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Craig is armed with a college degree that has so far brought him nothing, certain that something better is just around the corner but unable to encounter it. He's been cohabiting with Ashley since college, and is caught in the dilemma of whether to break up with her or give in to marriage. Meanwhile, Ashley's efforts to earn a graduate degree seem futile considering that her diploma has taken up residence under the sofa cushions. Stuck in dead-end jobs; weary of commercial, corporate, and parental influences; searching for their own identities; Ashley, Craig, and the other characters of Our Noise find refuge in the brash world of indie rock, thrift stores, coffee houses, zines, and cheap beers. There are Eileen, who ends up in Kitty, Virginia, by accident and forgets to leave, and the members of Bottlecap, Kitty's hometown band, trying to decide whether to sell out and go to the West Coast or continue in the life of a small band. Chipp and Randy start a zine as a way to get their blood flowing for the first time even as Dave, the struggling founder of Violent Revolution Records, works as a waiter to fund his record label.
318 pages, Unknown Binding
First published September 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
July 8, 2010
I bought this book on my 18th birthday in the airport on my way to Paris, which sounds terribly romantic and I suppose it would have been even more so if I hadn't been buying something to read so that I didn't have to talk to my idiot of a boyfriend who had somehow attached himself to me like a barnacle. Eh, I was 18. What did I know. Anyway, this is a book I keep coming back to and anyone who is of a certain age and of a certain level of musical geekery should read this, because it's amazing and tender and honest and funny and most of all has titles like Bizarre Love Triangle and Don't You Fugazabout Me...heh. It gives me le warm feeling.
April 18, 2014
Not sure why, but this mildly engrossing story of "alternative" types in Kitty, Virginia, a small, slightly hip town complete with indie record stores and a happening café, sat unread on my bookshelf for years. Reading it now, almost twenty years after its first publication, Our Noise now functions as a period piece, a look into a time when two characters who create a zine need to cheat Kinko's to print their product, and a guy who starts a small record label struggles with physical inventory and mailing costs. It's so much cheaper to be creative these days. I liked Gomez's female characters more than the males, most especially Eileen, a drifter who ends up in town only because her car has broken down. As she settles in, she creates romantic chaos for two locals. One slightly weird thing I noticed: Gomez has an obsession, perhaps unconscious, with some unniceties of intimacy, especially bad breath.
November 11, 2010
I actually went to college in a Southern college town in the 90s and played alternative rock music there. This pretty much sums it all up. I knew the people in the book.
February 6, 2025
Too slack
I picked this novel up in a charity shop a few weeks ago, attracted by its promise of a tale about mid-90s music-obsessed slackers in a small town in Virginia. The author uses the trick of writing separate stories about six characters and their partners or friends, and then interweaving them together. This means that there's little connection between the characters in different stories, which can make the overall book hard to follow - thus, in spite of paying reasonably close attention, I found it hard to remember the difference between two of the couples as regards what they'd done, and where they were up to in their relationships. As for the stories themselves, there's little development of the characters, and there's hardly any resolution at the end of the book - of course, this could have been intended as a reflection of the characteristic aimlessness of their lives, but this could have been conveyed in a more succinct and imaginative manner, I think.
A lot of effort has been put into including contemporary musical and other cultural details: for example, p14 sees two of the characters discussing the difference between two versions of a New Order single in obsessive detail, and there are several references to bands such as the Blake Babies (of which I'd never heard, but perhaps should have). In a similar vein, during a bout of (unintentionally) painful sex on p341, one of the characters allusively mutters, "Someone should start humming 'Venus In Furs'". This aspect of the book requires an easy handling of this sort of detail, so it was a bit unnerving to find one of the characters (on p159) referring to the original singer of Pink Floyd as Syd Barret or - more unforgivingly - thinking that "Free Bird", Lynyrd Skynyrd's best-known song, featured a guitar solo by someone called Van Sandt (p104). This might be a garbled reference to Ronnie Van Zant, but it's tolerably well-known that he was the singer in the band, and that the solo was played by Allen Collins. The author also slips up on p284, when one of the characters is given the wrong name, and in the middle of the fight between Mark and Laura on p227, when he sarcastically suggests that she might want to preserve her looks by remaining in something called a "hyperbolic chamber"; unless Mark's referring to a device that exaggerates its contents, I think he really means a hyperbaric chamber.
