A rock ’n’ roll story gets a new chapter
By ANDREA FELDMAN | December 11, 2007
|
It’s hardly your typical rock ’n’ roll saga. Joyce Raskin’s new memoir, Aching To Be: A Girl’s True Rock & Roll Story (Number One Press, 208 pps, $13.95, lulu.com/content/1192937), has little Behind the Music-style excess on display (unless you count the brief cameo from Courtney Love). And while it does have ups and downs of the sort all too familiar to many struggling young bands (lawsuits, sleazy A&R reps, endless tours), the real drama here is of a personal nature as she chronicles her own coming of age alongside that of her band Scarce.
The book has a diaristic honesty that spares no one, least of all Joyce herself. Raskin shines like a star onstage but struggles to find her equilibrium out of the spotlight. Looking back, Raskin wishes she hadn’t been so hard on her younger self.
“I was 25 [when the band ended] and I thought my life was over. I laugh at that now: so dramatic! I was just starting out — it’s okay to take bumps in the road.”
While the first part of the book captures Scarce’s meteoric, sometimes difficult rise, the final third of the book —detailing Chick’s medical crisis and the group’s desperate bid to gain back lost momentum— is harrowing and heart-breaking, as we see Joyce lose her best friend and her band to a slow, painful split.
Joyce knows the band deserved far better than that ignominious end. “I wish I’d had the guts to walk away from [the band] when Chick had the brain hemorrhage,” she tells me. “I forced him back into this life that maybe he didn’t want anymore. Or maybe he did, but it definitely felt like: ‘If I let go of this, am I letting go of his dream that only I can remember, or am I doing the wrong thing?’ I just didn’t know.”
Raskin has been working on the book since the band broke up. “Before I could move on, I really just needed to get it out. That was part of my therapy.”
Another necessary step: ending nine years of silence with Chick. To hear her tell it, Scarce’s reunion began the minute she picked up the phone. “I hadn’t spoken to him at all. I called him up and said, ‘Hey, Chick’ (blasé). And he said, ‘Hey, Joyce’ (blasé). I said, ‘How did you know it was me?!’ ‘I knew it was you.’ ” Raskin laughs. “We just started having this conversation. Eventually we said, ‘Let’s set up a show and see what happens.’ ”
With no expectations but to savor being a real band again, and no one to answer to but themselves, Scarce finally have the happy new beginning they deserved all along.
Related:
Striving for magic, Indie gets the blues, ''Alternative Label of the Year'', More
- Striving for magic
Do you remember Scarce?
- Indie gets the blues
White rockers generally come by the blues one of two ways.
- ''Alternative Label of the Year''
Dangerbird is offering rare remixes, demos, and Darker My Love’s homonymous debut in its entirety.
- Locked and loaded
Okay, this is getting ridiculous. It’s already been a strong year for games, with four — four ! — game-of-the-year contenders before Labor Day.
- Orchestral maneuvers
On stage, Paul had saluted scratching in early hip-hop culture by manipulating a 12-inch record briefly and then holding it up for the crowd to see.
- Digging it
If a Weezer/Talking Heads supergroup is something you’d look forward to, the Spinto Band is worth checking out .
- Flirting with danger
Mike Furey wants to play Bubba’s Sulky Lounge. Dangerous Muse, "The Rejection" (QuickTime)
- Sexy's back
Club gigs by superstars are inherently contrived, exclusionary, economically unsustainable. They also feel more human because they are more human. Duh.
- The quieter side of Dave's world
Grohl seemed to relish the opportunity to sit, talk, and play some of his favorite Foo tunes in a less intense setting than he’s clearly used to. Foo Fighters and Frank Black at the Wang Center, August 22, 2006.
- Is the RIAA inoculating itself against viral video?
You’ve seen them: the hundreds upon hundreds of homemade clips on YouTube and Google Video where bored teenagers set up a webcam and lip-sync cheekily to their favorite songs.
- The Rolling Stones, again
A bemused Keith mumbled something about “déjà vu,” but this was no rehash of the Fenway Park gig.
- Less
Topics:
Books
, Entertainment, Music, Pop and Rock Music, More
, Entertainment, Music, Pop and Rock Music, Courtney Love, Joyce Raskin, Less