The Book of Maleki is the story of 3 years of my life in the 80's playing bass for a low budget touring heavy metal band. In all the years since that I have worked in the music business, I have never heard anybody tell any stories of life on the road that is anywhere near as insane as this was. We had no record company, no management, no credit cards, no cell phones, no fax machines, no e-mail, and certainly no adult supervision. Never again will wild rock bands roam the country off the grid and under the radar. In comparison to the national acts that travel in jets, tour bus, and nice hotels; we were the covered wagons of heavy metal. If you’re easily offended by sexual situations, alcohol and drug abuse, or random acts of vandalism and mayhem, then don’t read this book!
After reading one of Peter Walker’s posts online that was amusing, I ordered a copy of his “The Book of Maleki.”
It’s a bunch of tales of his from the mid-1980’s, first as a member of the crew of the band Warchylde, and then as the bass player for Maleki. I’d never heard of either of the bands before.
His time was spent touring with low budget bands traveling mostly in the eastern part of the United States, playing small clubs and bars.
Most of the stories are amusing, funny, a few a bit shocking. Lots of drugs, sex and rock n’ roll…. People in the bands and crews making utter fools of themselves, acting like assholes, stuck in too small a space for too long, with too little money.
The book could’ve used a better font when printed, as the text was pretty hard to read. I found myself holding it at a funny angle to sort of reduce the height of the letters so they appeared more “normal”.
And the Walker could’ve used an editor to go over it as well. Misspellings here and there, and paragraph breaks in the middle of sentences. But also a little creative editing could’ve helped many of the stories have more of a beginning, middle, and end, and ease some of the transitions between stories to help readers tell when one is ending and one beginning.
Imagine the book “The Dirt” about Motley Crue. Now crank that up to eleven. Thats what these tales about life in an independent heavy metal band in the mid eighties is like. They’re absolutely wild and very, very raw. This isn’t a book for your Thursday evening book club unless you were a stripper or a dive bar groupie in the eighties. I laughed so much more from this than any other book in recent memory. Highly recommend!!
Absolutely awesome stories from the road. The Band Malekut sounded like a wild time sorry I never heard of them it would have been interesting to see but thank you Peter Walker for the stories.
Sounded embellished to the point of being unbelievable. At the very end, he even stated his stories sounded unbelievable. I concur. (Don’t even get me started about the disrespect to women. No excuse for this.) I am embarrassed to have read it.
A schoolboy romp thru the 80's, dull and repetitive and generally lacking purpose. There's no insanity, just stupidity. It's also patently clear why this band never got a record deal!