The King of Good Intentions II: The Continuing and Really Rather Quite Hilarious Misadventures of an Indie Rock Band Called The Weird Sisters, by John Andrew Fredrick
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The King of Good Intentions II: The Continuing and Really Rather Quite Hilarious Misadventures of an Indie Rock Band Called The Weird Sisters, by John Andrew Fredrick
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The King of Good Intentions II by Los Angeles songwriter and novelist John Andrew Fredrick picks up where we left off cliffhangingly, unsure whether John and Jenny, the brilliant and charming on-again/off-again couple who play in the fictitious fledgling indie band the Weird Sisters, will break up or not—as a couple or as the principal members of a getting-great band. Reconciled after an infidelity-that-can-be-explained or at least atoned for, King II opens as the Weird Sisters are on tour during the fateful day Kurt Cobain's suicide is announced. This undeniably hilarious sequel pits the little jangle pop band we're rooting for against an evil record label CEO'd by a guy who believes in aliens, various nefarious bookers and sound guys, drunken "punters," and lunatics and maniacs galore that Jenny, John, bassist Rob, and new and uproariously ridiculous new drummer Raleigh encounter on the zany road.A quintessential L.A. novel as well, King II finds John, the not-so-humble but endearing narrator, confronted by yet another dilemma of the femme fatale kind, as well as grappling with his deepening love for and attachment to Jenny, his beautiful girlfriend and bandmate and former piano prodigy.As II ends (with John getting a job as a P.A. on perhaps the most ludicrous video shoot in rock history), it sets up The Hollow Crown, a third installment—for Fredrick, without meaning to, and almost accidentally, has written a goddam trilogy.
The King of Good Intentions II: The Continuing and Really Rather Quite Hilarious Misadventures of an Indie Rock Band Called The Weird Sisters, by John Andrew Fredrick- Amazon Sales Rank: #1724693 in Books
- Published on: 2015-09-15
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x 1.20" w x 5.50" l, 1.24 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 424 pages
About the Author John Andrew Fredrick was born in Richmond, VA, and grew up in Santa Barbara, CA. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Barbara, he formed an indie rock band called The Black Watch that has released 17 records to considerable acclaim. He lives in Los Angeles.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. A Hilarious Ride By A radar You don't have to have read first King thoroughly to enjoy this delightful, sarcastic, poetic, and one-of-a-kind novel about an indie rock band on the road and its self-mocking and hilarious narrator, nor do you have to be a music snob (though both help)--but you do have to have, as John our hero does, a wicked or maybe twisted sense of humour. Beginning on the afternoon that Kurt Cobain's death-by-suicide is announced and ending at the location of an incredibly hilariously-described video shoot for a hard rock band that John, broke and exhausted, works on for an archtypical three days, The King of Good Intentions II itself (like the band, like John-who-is-really-trying-to-keep-it-together) goes for broke in describing in a kind of you might call it neo-Dickensian way, ALL of Los Angeles in the 90's. There are any number of sort of dramatic monologues in the narrative--a latino bass player who is cool and funny and who likes touring Canada because "people read up there"; there's a braggart (there are many braggarts in the music world Frederick limns) who cheats on his wife and is teaching his kids to cheat on the tennis court; there's two different preppy young women from John's past who are both articulate and neurotic and charming; there's a doctor who is just HILARIOUS in his self-involvement as he consoles an imaginary character who gets an STD; there's Bob Chalet, a horribly self-involved record executive (among many!); and the egregious Sylvia Doum, a publicist who is conceited and clueless. So many wacky yet believable characters here. And then of course all the rants John goes on in trying to navigate the dangerous and various waters of "making it" in "the biz." There's a David Foster Wallace-y section about a bus ride John takes that is marvelous, and there's a play-like part about his nervous breakdown post tour; there are descriptions of satellite types at rock shows and a conversation with an idiotic stoner record label president that is one of the funniest things I have read in a long time. And yet it all fits together somehow. And of course (not a spoiler, don't worry) there's the tender and fraught relationship between John and the other "front" person in the band, the beautiful piano prodigy Jenny, whom John knows he "must leave" and yet can't. There's a new dum-dum drummer to torture John (even worse, yet somehow more sympathetic than the horrible and unforgettable Walter in the first King), and Rob the bass player who is also really funny in a self-deprecating way, and who is along for the ride, as it were. The pages devoted to Rob and how he lived for a while with some sport-obsessed slackers who steal electricity from the laundry room in their apartment complex was too real, in fact; Frederick really makes you see the life these glorious dufuses lead as they try to work as little as possible and party as much as possible. All of the digressions in the novel, well, those are, for me, part of the fun. This is a book that lets its characters determine the plot. And of course the skewering of the movie world that John gets a sour taste of (that has its sweet side--you'll see) is spot on. It reminded me of the harum-scarum description of a baseball game that "Junior," John's alter-ego in the first King, blows. (Even though I have never seen a baseball game--it's a purely American sport--I found it uproarious). I must confess I was very very sorry to get to the end of the first King, and I can say the same thing about this one. Though, yet again, Frederick has left us hanging--the novel ends on a "to be continued" note. And it's a corker. And it doesn't look good for those of us who hoped John, after what he has seemingly suffered, would learn his lesson about flirting (pun) with disaster. I loved this book: its sometimes lush, if not purple-prosy, sometimes super to-the-point writing will keep you binge-reading for days on end. Anyone who loves indie rock and good comic writing, with some rather philosophical (and melancholy asides) will appreciate this gem. Can't wait for part three!! Here is a review from Good Reading Copy""Both novels follow a literary-minded frontman named John and his band, The Weird Sisters, through the early ‘90s indie rock scene. In the first novel, that’s mostly an LA-based proposition. The King II finds them on the road, shambling from one set of indignities to the next. This means the band has to deal with fans, label execs and publicity people, media members, club owners and, perhaps most significantly, one another.They’re in the van on an endless drive when they hear Kurt Cobain has died. Only one of the group’s four members is a fan, and it’s not John, who sets the tone for their travels. He handles the situation clumsily, there are minor recriminations, and we’re off and running with his hyper-analytical, often funny take on life on the road, as an ambitious, highly educated musician. There’s energy aplenty, verbal pyrotechnics, debauchery (but also admirable use of Jane Austen and George Eliot as conversational/pickup fodder).