Rock of Pages: Wish You Were Here

Leslie Simon’s Wish You Were Here is a snarky, amusing, and entertaining book about various genres and scenes and the locales that spawned them. Every city gets a bit of a history, some notable locations/albums/bands, as well as “scene types” courtesy of YourSceneSucks‘ Rob Dobi. Cities and scenes mentioned are Omaha and the Saddle Creek thing, Chicago and pop-punk, as well as Lawrence and the emo-pop movement of the late ’90s.

Now, while it’s cool as all hell to have Lawrence included in a list of influential scenes alongside D.C. straight-edge, there are a few inaccuracies that make me question the rest of the book’s veracity. Case in point: while Simon drops mention of bands like the Vitreous Humor, the entry on Love Garden makes mention of the fact that it is

“co-owned and operated by Kory Willis, his wife Katie Conrad, and Kelly Corcoran (husband of local All Things Considered host Laura Lorson, for all you NPR lovers out there).”

How the hell can you mention that Corcoran and Lorson are spouses, but not know that Willis and Conrad sold their shares of the business to them? Confusing. The whole book is amusing as hell, but it seems like many of the details were pulled off Google. The “scene types” are just reiterations or variations on what Dobi’s been doing on his website for years, as well.

This book could come in handy, but not as what it’s intended. It’s not detailed enough to be a travel guide to any city mentioned, nor does any of the info on the venues within those cities mention anything more than what you could find on their website. However, the scene documentation, and the bands and albums mentioned do a fantastic job of presenting an excellent, short-form primer on the various genres discussed. If you want to delve into Long Island hardcore, there’s something like 20-30 bands name-checked, and a healthy breadth of obscure albums mentioned.

Wish You Were Here is worth grabbing for the musical knowledge contained within, but if you’re going to make a mecca to somewhere mentioned in the book, you might want to dig a little deeper. There are travel books out there that cater to every subgroup, and I’m sure you’ll find something that goes a little further than this.

You can browse the book at Harper Collins’ website.