Finally, the book (published in 1995) suffers from the fate that all accounts of contemporary life share: it's become dated. Today's young readers might find it hard to believe that music used to be distributed on records and cassettes which had to be bought in special shops, or that the only way to see a film was to wait for it to be shown at a cinema or on TV. Similarly, on p254, there's an detailed account (that extends over several pages) of the way in which one character logs onto a bulletin board, which now only serves as a reminder of how far technology has evolved. Nothing gets older faster than attempts to appear up-to-date.
Originally reviewed 21 June 2011
I picked this novel up in a charity shop a few weeks ago, attracted by its promise of a tale about mid-90s music-obsessed slackers in a small town in Virginia. The author uses the trick of writing separate stories about six characters and their partners or friends, and then interweaving them together. This means that there's little connection between the characters in different stories, which can make the overall book hard to follow - thus, in spite of paying reasonably close attention, I found it hard to remember the difference between two of the couples as regards what they'd done, and where they were up to in their relationships. As for the stories themselves, there's little development of the characters, and there's hardly any resolution at the end of the book - of course, this could have been intended as a reflection of the characteristic aimlessness of their lives, but this could have been conveyed in a more succinct and imaginative manner, I think.
A lot of effort has been put into including contemporary musical and other cultural details: for example, p14 sees two of the characters discussing the difference between two versions of a New Order single in obsessive detail, and there are several references to bands such as the Blake Babies (of which I'd never heard, but perhaps should have). In a similar vein, during a bout of (unintentionally) painful sex on p341, one of the characters allusively mutters, "Someone should start humming 'Venus In Furs'". This aspect of the book requires an easy handling of this sort of detail, so it was a bit unnerving to find one of the characters (on p159) referring to the original singer of Pink Floyd as Syd Barret or - more unforgivingly - thinking that "Free Bird", Lynyrd Skynyrd's best-known song, featured a guitar solo by someone called Van Sandt (p104). This might be a garbled reference to Ronnie Van Zant, but it's tolerably well-known that he was the singer in the band, and that the solo was played by Allen Collins. The author also slips up on p284, when one of the characters is given the wrong name, and in the middle of the fight between Mark and Laura on p227, when he sarcastically suggests that she might want to preserve her looks by remaining in something called a "hyperbolic chamber"; unless Mark's referring to a device that exaggerates its contents, I think he really means a hyperbaric chamber.
Finally, the book (published in 1995) suffers from the fate that all accounts of contemporary life share: it's become dated. Today's young readers might find it hard to believe that music used to be distributed on records and cassettes which had to be bought in special shops, or that the only way to see a film was to wait for it to be shown at a cinema or on TV. Similarly, on p254, there's an detailed account (that extends over several pages) of the way in which one character logs onto a bulletin board, which now only serves as a reminder of how far technology has evolved. Nothing gets older faster than attempts to appear up-to-date.
