The Last Rock Star Book Or: Liz Phair,
a Rant
By Camden Joy
Verse Chorus Press
210 pages

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-      -    - ^-      A N ^{- -}             -   A _C C I D E N T A L - ^--  -- ^{- -}
------             - ---------^-  O B S E S S I O N -          ----------^-   -                -

------A bitter musician and rock critic is asked to toss
------together a cheap celebrity bio on Liz Phair.

Okay, I'm back. Now I've rewound and this works.

So.

How should I begin? I consult the Pocket Secretary 21 User Guide and it tells me, slide the one-button control fully upward and talk directly into the microphone. Ambient noise will be reduced proportionally to the distance at which the microphone is held.

Let's see.

This morning I received a phone call from an older guy named Gabriel Snell. He was calling from Florida, on a cell phone. He asked me to call him Gabe. Highway sounds came across the phone, rushing wind (the winds of Florida), brakes, swerves, decelerations. He explained that he puts out music-celebrity profiles, his particular expertise being picture books about ill-fated pop celebrities who have vanished or met with bad ends. Gabe was quite frank about his motives. He said he has cared nothing for popular music since Elvis got inducted into the army. His only interest in modern music is how often its silly dramas provide, and here I quote, "a ripe market." For reasons too numerous for Gabe to list, there is presently such a delightfully swift turnover of rock celebrities as to guarantee at least six individuals per year on whom he can commission profitable quickie where-are-they-now?-style biographies. He explained his formula for determining which newly departed faces deserve a farewell rock bio, but I have to say that like most marketing lingo his formula escaped me. I stopped listening, as I am apt to do, and spaced for a time, and when I tuned back in mention was being made of logarithmically deducting demographics from an "optimal franchise base" to calculate a "percentile of controversy" (honest to god) and all the polls you'd expect as well as the stuff about sales having once approached three hundred thousand units and the hint of a hit single. Gabe admitted he had never even noticed this Liz Phair when she was around but felt, from the surveys he had consulted, that some people must have, and they might be missing her, wondering where she had gone. Thus, Liz Phair was "ripe" (that word again!) for the Gabe Snell treatment. At the same time, he was nervous the memory of Liz Phair's career could disappear any minute. He told me he had once published a very well written book about a similar young female singer/songwriter named Laura Nyro who at one time was expected to accomplish great things, but never did. But Gabe had been too cocky and had waited too long, waited until she'd completely fallen out of sight before he commissioned the bio, and nearly lost his shirt in the lack of interest the book stirred. When I told him I'd once owned a copy of that book and had quite liked it, he seemed genuinely surprised. He said his failure to profit from the Nyro book taught him two things: run lots of photos and hurry it into print. "Don't wait till the body's cold," was how he put it. "I missed the forest 'cause I was too busy farting around in the trees." If he had worried less about what was written and had included more snapshots and gotten out the Nyro book when the market indicators were "lit," then he might have made some money. Instead, since Laura Nyro had sunk from memory, all his book could do (in a marketing sense) was go down after her. I said I could see his point.

Having spotted my name in a pile of press clippings on budding rock writers, Gabe hastily decided to commission me to dictate a book about Liz Phair and where she is now. I protested that I was no rock critic, that whole rap was a mistake. I had been a little sick in the head and had taken to writing things on the walls of big cities, and publishers had turned around and published what I'd written without me knowing. I didn't know enough rock criticism to fill a pair of shoes, much less a whole book. I knew a little, but I was mostly a musician.

"But you're familiar," he dramatically revealed, "with Liz Phair."

"I am?"

"Not familiar, maybe that's not the right word, none of these kids are even around long enough to be familiar, but she's your age, I just bet you could tell her story with your eyes shut. I know you've seen her picture."

"Oh, is she that one who suckles pigs with her shirt all like unbuttoned?"

"That's another one. That's someone from TV."

"So how do you know I've seen her?"

"Babe, was she high-profile a few years back! Giving out Grammies, on the cover of Rolling Stone --"

"Nope."

"No matter, no matter."

