The Quarter-Life Reviews

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Back in 1994, Australian rock journalist published his first book, a biography about the Australian band Silverchair called Tomorrow Never Knows. It was a decent first attempt at a book, although, after it was published it was pointed out by many die hard Silverchair fans that there were many errors scattered amongst the pages (for example he switched the instruments of two of the members on one of the first pages, he stated that the lead singer was suffering from an illness…that after some quick research on my part only affects canines, and over all it just seemed to drag off on two many tangents about the state of the music business instead of staying on the topic of the band, focused entirely too much on the lead singer…and overall just seemed unprofessional for someone that was a veteran journalist. I suppose for those who hadn’t been die hard fans of the band it was a decent book, but for the fans that had more or less been fans from the beginning it was a let down.

After the book was released, Apter released several more books, one being a biography of Red Hot Chili Peppers. This attempt was much better. It seemed much more professional, I personally didn’t pick up on any blantant errors so I forgave him for his first attempt at writing a book.

A few months ago it was announced that Apter has updated his first book…went in and fixed up all the errors, cut out the really boring parts and added quite a bit as the band is currently in the process of releasing their fifth studio album and in between this album and the last album had been involved in varying degrees of sucessful side projects. So needless to say, I received this news with both excitment and a bit of apprehension…and so I asked my Australian buddy for the book for X-mas, which he did…what a champ!

I finished reading it today, and I have to say that I was impressed by how well Apter did on this book compared to the last version. Quite a bit of it was the same as far as the quotes and some of the interviews but it seemed that some of the parts that didn’t work in the first book were taken out…and their was a new introduction to the book, and the last few chapters were completely new. And probably the one thing that made me happy was that in the first book, at the end, there was a full interview with the lead singer…(and scattered through the book was other, similar interviews with other people associated with the band)…but he hadn’t sat down with the bassist or the drummer for the same type of interview which is something that really bothered me about the first book. I don’t know why, but I’ve always been protective of them in that regard.

So overall I really enjoyed this book, it was nice to “revisit” my favorite band from my teenage years…for the last year or two I really haven’t paid too much attention to them…I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I really sat down to listen to any of their albums…which was a bit strange considering that from the time I was 14 until about a year or so ago I’d listen to at least one of albums a couple times a week. But now after reading the book I’ll probably go and start listening to their albums again on a more regular basis, and start looking forward to their new album coming out.