Gimme More [French] [Paperback]

A masterpiece, of sorts. It depicts the rock n' roll stage, the rockstar bachstage and the music shark wings marvellously, showing how these sharks use the naiveté and at times simplemindedness and inner hostility of these rock n' roll groups to provide them with golden crumbs when they keep for themselves the gold ingots though these are nothing but the proceeds of the rock n' roll bands' work. In other words these bands are robbed of the money they make and their fame is hijacked into narcissism, drug use and hangover, the three things that make them blind to the highway robbery they are sumitted to. Then the book is also a masterpiece when dealing with copyright, not author rights, but copyright in England or the US where author rights are not recongnized. If you know what she is speaking about you will understand the demonstration. If you jknow about the debate concerning the downloading of music by Internet users you will understand what she is aiming at : denouncing and exposing in the most attractive, thrilling and fascinating way possible the freedom Internet users want to enjoy when downloading music, which means they want to do it for free though the only people who will be ripped off are the musicians, composers and authors because be quite reassured about the producers and other music sharks : they will make billions from the technology necessary to digitalise the music, to transport the digitalized music and to download this digitalized music. You will even enjoy how this sly Birdie is managing the official « producer » of Jack's music, the owner of the copyright of his music into refusing to sign a contract which allows her to go and negociate with a competitor, because in this copyrighted world, when an artist has been copyrighted by a producer, he cannot change producers as long as the first one does not refuse to sign a contract with him for new music pieces. The artist is enslaved to the copyright-holding producer. Liza Cody makes the adventure, the fight, the struggle, the debate so vivid that we are persuaded it is a thriller and convinced we are dealing with gangsters and thieves, though they are realistically perfect, these copyright-holders in the book. Liza Cody then is a lot more than entertaining us on two essential subjects : roch n' roll music for young people and the exploitation of the musical slaves. Then she makes some producers and slave-exploiting kapos appear as perverts and bad losers, but and because they are perverts and badlosers. This is not an illusion nor a fantasy : they have to be perverts and badlosers in order to survive in that harsh harsh world. So the ending, though slightly sentimentalese, is refreshing : you could escape the sharks by dealing with some other pikes, in other words fresh water sharks who are reducing the tension a little, at least for a while.

Rarely does an author absorb me as Liza Cody can. She's a master of mood, character, language, and plot. I started reading her novels years ago, beginning with Dupe and have followed the development of this talented author with great interest. She has such an ear for dialog, and creates such finely-tuned characters you'd swear she was reading minds and transcribing instead of imagining brand new human beings. Her language is always arresting and fresh without sounding forced or flowery.

Whew.

So I loved Gimme More. I loved the faded beauty, Birdie, her escapades, her jaded views, her hard wit, and her secrets. I loved the way Cody let the little mysteries reveal themselves with utter subtlety. The ending, a real modern descent into the Heart of Darkness, was properly shocking and filled me with satisfaction.

Very highly recommended. "Listen to the reverb" in Gimme More. Also, try Bucket Nut. It's just plain great...

In this book Liza Cody moves away from the much cliched and sought after glamour of the music industry. The opening pages are cynical and witty, revealing an expeienced woman with an insticnt for survival. The reader is immediately drawn to Birdie and is compelled to read further if only to indulge in amusing escapades one wishes they had the nerve to act out. The characters are strikingly real and Cody manages to convey the brutal, selfish aspect of the rock'n'roll business aswell as managing to keep humour and human nature alive.
There is almost an investigative element in the book - Birdie's distrust of everybody is intriguing and the reader adopts the same attitude toward the characters as Birdie herself. Cody's capability to strike up such a realtionsip with the reader and the protagonist is admirable.
The twist at the end is, if not slightly predictable, very rewarding and leaves the reader breathing a sigh of satisfaction. The reader finishes hungry for more, with a busy imagination and a new found perspective on the rock music industry.
An extremely entertaining read.