Nick
What the book promises: the memoir of a punk/hardcore legend, chronicling his early days all the way through today. The synopsis leads the reader to believe this will be a comprehensive story of Cappo’s life including the trials and tribulations of being in a touring band and the story of what led him to Hinduism and becoming a Hare Krishna.
What the book delivers: well, yes, there are spats of personal stories and glimpses of life on a touring band, but they are put on the back burner to a full description of the Hare Krishna lifestyle. This is more of a new age-y holistic medicine and fable book than it is any sort of memoir. There are a few anecdotes thrown in that are supposed to be a bit of a frame, but they don’t really go anywhere.
This was a rough one. I did like the beginning wherein Cappo describes a culture shock moment as well as his intro to the punk scene and religion with some familiar faces.
However, very suddenly it becomes obvious that this is closer to a religious tract than it is any sort of insight into the “punk to monk” journey promised. For those wanting to learn more about Cappo’s music, let me put it this way: he describes bowel movements more than he does Youth of Today and semen more than BT1K. I could go on, but I’m sure you get the gist.
One thing that really bothered me is his constant infantalizing and fetishizing of Indian people. Every person in India he encounters is either too cute or extremely beautiful to a point of it being weird. And, for those interested in the audiobook, he does an Apu accent for every Indian person. Now, if they actually sound like that, whatever. But he’ll talk about how he barely understands their Hindi but then relay the message in a terrible Indian/English charicature voice. Not sure who signed off on that.
Highly recommend to stay away from this one.
What the book promises: the memoir of a punk/hardcore legend, chronicling his early days all the way through today. The synopsis leads the reader to believe this will be a comprehensive story of Cappo’s life including the trials and tribulations of being in a touring band and the story of what led him to Hinduism and becoming a Hare Krishna.
What the book delivers: well, yes, there are spats of personal stories and glimpses of life on a touring band, but they are put on the back burner to a full description of the Hare Krishna lifestyle. This is more of a new age-y holistic medicine and fable book than it is any sort of memoir. There are a few anecdotes thrown in that are supposed to be a bit of a frame, but they don’t really go anywhere.
This was a rough one. I did like the beginning wherein Cappo describes a culture shock moment as well as his intro to the punk scene and religion with some familiar faces.
However, very suddenly it becomes obvious that this is closer to a religious tract than it is any sort of insight into the “punk to monk” journey promised. For those wanting to learn more about Cappo’s music, let me put it this way: he describes bowel movements more than he does Youth of Today and semen more than BT1K. I could go on, but I’m sure you get the gist.
One thing that really bothered me is his constant infantalizing and fetishizing of Indian people. Every person in India he encounters is either too cute or extremely beautiful to a point of it being weird. And, for those interested in the audiobook, he does an Apu accent for every Indian person. Now, if they actually sound like that, whatever. But he’ll talk about how he barely understands their Hindi but then relay the message in a terrible Indian/English charicature voice. Not sure who signed off on that.
Highly recommend to stay away from this one.