Jim Rose (1) (1956–)

Picked this up off bookmooch from someone in the UK. I never saw Jim Rose but I'm pretty sure this will be interesting.

Just finished this last night. Very cool. I flew through it. I seem to really like non-fiction about things that were happening while I was growing up. It's like you live in this microcosm (your neighborhood) and you hear about things in the headlines that happen in other microcosms, but books like this give you a glimpse into the details of what was really going on.

The tour started in the early 90's and the book ends in 95. So while I was playing dungeons & dragons, reading Anne Rice, playing in 2 bands, graduating from college, and sleeping with my girlfriend's best friend (with and without permission). Jim Rose was touring europe learning to eat lightbulbs, lay on beds of nails and eat fire. Then he formed a legendary troupe of freaks and toured the entire world and wrote a book.

The book includes many (poor quality) pictures of the different acts and Jim Rose hanging out with William Burroughs, Eddie Veder, Roger Daltry etc... It covers the original shows, the lallapalozza tour and the Nine Inch Nails tour. Very cool stuff. Just to score some cool points I did go to the first Lallapalozza and a couple others, just not the one with Jim Rose… (mer)