“Every band, at any level, believes they should be one level up,” John says at one point, and it’s easy to want that for The Weird Sisters. It’s easy to want that for John Andrew Fredrick, novelist and rock star (don’t split hairs with me – he’s more rock star than you or I will ever be). This one may have slipped under your radar, but the road to forgiveness is painless. That was a hint about buying the book.Later, our fearless leader/narrator quotes the English novelist Elizabeth Bowen on dialogue – it’s “what characters do to each other” – and adds, “Speech is action. Isn’t that wonderful?” It is in the hands of a writer who understands the corollary in more than a theoretical way, and Fredrick does. The King II is something like one of those land-speed vehicles, hurtling across the desert floor, propelled by talk. The driver keeps turning to you and talking at high speed, and you think, “We’ve veered off course,” only you don’t say anything. You give in to the scenic route, as narrated by a man whose synapses fire at very high speed, and who somehow manages to relay that endless series of connections and asides in real time. You might agree with him or not, but about the time you’ve formulated a response, he’s on to something else, not by way of squashing dissent, but because he’s the pilot, by God, and whatever else, his intentions are good (get it? have you been paying attention at all?).
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. 'Long on material for jeremiads like this' By John L Murphy A fresh novel about the travails of a struggling musician on L.A.'s indie-rock fringe, this sequel to The King of Good Intentions (see my review) continues the story of John and his jangle-pop band, The Weird Sisters. Likely at least semi-autobiographical, narrated after all by John with frequent asides to us, this takes up the tale on the 5th of April, 1994, the day Kurt Cobain died. While only Raleigh, the new drummer, feels bereft by this news as the band ends its West Coast tour in their woebegone van, John, and his fellow Sisters girlfriend Jenny and bassist Rob, convey their own emotions, as they contend with the usual litany of woes on a tiny record label's budget, and their dreary day jobs. It's similar to the late-career Spinal Tap playing puppet shows and pizza parlors, sans wigs or bombast.They realize the long odds, for 'there are zillions of Nigel Tufnels out there, in Technicolor verisimilitude, readying their teapot tempests, viewing their at once shrunken and little self-important lives through metaphorical shrink wrap.' Fredrick, who teaches college English while fronting for decades The Black Watch, connects commentary with comedy, erudition to emotion. He takes more chances in this second novel, too. Consider, in extended set-pieces of a dozen or twenty pages, the maximalist style and elevated diction which Alexander Theroux's books exemplify. 'Eudaemonic snowman', 'plethoric poses', 'untinctured marzipan', and 'orgulous orbit' speckle a ramble on musicians' follies. Dr Johnson and The Rambler, besides, earn name-checks, alongside Bloom and Hobbes, Hamlet and Macbeth, Plato and Chaucer, Karen Horney and Jean Renoir. Not your usual rocker's lament from the road. Ten pages on terrible tours entertain; so do those on a break-up, travails of record-label workers, and a diversion starting on L.A.'s woeful buses and ending in death.Fredrick stumbles here, however, when cliches about Westside mini-moguls and riffs on a bigoted ex-pat posse of Brits in Santa Monica and a visit to randy Jewish doctor fall flat. 'Sony Bono' is a great typo, but too many others mar the prose's flow. All the same, for 450 pages, this roars along, in overdrive for the frenzied satire, downshifting for clever flirtation or existential lament. You feel the 'ass death' of sitting in the van, you smell the farts. In the middle of a Central California highway stop, the prose bursts into 'what atrocious colloquies one has to have in bands'. The Sisters contend with musical marginalization a post-Kurt grunge mood, their miniscule fan base of twee chicks and twinkly critics remains so, and their psychedelic-fuzz, lyrically literate CD languishes undistributed.But these, fans or not, delight. Bob Chalet of Bob Chalet Records, truculent publicist Sylvia Doum, Brit bar bore Barnacle Bob, Jen's father the whingeing Ogre, the fanzine scribe Flake with 'skin like the inside of a candy bar wrapper' move the story along, even if John in his frustration with the mechanics of fiction relegates plots to cemeteries. For this picaresque tale recalls its 18th-century predecessors, the London scribblers of the demi-monde. Fredrick integrates his academic training in this period with dissecting late 20th-century foibles, and his scholarly bent enriches this narrative.The results, which begin and end in medias res (for this saga will turn a trilogy, we are told early on), capture John's tetchy voice, a winning if often whining one. It can be bright, as with romance, or dim, as when a nervous breakdown invokes 'The Waste Land, stripped of...nothing.' While admittedly 'long on material for jeremiads like this', it deftly conjures up Ulysses and The Great Gatsby as it fades. And with the promise of The Hollow Crown, we will welcome the conclusion of the Weird Sisters' spells.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. ... it again with Part 2 of The King of Good Intentions. The book reads pretty closely to how ... By Amazon Customer The master of vocabulary does it again with Part 2 of The King of Good Intentions. The book reads pretty closely to how he talks in person! Which is to say witty, exuberant, passionate, humble. So much detail, and very 3 dimensional characters. Honest writing that never falls into cliches, the book is refreshing and an all around fun read--i never knew what to expect with each turn of the page, and i was always happily surprised.
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