|
Never the Same Again: A Rock 'N' Roll Gothic
|
| Price: |
19 new or used available from $4.29
Average customer review:
Product Description
NEVER THE SAME AGAIN details the often tragic, always extraordinary life of Jesse Sublett—punk musician, novelist, survivor. After an out-of-town gig in the summer of 1976, the 20-year-old singer-songwriter returned to his Austin, Texas, bungalow to discover his girlfriend's gruesomely murdered body. The police focused on Jesse as the prime suspect—but he wound up solving the case for them. Recovering from the devastating loss of his girlfriend, he immersed himself in creative endeavors, founding the legendary punk band the Skunks, and later moving to Los Angeles to write screenplays and crime novels. After contracting a rare form of throat cancer, Jesse moved back to Austin to begin the hardest fight of his life. Here, Jesse candidly narrates his novel-worthy true story, a testament to art's power to heal the deepest wounds. The autobiography of famed punk band member and crime novelist Jesse Sublett, covering his first love's tragic murder, his music career, and his struggle with cancer.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #983713 in Books
- Published on: 2004-04
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 300 pages
Editorial Reviews
From AudioFile
This rock-and-roll memoir proposes an emotional connection between the murder of the author's young girlfriend and his contracting neck cancer some years later. Narrator Kyle Hebert perfectly captures the timbre and twang of the author, a Texas punk rocker and mystery novelist (the Martin Fender series), and yanks back the curtain of the rock scene of the '70s and '80s in Austin, New York, and beyond. The book is enhanced by the addition of five remixed songs from Jesse's seminal punk band, The Skunks, and an unedited interview with the author. Here's proof that at least one life was saved by rock and roll. R.O. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
LA Weekly (June 2004)
Sublett's humor is relatively pervasive; his voice conveys a resiliency known only to those who have stared down death.
Austin Chronicle (May 2004)
Never the Same Again is a gripping memoir that never feels forced or emotionally manipulative.
Customer Reviews
A Heart Wrenching Book
I was privileged to hear Jesse Sublett speak at ConMisterio in Austin. The way he presented himself and talked about his book intrigued me. A great-grandmother, I've never been particularly fond of rock music, but I bought the book and read it on my airplane ride back to California.
Mr. Sublett pours his heart and soul out in this book. It gave me some insight into the make-up of a musician. The way he writes about his music and how it makes him feel is revealing, especially to someone like me who had no prior knowledge.
However, the meat of the story is how the murder of his girlfriend affects his whole life, and how that devastating event also changes him and eventually even influences his choices during his life-threatening illness.
Once I began reading, I couldn't stop. I highly recommend Never the Same Again.
Marilyn Meredith, the author of Wishing Makes It So and Wingbeat
Life Imprinted with Death
It's gotta be a wild hopscotch between playing first wave punk in the late 70s and turning into a detective novelist for the next two decades. Yet, like his idol James Ellroy, Jesse Sublett's own life was imprinted with death. Sublett's talent lies not just in the vivid depiction of a nascent music scene in Austin, Texas but his deft juxtaposition of it as a man living with a dark memory and what might have been a bleak future. With wry humor and insight, Never The Same Again is in a category of its own in the rock book pantheon, an autiography turned up to 11.
detective work
Aside from his music, Jesse Sublett is known for his pulp detective novels. Here he turns his gaze inward, and exercises his detection skills to unravel his past and come to terms with an event which has troubled his sleeping and waking since its occurence. One of the few memoirs that I have read which treats the author's younger self with neither condesencion nor contempt: it captures his innocence even in "rebellion", and the lovely part is, that although he faced both the brutal murder of a lover and a deadly disease, that innocence has survived and blossomed into a new life.
