Another thing that #60pages might be: an oral history in the making. An oral history of things that were very rarely actually said out loud, but still. Or maybe I’m just thinking that because I’ve been wondering why they’re everywhere lately. Oral histories, I mean. We’re living in the Age of the Interview anyway, so maybe that’s the reason.
Most of them are entertainment-related. The stories & scandals behind TV shows (like SNL) or whole TV channels – you’re getting slimed, catch it, proud as a peacock. “Please Kill Me” about the New York punk scene (named after something Richard Hell had written on his shirt – with this, “You Make Me” written on his chest and “Void” on his forehead he really tried his best to disappear and turn into a walking advertisement for disaffection) might be the best-loved.
But the best one – in the Silly Little Show-Biz™ category anyway – is “I Want My MTV” by Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum, about you-can-guess-what. Open any page of that book and you will find something like “Barbara Kanowitz, MTV staff: We paid people in T-shirts for the first five years” or “Tabitha Soren, VJ: VJs came and went. I can’t remember half of them” or of course this priceless gem by Mike Score from A Flock of Seagulls: “Frank, the bass player, and I were both hairdressers”
The best show-biz anecdotes are of course the ones where nothing happens or everything happens. So you either want Pat Benatar talking about how she really isn’t a dancer but liked how the video for “Love is a Battlefield” came out anyway – or you want a story about Prince coming three hours late for a live broadcast and saying, after softly scolded by a producer, “Man, I don’t use time. I use truth.”
This shit is my oxygen. I hope that doesn’t make me a cynic. It’s like an engine running on trash, or good comedy: talking very earnestly about the most mundane or ridiculous stuff in the world. If all those people still thought they were huge starts or very important this book would be unbearably sad. But most of them know what’s up. Still, there is one last remaining speck of self-importance – they’re still getting recognized when buying milk after all. That’s the beauty of it.