Read: Byron Coley 1978-83 Anthology

For the half-decade represented here, there wasn't a sword shinning any brighter than Byron Coley's pen. C'est la guerre: Early Writings: 1978-1983 (published by L'Oie de Cravan) collects the rock ‘n' roll contrarian's greatest early hits.

By Logan K. Young

"I finally gave up trying to advance through the ranks at McD's, so I guess I'll never be
a burger magnate. C'est la guerre." -- Byron Coley, Letter from San Francisco # 3, Feb. 1979

Fuck Marcus. And forget "Xgau." Save for Dylan, what do they know, anyways? You can have Niki Cohn, maybe even Lester. At this point, Boze Hadleigh reads truer. Next to early Tosches or the SUNY-cum-Yale aesthetics of Meltzer, Lord Byron's the one, true Dean of American rock critics. And as this back pocket zine from Québécoise imprint L'Oie de Cravan makes sure, he's a badass en français, aussi. Still standing - and not just on Twitter or some SEO-forsaken blogspot - the man and his soul patch are national treasures worthy of another Nick Cage franchise. Hell, this cobbling of would-be ephemera was brought to my door by the good fellas at Forced Exposure, who themselves would be nothing were it not for Coley. As the Plaid Piper of Pedro himself, Mike Watt, writes in the lowercase intro: "give byron coley a piece of rope and he'll be ready to tell you about knots. give him enough rope and he'll string some knots up for you, all kinds - he'll get creative."

But, of course, he didn't start out that way. "This is an example of my writing at its shittiest," reads the preface to his NY Rocker ‘82 review of the Dü's Land Speed Record. (Literally, he spends half his word count waxing how the French would shove shrapnel in enemy bungholes to fashion human bombs.) "...none of the lousy grammar or questionable word usages have been altered to cover my ineptitude," he writes before the longest piece herein. His first non-gratis burping, it's a Pernod-induced, yet undeniably DEVOted tour diary of that band's Warner-funded degeneration through the great cities of the East Coast. Entitled "Where the Rubber Met the Road," and published in the January 1979 edition of Andy Schwartz's Rocker, Coley notes, "I believe that behind those rubber suits are some incredible songs that could and will catapult this band to stardom, if they're heard as the stompers they actually are rather than as the proselytizing of an intellectual clique from Akron." Boy oh Booji Boy, I could not agree more with the then twenty-something. That he's so willing to share the ecstatic yod of what's basically his journalistic juvenilia proves just how cocksure he's become. (I, for one, am still trying to bury the purple prose of my fledgling scribbles; alas, the cub Coley never had to battle Google.)

To wit, there are some really fantastic pieces I'd've been proud of at any age. A man of letters first, the five epistles to Angela Jaeger included document his own papal flight, via bus, to the Yes Wave climes of San Fran. And if you want to get to know Byron the boy - who, truth be told, is every bit as enlightening as Coley the present-day man - I suggest you start here. His Selby, Jr. truncations and abbreviated txt speak (long before cell phones came in bags, even) subscribe to that old Orwellian adage from Strunk & White. Namely, if you can leave out a word, then... His fat black slagging of The Thin White Duke from LA Weekly is probably the most well-known clip of the lot. And honestly, re-reading it now, it does make me think. Calling Bowie "the Gloria Vanderbilt of the electric guitar" and "a dink so bereft of emotional musculature," he further calls into question the very notion of change in rock. "You can call that progress and exploration if you will, but I'll call it the vacillation of a man who has no center," he argues. Le ouch, Maître Coley!

But this handsome collection, the cover drawn and silkscreened by one Simon Bossé, is more than the letters of a young contrarian run amuck. Like any rock scribe worth his stylus, Coley's a brilliant pure writer, too. If the two book reviews reprinted here don't convince you, his record store retelling of O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" from Xmas ‘83 certainly will. Furthermore, as we see in many of the sidebars, he's also got a way with doodles. (And in the case of his typewriter ode to The Velvets' Sterling Morrison, Coley's got an eye for poetry concrète as well.)

Whether knocking Suicide's Marty Rev on his ass or a drunk Fred Frith knocking into his pinball game, or Coley himself knocking back some rum and a couple Quaaludes, in these early scribblings he posits himself as just another rock ‘n' roll raconteur. Heir apparent to those bloated names I first dropped, before I myself had even learned to speak, if Coley never penned another Beefheart screed, another paean to ½ Japanese - truthfully - I doubt I'd be writing this now. That kind of self-indulgent, gonzo whippersnapperism gets old faster than psycho-reactive carburetor dung.

What makes Coley still worth reading today, in the present, is that while he's no doubt grown and matured into our best rock writer, he's retained just enough piss from his l'enfant terrible birthright. All is fair in love and guerre, and for the half-decade represented here, there wasn't a sword shinning any brighter than Byron Coley's pen.