Say Goodbye : The Laurie Moss Story

by Lewis Shiner

• ISBN13: 9780312263867
• ISBN10: 0312263864
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2000-10-14
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Summary

"I first heard Laurie Moss on Stanford's KZSU in early August of 1995. I was driving into San Francisco on the Junipero Serra and "Neither Are We," with its jazzy-but-distorted chords and Laurie's hurt and weary vocals, simply blindsided me. I turned up the radio and tried to fix the details of the song in my mind, afraid the DJ wouldn't back-announce and this music would pass out of my life without my ever knowing what it was." Laurie Moss seemed to come out of nowhere, but behind those songs, behind that powerful voice, lies a history. This extraordinary book takes you from her Texas roots to her first recording contract, from her struggling days in L. A. to her final tour---and beyond. It's also the story of her relationship with the legendary guitarist Skip Shaw, whose passion for self-destruction illuminated her career like a bonfire. Lewis Shiner writes about the music scene with unequalled passion and firsthand knowledge. Critic Charles Shaar Murray hailed his Glimpses as "a superb contemporary novel, and a groundbreaking work of creative rock criticism" and BAM raved "a music lover couldn't find a better read." The battlefield forSay Goodbyemay be the music industry, but the novel's themes are universal: success and failure, love and loss, obsession and forgiveness. This book is Shiner's most profound and moving work yet, a deep and heartfelt novel peopled with characters you will never forget.

Table of Contents

"All the virtues of old-fashioned story-telling---a heroine you can love, a world you can live in---told in the key of urban cool. Say Goodbye is a dream of a book, perfectly imagined, perfectly imparted. Shiner's voice comes through with all his usual passionate authority, and he never hits a false note." --Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Sweetheart Season

"Every band has an inner momentum like this, its entangles and wreck-tangles, moments of bliss mixed with the jarring reality of life in the belly of the music business, and the shared song which makes it all worthwhile. Lewis Shiner sings the tale with harmonic compassion."
--Lenny Kaye, guitarist

"Say Goodbye resonates like a blue note heard and remembered in a smoky, late-night club. Lewis Shiner has written the Citizen Kane of rock and roll novels, a human and moving piece of work." --George P. Pelecanos, author of The Sweet Forever

"Lewis Shiner writes with enough heart for three chests. . . . Strong stuff." --Jonathan Carroll, author of The Marriage of Sticks