Too Much, Too Late, Too Bad It Was Published

I wrote a number of reviews for books, movies, etc, for a webzine, but I'm not sure when it will see the light of day. So I am presenting them here for your reading pleasure.

Too Much, Too Late
By Marc Spitz
Publishing date: February 28, 2006

Sandy James –nee Sandy Klein – drums for the Jane Ashers, a band that split up during its original incarnation and nearly twenty years later reunited with unexpected success. The band becomes an “overnight” sensation, replete with all of requisite, clichéd trappings.

Spitz’s novel seems aimed at or around my generation – the thirtysomething set. He references all of the big musical milestones of my younger years, Nevermind chief among them. Yet the musical name-dropping (the novel itself is presumably titled after the New York Doll’s second and final paean to excess, Too Much, Too Soon) gets old after only a few pages. He mentions everyone from the Replacements to Helmet, The Gun Club to Material Issue. He even calls the band’s guitar player “young, loud and snotty,” which is the Dead Boys first album.

The characters are barely original, inspired or believable. The most interesting character is vocalist Harry Vance, Jr., who struggles to balance the surreal nature of rock success with the very real and more desirable wife and son he leaves at home. The rest of the cast Spitz rounds out with the usual cast of malcontents who wax philosophic while high on topics like whether one would go to jail in place of a shoplifting Winona Ryder.

Spitz peppers his novel with band anecdotes about life on the road, which were told better in everything from Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s Please Kill Me and Henry Rollins’ Get In the Van. I got so bored with the alcohol and cocaine abuse that I wished the band would break up again so we could follow Vance back to Dean, Ohio, and watch him learn to adjust to living out his other dream of raising a family. Instead, Spitz treats us to drunken fights, drunken apologies, and coked-up performances. Perhaps the drug use seems so cliché because it is true, but that hardly seems to justify writing a boring novel.

Too Much, Too Late is written as a memoir, but does not work as such. The memoir allegedly comes from the aforementioned drummer, but he frequently gives detailed accounts of events and conversations that he would not know about, much less be able to relate second-hand with any accuracy. James recounts, for instance, what happens in Vance’s home when he orders a new cat to replace one that dies, and bills it to the band. Vance would not have told James about that, much less in such detail. That Spitz decided to remain with his memoir gimmick reveals either how little he thinks of his readers or how little he thinks about his writing. I also had trouble at times figuring out who was speaking certain sides of dialogue, particularly when Spitz himself seem to be tripped up. During a Q&A between Vance, Jr and his newly re-acquainted father, Spitz mixes up some dialogue so that it appears Vance, Sr is saying that Vance. Jr. is now a grandfather.

It seems that Spitz, a writer for Spin, is too in love with his insider knowledge to be able to drop it long enough to craft a good story without pretension. There is a good story to be told in reuniting a band well past its prime, and it was told in the film “Still Crazy.” Rent that, and avoid this book.