Originally reviewed 21 June 2011
August 21, 2017
in una ipotetica gara su chi cita il maggior numero di icone "alternative" anni '90 "rumore" potrebbe vincere senza problemi: si parla di fugazi e sub pop, c'è un concerto dei superchunk, c'è una fanzine con in copertina g.g.allin e una libreria in cui si comprano pynchon e vonnegut, si cercano cd degli unrest e si va in un cinema che da "weekend" di godard (mentre altri riflettono sull'importanza di "braekfast club" nella loro vita). ok, se jeff gomez voleva stupirci col maggior numero di riferimenti "underground" in un libro, beh c'è riuscito.
ma c'è dell'altro, per fortuna.
qui si parla di coppie che si sfasciano nella noia o nell'egoismo, di vite passate senza concludere nulla, di fallimenti imponenti e piccole vittorie, di fughe (da se stessi prima ancora che da qualcuno o qualcosa). si parla soprattutto di invecchiare, o meglio del passare da ex-adolescente che vive senza pensare a un domani a giovane uomo ("here are the young men...") sepolto da bollette, lavori diversi da quello che si voleva essere, relazioni sentimentali più mature.
da recuperare: speriamo che prima o poi lo ristampino...
ma c'è dell'altro, per fortuna.
qui si parla di coppie che si sfasciano nella noia o nell'egoismo, di vite passate senza concludere nulla, di fallimenti imponenti e piccole vittorie, di fughe (da se stessi prima ancora che da qualcuno o qualcosa). si parla soprattutto di invecchiare, o meglio del passare da ex-adolescente che vive senza pensare a un domani a giovane uomo ("here are the young men...") sepolto da bollette, lavori diversi da quello che si voleva essere, relazioni sentimentali più mature.
da recuperare: speriamo che prima o poi lo ristampino...
January 24, 2022
2.5. I persevered because of the awesome band, song and indie references but the characters were selfish and all felt the same so it was hard to tell most of the people apart. Would have liked to see how it unfolded if all told from the same perspective- if, for example, the story was told by Eileen watching this stuff unfold at the coffee shop.
July 14, 2011
I can see why some may have reviewed this badly. It's kind of a niche book. Unless you get the band references on every page ( I've listened to a lot of them here), zines and other pop culture references, reading this might be a little bit tedious. But I'm probably one of the ideal readers for this book. I love zines but haven't been reading too many lately (probably to catch up on my books!) This book may have been more relevant to me a couple years ago. I hate when I know books shouldn't be sitting on my shelves unread as long as they go unread. They keep calling me.. "Read me now!" Though this book was written in 1994, this was more like my life in the early 2000s. It involves a bunch of 20 somethings living in the mid-90s. They are a bit angsty, and by the end of the book a lot of the characters are told to snap out of it, but it doesn't appear they do. There are a lot of main characters here, but it seemed to really work well. I never forgot who was who, which is sometimes a problem for me. Its like a treasure trove of fun pop culture references, its like a slice of the time. I love it. It's probably better to read it now for nostalgic value rather than to have read it when it was released. And I think it is really well written also. I could have lived with a bit less relationship stuff and drinking, but the pop culture references were so spot on, I wish there were more. Jeff Gomez took a big risk writing such a niche book, but it worked for me, and I'm looking forward to the sequel.
February 6, 2008
i re-read this recently and decided it just seems like a nice friend to talk about music to. but then i realized i also skipped whole pages because i didn't want to read every description of someones thumbnail...in other words the descriptions can get that annoying.
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February 13, 2008grunge will neevvverrr ddiiiiieeeee
June 11, 2008
The worst book I've ever read from cover to cover...
November 6, 2009
It's not the best book by a long shot. I just enjoyed that it uses downtown Columbia, SC as its location.
April 7, 2010
The start of this book has too many pop-culture references in my opinion. This does fade after a while.
Even though it's hard to find an obvious story direction, I didn't find this book boring.
Even though it's hard to find an obvious story direction, I didn't find this book boring.
January 14, 2013
A boring cliché of indie life in the early/mid 90's. Its only redeeming quality is a reference to Scrawl.
August 4, 2013
Jeff Gomez is a good writer. However none of the characters did anything that made me care about them. The characters started and ended without changing during the story.
January 13, 2016
Poorly written, with really awkward and gratuitous references to indie rock. Which made it hard to read, and hard to not read.
February 6, 2011
reality bites in book form. a little whiny so far.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews