Jizzy Pearl Angst For the Memories
By
Mick Stingley,
Contributor
Monday, June 3, 2002 @ 9:04 AM
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There are great pleasures in reading, and more for a rock fan, when they get to read the twisted ink of a rock singer.
With his degrees in hard knocks and hard rock, L.A. Troubadour and rock and roll Icarus, (current Ratt singer, ex-Love/Hate singer)
Jizzy Pearl offers 25 brutal and hilarious short works compiled in one self-published neo-auto-biography, “Angst For The Memories.”
His second such collection of jaded hyperbole and glittering hymns to the fractured humanity of “the rock and roll lifestyle”, (a follow-up to “I Got More Crickets Than Friends”) his new book also offers some forays into fiction. Though easily digested on a plane from Miami to NYC, Pearl’s book is far more substantial than an in-flight magazine.
The opening story “DEATH=JOB=DEATH” is a funny, well-paced piece that recalls early Stephen King. The book takes off from there with alternating rear-view mirror glimpses on his experiences as a touring rock singer -- “Lounge Lizardry,” “Gig Butt,” “Wendy” and “Green Pontiac” (about “groupies”), and some personal history, “Gas Station” and “Thai Stick” -- to bizarre stories about sideshow freaks, “Dwidgets” and fast food corporate merchandising evils, “The General.” A girl’s point-of-view on stripping peels away the scarves of pretense of that vocation in “Christmas Eve at The Spearmint Hippo.” And Jizzy’s tales of his neighbors ("The Delicate Torture Of Everyday Life") almost makes you want to drive by his house. ALMOST…
But the real stand-outs are the grim fairy tales, “Ants,” “Shit A Flute” and “A Minor Annoyance.” These last two read like unproduced scripts from David Cronenberg. Unrelentingly ghastly, they are at once gross-out funny and warped. “Ants,” a cocaine allegory, is a terrific piece of prose and might be best described as “if Rod Serling wrote for Hustler.”
In between and here and there are peeks out the tour bus window or stolen moments from the hotel rooms across America, where Pearl rants with style on a variety of subjects. The short piece, “Branding” should be our national crime program.
And with all that, page 216 has one of the best descriptive sentences ever written to convey fear and set a mood. “Angst For The Memories” is a fast fun read, with more than enough grit to sand a dancefloor.
The book is available at his website: jizzypearl.com
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