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VITAL SIGNS
By Ian Penman
Serpent's Tail, 374 pp. $15.99

American pop and British pop come from different perspectives. Over the years, very few Brit crits have been able to bridge the Atlantic gap and attain the name recognition of, say, the American rock critic Dave Marsh (who's really only famous to fans of rock writing, an admittedly small circle of friends). The truly talented pop writers can catch our U.S. fancy, though, and Ian Penman, who started penning his opinions in the British music weekly New Musical Express during the punk heyday of 1977, is such a writer.

In "Vital Signs," subtitled "Music, Movies and other Manias," a collection of articles culled from the span of his career, Penman peers at quite a bit of American pop and gives us a sometimes suprisingly reflected look at our own image. Maybe it's not ultra-deep thinking to say, in his rambling 1989 piece, "The Wild Frontier, Designer Dustbowl," that "The Frontier is the point, the subliminal line, where America marks and markets the confusion of its past."

But he does it well (throughout the book), with a fine sense of word-rhythm and sentence-cadence, lit up by a true sensual embrace of alliteration and the literary in-joke. In the essay, Penman jumps from a commentary on a Vanity Fair article with Ralph Lauren and his wife dressed up in retro ranch duds to beatniks, hippies, Bruce Springsteen and Ronald Reagan and finally comes to a breathless rest with Sam Shepard and Hunter S. Thompson. THIS is a British pop-observer's view of America's infatuation with the wild wild west?

His other work, whether thorny think-pieces or not-quite straightforward Q&A interviews, can be just as obtuse -- Penman is one of those snotty-punk intellectuals who could interview a reggae dub master like Dennis Bovell, or a folkie like acoustic guitar genius John Fahey, or movie icons such as Oliver Stone or Robert DeNiro (and even a movie non-icon like Harry Dean Stanton), and come across at street level while throwing in lots of existential references that might impress you or bore you, depending on your mood. Half the fun is weeding through his craft to appreciate the thought that goes into it. It's a good thing the craft itself is worth the weeding, er, reading, and that his observations are often thoughtful and thought-provoking.

Even his obvious talent and the wealth of good prose "Vital Signs" offers, however, can't keep the book from bogging down whenever Penman looks at a Brit-specific topic. Call it cultural centrism, call it parochialism of the worst sort... my eyes glazed over whenever he focused on British television shows and culture, even the cleverly constructed column "Beer, Flogging Your Flagon," which is not about Bud vs. microbrews.

Don't judge the book by the Anglophile content, though. Penman's a fabulous interviewer who really thinks about his subjects before he meets them (Harry Dean Stanton and Oliver Stone are flat-out great pieces), and his thoughful views on such topics as "Drugs, My Own Private Overdose" (a pretty smart musing on the evolution of drug culture leading to actor River Phoenix' senseless death), and the significance of Norman Mailer are almost worth the price of the book by themselves.

There's so little pop criticism of any depth in these days of Entertainment Weekly and Entertainment Tonight (which isn't necessarily bad -- I read and watch both), that it's simply refreshing to sit down and read someone who takes the time to THINK about these passing fancies, and dares to put down his pondering with elegance and -- gasp -- a voice. Penman's worth a listen.

This review ran in the Rocky Mountain News Book Review section, August, 1998.

Copyright by Gil Asakawa -- not for use without permission.
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Gil Asakawa's

WRITING SAMPLES

I've got plenty more writing samples if you're interested. Thanks for reading!

I've got plenty more writing samples if you're interested.
Thanks for reading!