He wants twenty hours worth of microcassettes mailed to him in five days. He indicated he was sending me half the money now, the other half when he gets the microcassettes. (When he pronounced that word -- money -- I admit I suddenly became very intrigued by Liz Phair, and Yeah! I practically shouted into the receiver, where has she gone to, why don't we hear of her anymore? whoever she is). He feels I'll accomplish the task more quickly if I dictate it, because he knows how careful and precious writers start to be with their manuscripts, and has indicated that he cares very little what I say. Oh, was he smooth. He went back to assuring me I don't have to know where she is now to write a where-is-she-now?-style book. I don't even have to care or find out. He told me it's not about words but about pictures. He has hundreds of photos already picked out, on his car seat right beside him as we speak, pictures from Liz Phair's childhood of her dressed up at Halloween, that sort of stuff, as well as shots of her big moments in the media spotlight. He simply requires a bunch of verbiage he can wrap around the pictures to make them look a little more highbrow. He has a woman on staff who does nothing but transcribe microcassettes sent in by various writers around the country.

He said he would Fed Ex me everything I need -- press clippings, her CDs, a ton of bio material -- but he'd prefer I didn't wait for them to arrive before starting to dictate. "Remember Laura Nyro," Gabe kept saying. "We thought we had all the goddamn time in the world." When I repeated I didn't know what I had to say about Liz Phair because I couldn't even recall precisely who she was, he said that didn't matter. His experience has been that people buy his books for the pictures. "No one reads these things," he told me. "And no one remembers them."

So today I went out and cashed my disability check and snapped up this little Pocket Secretary 21 and here we are now, just the two of us. She takes AAA batteries. An accompanying booklet assures me the Pocket Secretary 21 epitomizes the continuing quality of portable recorders offered by Lorenz. The sleek styling, coupled with an unprecedented use of microelectronics, provides you with an extremely reliable and easy-to-use Thought Processor.

I'm sitting in the park near the room I rent in Sioux City. I'm staring out at the trees along Thermaducian Court, remembering what that Joyce Kilmer chick said about trees, how one is fine but two divine, or something like that. I'm attempting to Process My Thoughts. I'm back in Iowa, home sweet home. I don't really know what to include and what not to include. I just ate a red-white-and-blue popsicle I bought from an ice cream truck. I bought it because I liked the popsicle's name. It's called a Bomb Pop. I think I'll rewind and see how this sounds so far.

I should say something about Liz Phair now, since I guess we've gotten this far, and like me you might well wonder who or what she is.

So, okay. Liz Phair. I went to the library and looked her up in the periodical guide. I put in a request for a 1993 article about her first CD Exile in Guyville. The article was called: "Liz Phair: The Reluctant Star's Frank Tales of Male Betrayal." That issue was no longer available. The librarian felt sure that it had been stolen. "Someone steals all our magazines," she informed me pleasantly.

So: Liz Phair. Exile in Guyville. The Reluctant Star.

By now, these words either resonate for you or they don't. Perhaps you never knew her or perhaps you have forgotten her. Soon she might be the question to an obscure Jeopardy answer ("Uh, yes, Alex. Who is 'Liz Phair'?"), under some challenging category like "Feminists of the Past" or "Artists Who Choked under Pressure" or "Indie Disappointments."

Or perhaps you are thinking, Oh my god, that's right, Liz Phair -- where is she now? -- in these dire times it is most surely her strong presence that can provide the balance and reason so lacking of late. (Of course you're not reading these words anyway, you're looking at the pictures.) I really don't know what else to say about Liz Phair here. She stood a thousand feet tall and made the natives tremble. She drove the jeeps that made the children well. Liz Phair: cook at 350 degrees, basting all the while; serves eight. Liz Phair, consistently rich and delicious, cup after cup. Liz Phair -- crush 3/4 tsp. for use in eggplant, zucchini, and green beans. Liz Phair, brewer, patriot, and revolutionary. Sodium Free Liz Phair, refrigerate after opening. This is really hard. Now I've gone and made myself thirsty. I think I'll stop for a while and drink a glass of water.

N E X T_P A G E _| The futility of my youth