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BOOK REVIEW! EVERYTHING IS COMBUSTIBLE---TELEVISION, CBGB'S AND FIVE DECADES OF ROCK AND ROLL BY RICHARD LLOYD (Heech Hill Publishing Company, 2018)

Dunno how this book got an '18 copyright date considering how we're still stuck here in good ol' '17, but I ain't gonna be a stickler'r anything about it. The ahead-of-its-time date only gives me hope that there WILL be an '18 to live through, kinda like the feeling I got when I was a mere turdler and I was worried about "today" being the end of the world only I was told that since it was already tomorrow in Asia and they were still up 'n about we were safe over here in their yesterday and boy did I feel good about it!

Boy has there been a spate of good rock 'n roll reading this past year or three what with previous faves like the Stooges book, that Suicide bio, the DENIM DELINQUENT compendium and the Sal Maida autobio entering into our fart-encrusted abodes, but now there's this killer to contend with! And what a killer it is, a read that I wasn't even expecting to get hold of (a premature Christmas gift courtesy Robert Forward, who I think got his surname due to his definitely forward thinking) and you can bet that I have recharged my rock 'n roll batteries because of its entry into my life! I mean, I actually got one of those uncontrollable rock thrills (the same kind I get reading classic hard-edged Velvets-spawned scrawl that cut to the quick of my being......ooooooooohhhh!) that I can only obtain while absorbing the likes of Laughner, Bangs, Meltzer, Kent... under the influence of a great high energy spinner so you know this just ain't some hippy rehash of the greatness of mudfests and brain-raped platitudes being foistered upon us like so many ill-minded attempts to relay the energy, violence and atonality of rock 'n roll upon us lumpen fanboys.  

Not that ex-Television guitarist Lloyd ain't whatcha'd call a top notch writer---he somehow comes off timid in his style coming off as if you're reading a letter from your cousin in the Peace Corps right before he gets captured and dumped into a boiling cauldron---but the guy sure has the tales to spin and spin them he does purty GOOD!

Maybe Tom Verlaine or Billy Ficca (dunno about Fred Smith) could deal out a better read but this one is prime enough. Lotsa talk goin' on here about the people Lloyd rubbed elbows with, the good guys and the bad, and it does make for some stimulating reads because we all know what weird creatures these rock people can be and well, having it reinforced once in awhile will make you glad that maybe you were stuck in your suburban squats back inna seventies dreaming about hanging out at Max's Kansas City like all of the other member of the New Culture because things could get a little hectic out there and what do fifteen-year-old pimplefarms know about protecting themselves against predators and drug-addled hypo-nuts anyway???

Great stuff...the various late-sixties/early-seventies pre-Television tales regarding the likes of some famous names like Jimi and Led Zep and PLENTY on Lloyd's close and personal friend Velvert Turner whose tale could make up another hefty-sized tome if it hasn't already. Television's own history is recorded though perhaps not quite in the detail that one would have hoped while even the Piccadilly Inn gigs with Rocket From The Tombs get a nice li'l bit of space you know it probably wouldn't have gotten had this book came out a good three or so decades earlier. Other names like Keith Richard, Anita Pallenberg and Buddy Guy make their way into the book and the tales they generate sure'll make what's left of your frontals do a few snizzle pops ifyaknowaddamean...

I even grooved heavily on Lloyd's psychiatric troubles where he relates his own mental crackup and tales of his stay in Creedmore undergoing treatments I would consider dubious even by sixties standards. If you think your favorite rockers were raving lunatics the people who occupied the beds where Lloyd was staying would have made the ultimate rock group and don't you kid yourself---if only they could untie their restraining straps!

Bad points, the overemphasis on matters s-xual and otherwise. Yeah I know I'm a prood and that this kinda material seems to come with the territory anymore but that doesn't mean I have to like reading about Lloyd's "trisexual" appetites and who screwed who or about Lloyd standing there nude while Danny Fields flibbened his jib because the former wasn't feeling flittery at the time. When I start reading about the durtier aspects of various celeb lifestyles I kinda feel like that guy who's walking his dog inna park and has to watch the dog take a dump so he can scoop it up in a plastic grocery bag to be properly disposed of. You know, observe the sphincter open and the brown load come out then pick it up with the bag as so none of the defecation touches his mitts even though you know poop smell can permeate just about anything as us frequent wipers can tell you. If you like it fine but sheesh, I've heard enough about the private and not-so hobbies of some of the real big names of showbiz from what Don Fellman tells me after he listens to Gilbert Gottfried's podcasts, and if Danny Thomas and Charles Laughton were as sicko as they were then you can just guess how a under-the-underground guy like Lloyd came off!

If you want to read this I ain't stoppin' ya. EVERYTHING IS COMBUSTIBLE's a fine stroll through sixties/seventies rock 'n roll history (the good stuff, not the ROLLING STONE junk that has been presented as such these past fifty years), but remember, do save your plastic grocery bags because you're gonna NEED 'em!