Book Review – Gentlemanly Repose
Michael Ruffino's Funny and Poignant Book On His Band, The Unband
In Every crappy rock band that was almost worth hearing followed the same pattern: boredom, volume, addiction, luck, ladies, fights. The stuff in the middle might change order, and sometimes Razzle dies, but the bookends are the same in almost every case. What did the Unband have that no other band had? Three dudes from the New England ‘burbs listening to Hirax and Black Flag, drinking too much, playing too loud. Basically, nothing.
Dumb Enough to Rock, Smart Enough to Write
Even though The Unband still played dumb 3-chord chug-anthems just like every other group of screw-ups with a six-pack and nothin’ to do, reading 2004's Gentlemanly Repose (Citadel, ISBN: 0806526262) shows that not only is rock and roll not for the brainy kids, it’s also not for the sissies.
That said, rarely does someone write with such tact and poise, especially when discussing all of the times that he completely lacked both of those things. The prose is so pure it’s possible to almost smell the stains the hooker left on the couch, and that’s what The Unband was really about: virtuous debauchery.
Rock? Yes. Roll? Oh Yeah.
The stories are great: a drinking monkey, tours with washed up butt-rockers, offensive letters to the record company, an ill-conceived Super Bowl gig, coke everywhere, etc. What really carries the book, though, is the writing. Unband bassist Michael Ruffino is in the moment like Charles Bukowski was, only not so pessimistic. Bukowski was full of angst and trying to live. Ruffino is just sort of hanging out, looking for a smoke.
Ruffino has no ideologies, he doesn’t have any stances on issues, and he doesn’t really want any. That’s what makes this book so incredibly funny and so incredibly sad. The joke is “Three guys walk into a bar,” and when you finish the book he lets you know that the punchline is in the set-up. There was too much beer, too much rockin’, and too much time spent waiting between shows, watching the rain hit the windshield of the bus because what else is there to do, ever?
Beauty and the Booze
It’s easy to crack open a rockstar autobiography and expect complete idiocy (Motley Crue’s The Dirt), self-satisfying stories that could be a bit more honest (David Lee Roth’s Crazy From the Heat), or boring nerd-candy (the part in every retrospective where the dude goes, “Then we went into the studio and recorded Get a Grip. Bruce Fairbairn suggested I use a single-coil guitar on the majority of the tracks, an idea I resisted until . . .” and so on).
Yes, Gentlemanly Repose has some of those things (mainly the idiocy), but Ruffino tackles it all the only way he knows how to tackle anything, and that’s by tripping over his own feet before landing on the subject. A pretty wreck, if nothing else. Usually, though there’s always something else – and if there is anything to be learned from this book, it’s that something else will probably get you kicked out of wherever you’re at.
Buy Gentlemanly Repose on Amazon.com
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Gentlemanly Repose, Unband, Ruffino
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