The least authoritative rock reference book ever published!
FOR THE KINKY
USA $10 UK £8 CANADA $13 EU €9
Paypal: jnmfiction@gmail.com
“The funniest rock'n'roll writer OF ALL TIME
— Barney Hoskyns
The UK’s most decorated rock biographer and archivist
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I began writing about rock in Rolling Stone’s infancy, and along with St. Lester Bangs, became one of the co-kings of the magazine’s reviews section, this — insanely! — while also trying o become one about whom reviews were written. I was a minor rock star myself for a short while there, a pal and confidante of the likes of Pete Townshend and David Bowie. In a snit after Rolling Stone spoke unkindly of my own recording debut, I sneaked over to Creem, and continued to disarm, provoke, and even infuriate in equal measure. But don’t believe me. Believe Ira Robbins of Trouser Press:
"One of the most illustrious and provocative of my forebears in the rock writing swindle, a man who has continued to write and make music for more than a half-century, John Mendelssohn has had an incredible life. Hs story is an all-star cavalcade of loathing, brilliance, and disaster in and among the lions of popular music."
Rolling Stone described my Rhino Music-published 1995 autobiography, I, Caramba, as “like Portnoy’s Complaint as written by Pete Townshend.” (I couldn’t make heads or tails of. that either!) I continued performing original music even after the loss of my looks in a tragic aging accident, and then, during the darkest days of theCOVID pandemic, resolved to write the least authoritative, but most fun rock reference book ever published, mixing wild re-imaginings with lurid tales of the genre’s most resplendent megastars with amusing excoriations of all that had come to make me wonder, “What are they doing to the music that I used to love so much?
[Robbins again:] In Rock N’ Droll, Mendelssohn has tossed his own tale in a mixer with an uproariously inventive fictional chronicle of rock and pop that offers both Pythonesque farce and "wait, did that really happen?" uncertainty. Laugh-out-loud funny for those in the know and confounding to anyone hoping for a reliable lesson in the history of rock, this is what we old-timers (the ones who didn't take drugs) used to call a "mind-fuck." And I mean that in the best possible sense.
The Guardian’s Caroline Sullivan: “Rock N’ Droll,is every hilarious bit the equal of his fabled writing for Creem and Rolling Stone.” Not to be outdone, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Pam Grady gasped, “The history of rock ‘n’ roll as you’ve never seen it or imagined it emerges out of John Mendelssohn’s fever dream of a book.”
Funniest rock ’n’ roll writer OF ALL TIME that I am, I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy reading Rock N’ Droll, as I think countless tens of thousands of rock and even rawk fans will be too.
The story of one man's evolution from a traditional male dom with fierce high heels and long glove fetishes into an avid worshipper of glamrous older women. Sometimes funny, sometimes suspenseful, and always sexy!
USA $10 UK £8 CANADA $13 EU €9
Paypal: jnmfiction@gmail.com
In this 17,000-word novella (whose brevity is reflected in its price), two proud feminists learn to embrace their innate submissiveness in the bedroom with lovers who help them come to recognize their submission as indicative of strength, rather than weakness. Must reading for any woman ashamed of her inclination to deference. SEE VIDEOS.
USA $7 UK £5 CANADA $9 EU €8
Paypal: jnmfiction@gmail.com
A German bass player who was almost in my band the Freudian Sluts believes my stories to be reminiscent of Lucia Berlin's. I didn't know her work, but didn't think our stuff was that similar. Better I should remind people of Stanley Elkin!
For what it's worth, I was one of the winners of the PEN Syndicated Fiction contest late in the century before that in which I wrote these 112 stories in all sorts of unlikely places. I wrote The Total Babe while living in the wine country north of San Francisco in 2000, and both A Message From Jesus in Braille and A History of the Jews while in arty, grimy Beacon, New York. The remaining three were all born, bred, and haphazardly proof-read in the southwest corner of London.
USA $10 UK £8 CANADA $13 EU €9
Paypal: jnmfiction@gmail.com
USA $49 UK £39 CANADA $56 EU €45
Paypal: jnmfiction@gmail.com
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