Life is a Rip Off

by John Olson, Henry Rollins (Contributor), Ben Hell Hall (Contributor)

Life is a Rip Off is a collection of record reviews by John Inzane Olson aka Inzane Johnny aka Amer....

Genres: Music

404 pages, Paperback

Published May 10, 2016

Reviews

[Ned Netherwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this inspiring, baffling, informative and twitchy. Sometimes in the same sentence. My friends think I'm knowledgeable about underground music but Olson is about three or four leagues above me. I think I had about four of these records. Makes me feel like someone whose only music collection is twelve 128kbs Nickelback mp3s that his cousin bluetoothed to his phone.

[Mason Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Giving this one a rating doesn't really work, but there it is anyway. I read some of this for a while, then put it down, then came back, and so forth, since it's a collection of one-page reviews of mostly-obscure and weird records -- not a read-it-through sort of book in any case. It's fun to pick it up, read a few, and set it aside again until later on. Lots of hardcore, black metal, jazz, dub, but fewer strictly-out-there oddities than I might have expected from the dude, and there's also the unexpected mainstream-oldie, for fun. Pretty much all stuff he likes, which makes sense for the book: why spend a page on something not worth it?? So, you know what you're getting most likely, and if you're really truly into tunes, you'll dig it one way or the other.

[Ted Gurley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Long-form coffee tabłe book of reviews. Olson has his own language making it a bit of a tough read at times,

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the kind of brain-fevered writing about music that I have loved since reading Byron Coley's writing in Forced Exposure in the 80s. Wish Third Man would reprint it - I downloaded a PDF

[Joey · Rating 3 out of 5]

A masterwork that catalogs one year of underground music from one of the kings of weirdo art!