everything you hope for: Wareham is smart enough to quote Trotsky but funny enough to crack dirty jokes about tour life, he's old enough to have perspective about the industry but young enough to not be nostalgic. I was quoting lines out of it to friends the whole time I was reading it, such as "Perhaps we were postmodern. Perhaps we were just old fashioned."
Wareham Fans - Rejoice! July 13, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
After being a huge fan of both Galaxie 500 and Luna, I was giddy with delight when I learned that Dean Wareham wrote an autobiography.
It's not often when you can say you loved, not one, but two bands with the same singer/songwriter guitarist.
This is a great read if you're a fan of either band.
But even if you're not, the style and musings of Wareham are insightful and dryly comical.
Fans of both bands can arguably say that either/both should have been much more popular then they were and in a perfect world, their songs should be playing on radio stations all over the world.
Not to say they should be making a lot more money.
The not so glamorous world of an indie, and even major label,band is captured in a warts and all telling.
And the in-fighting among bandmates is understandable if you're living with them in smelly vans and hotel rooms 24 hours a day.
As a postscript - if you're a big Luna fan, I would recommend their travelogue DVD "Tell Me Do You Miss Me" that captures the final tour.
Great stuff.
This rating system should go to eleven... June 26, 2008
I really enjoyed this book.
I think the overarching theme is the battle of the creative soul against group think.
The record labels selling the "bruit du jour", the media selling "shock and awe", and our cultural legacies that define the proper "progression" of our lives. At times that creative soul is triumphant and you pant your flaming Seminole on the battle field of life, other times you wind up drunk and stoned, eating cheez whiz and wonder bread sandwiches at 3am, and wondering where the hell you went wrong.
I guess the key is to recognize when you reached that creative dead-end and have the courage to forge a new path. Even if that feels like backtracking. Even you feel the sting of loss.
The Book leads you candidly through his journey to (and out of) several of these dead-end. He does this in literary tones that oscillate from reverence for the creative work that might have been, to playful banter on the absurdities of business, love and the creative process.
Aspiring musicians will benefit from the catalog of pitfalls and "early warnings" he documents. Music fans who grew up in the alternative rock scene of the 90's will especially love the behind the scenes view of a music industry under siege financially by Napster, and artistically by "grunge".
All-in-all a great read you don't have to be a Galaxie 500, Luna, or Dean & Britta fan to enjoy.
Hope this review helps :-)
Why's everybody look so strange? Here's the answer. June 18, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I could ask Dean Wareham lots of questions about him, Galaxie 500, Luna etc. But now my mind is clear. I believe he was honest while he was writing. Not only any fan of Dean Wareham or Luna or Galaxie 500 but everybody who likes music more than a listener must read the book, it's a pleasure and it's as important as listening to Tugboat or 23 Minutes In Brussels, anyway. and it is more than a book about a man and his band(s), it has lots of points about being in a band and making music business. Moreover, you can figure out some points how the modern rock/indie music scene developed. as a personal note; i haven't read a book, easy to follow and understand like this one, even written in my native language.
Don't Let Our Youth Go to Waste...Dean Wareham's Cathartic Black Postcards June 14, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Andy Warhol said that in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. If one is lucky enough to land a recording contract with a name record company, write brilliantly crafted rock songs, and tour endlessly, then one might get to be 'almost famous' for 15 years. Such is the story that Dean Wareham, who was the lead singer songwriter of the alternative/indie rock bands Galaxie 500 and Luna, tells in his hilariously satirical, meticulously detailed and occasionally disturbing semi-autobiographical tome, "Black Postcards: A Rock Roll Romance" (The Penguin Press, New York, 2008). This is an essential read for anyone who loves rock music, as it is one of the most well written and insightful accounts from the trenches of the often seamy and occasionally glorious scene that was the alternative rock music business.
Drawing his reminiscences from a diary that his father, a successful management consultant suggested he keep, Wareham chronicles his middle class childhood in New Zealand and later in New York City. It was in New York where Dean came of age in the late 1970's during the halcyon days of punk and new wave. Like a sponge, Wareham absorbed the music, the style and the ethos of punk and new wave rock. Ever opinionated, Wareham quickly draws sharp lines of demarcation between "good" and "bad" music. The Clash, Joy Division, Talking Heads, and The Feelies fell into Dean's category of "good" music. U2, Metallica, The Cure and other big name bands who received extensive radio airplay, were not especially 'cool'. That the dizzying list of bands Wareham cites as influences, recorded abrasively uncommercial rock music and achieved only cult status is exactly the point, as it was that do it yourself for the sake of the music ethos that shaped Wareham's later choices of the people he befriended, the guitars he played, the bands he formed and the music that he created. Galaxie 500 and Luna were "not the Beatles" nor Nirvana as Dean wryly observes, but Wareham and band mates achieved the more modest aim of making rock music that was quieter than grunge but which was every bit as gripping. Wareham and Galaxie 500 members Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang distilled the urban folk-rock of The Velvet Underground as well as 60's garage rock to create jangly and trace-like guitar based rock. After Galaxie 500's demise Wareham, along with Luna band mates, Justin Harwood, Stanley Demeski, and Sean Eden (and later Britta Phillips) developed a more rhythmic and angular sounding rock described as "dream pop". When each band was at the top of their game, several critically acclaimed alternative rock records emerged, namely "Today" by Galaxie 500 and "Penthouse" and "Pup Tent" by Luna.
Wareham could have subtitled his book, "a Rock & Roll Alternative", because, Wareham is forever faced with choices. The choice making process that Wareham describes, gives "Black Postcards" its' dramatic tension. Dozens of choices must be made in a rock & roll life from the mundane to the potentially life altering. Whether to continue to take college classes or to instead spend a lot of time learning how to play guitar really well; which producer to hire to mix an album; how to spend time on tour after performing at sparsely attended shows; whether to be faithful to his wife or to romance the new female band member, Britta Phillips. What is frustrating about Wareham is that he more often than not makes the wrong choices. Not one to get too glum or mope about his lapses in good judgement, Wareham keeps the tone of his story loose by injecting copious amounts of deadpan, satirical and scatological humor, thus refreshingly breaking up the tedium of the seemingly endless road tours, sleazy hotels, and internal bickering among the band members. The following passage about a night spent in Los Angeles in 1989 seeing the bands Hole and The Dwarves is priceless:
"The Dwarves took it to another level. The guitarist (who was called He Who Cannot Be Named) wore only a jockstrap and a hockey mask. The singer (Blag Dahlia) wore a pair of fishnet tights and no underwear, so his package was quite visible. After their final song, the drummer knocked over the drum kit, pulled down his pants, and mooned the audience. Then he inserted two fingers in his a**. That was a show stopper." (Black Postcards, at p.99).
Wareham does not spare himself from his critiques, as he relates how he gradually came to grips (through therapy) with the uglier aspects of his own personality and saw how his destructive behavior hurt the people closest to him. Wareham conveys real pain when he describes the scene where he looks across a street and sees the nanny wheeling Jack, his then two year old son, away from him and effectively out of his life. "This was the worst moment of my life. Of course I know that other people live through much worse. Mine were the problems of a spoiled and self-indulgent singer/songwriter. Still this was my moment and it hurt. Never mind that it was self-inflicted." (Black Postcards at p.240).
"Black Postcards" is an essential rock read, because it is a lively narrative of rock & roll from the point of view of a talented but commercially unsuccessful rocker. Some complain that Wareham should have described more of the creative process that went into making Galaxie 500's and Luna's paeans of teen angst, lust and boredom, but these details were not essential to the intensely personal saga that Wareham tells. Like all the best rock records that when finished playing leave you wanting more, both Galaxie 500 and Luna did it their way, did it well, and then they broke up...the process often being rocky but a process of evolving nonetheless. Not many rock bands can say that they achieved such creative success and hopefully now that Wareham has written about his adventures, more people will check out the stark beauty of Galaxie 500's and Luna's music. Dean Wareham is to be commended for deflating some of the pompous rock myths and for honestly describing the price one pays should one choose to live out the adolescent fantasy of being a rock star. "Black Postcards A Rock & Roll Romance" captures the edgy and thrilling danger that good rock music is.
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