Stereo Killer

by Jeremy Tuman

Jeremy Tuman’s incandescent novel, STEREO KILLER, makes a joke out of the joke, “Let’s get the band back together, man.” When the main character’s cynical former front man calls to see if Chet Screamer wants to take a respite from his job as a part-time high-school teacher, head to Europe for a reunion tour, set his SG on stun, and risk screwing up a potential new relationship, even before his undesired stint of celibacy gets broken, he reluctantly says yes. And so the garage punkers The Stereo Killers are off on a low-budget summer blitz through dive bars, a journey on which the only sure things are dodgy-to-no sleeping accommodations, unpredictable audiences, too much boozing, and searing, primitive rock n roll. This ain’t some rock-star return; this is the ear-busting reality of a band blasting back into the underground of trashy tunes and moments of jagged ecstasy. This book is fierce, true, hilarious, beautiful, tragic, and heavy with earned wisdom. Tuman’s prose is as in-your-face as a kid flung from a mosh pit, or a guitar solo thrashed out while the guitarist is falling down. Tuman knows his characters, their musical salvation stories, and their hardships. He also knows what it’s like to be the best kind of losers, meaning those who find what they weren’t even sure was lost. --Tim Parrish, author of FEAR AND WHAT FOLLOWS. Jeremy Tuman’s STEREO KILLER is a meteor of a story, a book with DIY punk guts and a delightful up-yours kind of ethos. It is a blast, vested with a visceral knowledge of the grimy and the liberating, and possessing a deep familiarity with the musical and visual lineages of the punk rock arts. STEREO KILLER will show you what is essential (and desperately human) about the loud, the fast, and the little bit dangerous.-- Nicholas Mainieri, author of THE INFINITE

200 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 21, 2019

About the author

I live in New Orleans, where I teach English at Xavier University of Louisiana and play in the rock 'n' roll band The Great Twenty-Eights. STEREO KILLER is my first novel.

Reviews

[David Farkas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stereo Killers is a very engaging book. For starters, you get a vivid (and appalling) look into the world of the (mostly) European garage-punk music scene. But what I like just as much is the narrator’s wry, self-deprecating but ultimately very humane presence. I don’t buy Jeremy Tuman’s implicit argument that two chords and raw energy are a substitute for musicianship, but I was more than willing to see him make his case. My musical tastes run to Classic Rock and singer-songwriter, so I was initially put off when I realized that to read the novel meaningfully, I’d have to go search out a lot of strange bands on You Tube. But I got into doing this, and the result is a kind of multimedia reading experience. Read, listen, read, listen. And it turns out that the Butthole Surfers make some pretty good music.

[Mary June · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although, referred to and defined as "general fiction," I have a hunch, it's more of an autobiographical piece rather than pure fiction.

The story is about an American teacher returning to the punk rock band he once played with and going on a crazy punk tour across Europe.

I fairly enjoyed reading the book, and although I could not really relate to the narrative or the music the band played and that was so vividly described by the narrator, I had my fair share of laughs.

Since the story is about punks, there is a lot of anger, frustration, disgust, destruction, and destructive characters. The narrative tone is emotionally intense and complex: while reading the story, at times, I had mixed feelings of aversion and repulsion, which made me put down a book for some time and go out for some fresh air. Sometimes you happen to need one after you've read a paragraph on someone puking warm piss beer on another fellow in a pub. Well, you can't blame me.

I particularly liked the flashback pieces about different members of the band: where the guys met, how they came to like that sort of music, and how their friendships evolved through time. What I think the book lacked is descriptions: there's a lot of dialogue on tour, but I wanted to learn more about the scenery; for example, how the managers talked and looked, what the stage felt like, how the guests and fans behaved. And while there were some descriptions of those things, I was still left earning for more.

What I think the author tried to do was to put all those crazy things that happened to him on paper, to relive through some of those moments of complete freedom and chaos, and then gladly get back to his teaching job and his family. And that -- I can certainly relate to.

[Ivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing read!

The cover of this book drew me to it. I love music and I play some guitar as well. With the whole pandemic going on, this book made me miss concerts. I miss concerts, and all the chaos and awesomeness they bring. This book also reminds me that you can't be young forever, but be young at heart still. This book is about a punk band; I'm more of a metalhead myself. I enjoyed reading it very much and it's not a long read either.

[Jon Fassnacht · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chet Thompson is a part-time teacher living a bland existence, “a sphere that had no name and only a sense of understated desperation to mark its borders.” Then one day he’s contacted by former bandmate Parker Pike, wanting to know if he’d be interested in reliving their salad days, back when Pike sang and “Chet Screamer” played guitar for punk band the Stereo Killers. It had been over 10 years since they last played, but the band’s sound was experiencing a bit of a revival across Europe. A short tour of the continent commences, during which the only constant is chaos: fast music, scores of colorful personalities, the requisite alcohol and drugs, bungled itineraries, sketchy lodgings, even an evening in jail. In other words, exactly what a punk rock tour should be.

“Stereo Killer,” according to the preface, is based on real people and some real events, so it’s probably safe to assume it’s at least partly autobiographical. And you can tell Jeremy Tuman knows music due to his ease describing its intricacies and the laundry list of bands name-checked in the pages.

One interesting aspect of the book is that it exists on either side of the Stereo Killers’ tenure. The narrative vacillates between the current nostalgia tour and the months leading up to the band’s founding decades prior. Very little time is spent discussing the group’s prime, and even then it’s often just an offhand comment.

But that speaks to one of the key themes of the book, which is that everything is fleeting, but the sense of community that is fostered during those moments is forever. As Tuman writes near the end, during one of the band’s final shows: “Each of us gives that gift to each other when we come together to play, band and audience alike, the gift of feeling the full fire of life burn, if only for a moment. And when the group breaks up and each of us retreats to other quarters, we carry a little bit of that flame inside, even if we never see each other again.”

If you’ve ever been to a great live show, especially if you’ve been to a transcendent live show, you’ll know the feeling. And it’s a feeling worth going through a few weeks of hell playing dank venues in countries where you don’t speak the language to try to recapture, even briefly.

It was a lot of fun tagging along while Chet Screamer and his pals chased that feeling again. Plus, any book that mentions Bad Brains, even in passing, gets a hat tip from me.

[Amanda M. Lyons · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stereo Killer is absolutely a book for music fans, particularly those of us who were ever into Punk Rock. Here you’ll meet Chet, a former punk now in the role of teacher to some less than enthused teenagers who have no idea about his past. It could easily be said that in many ways Chet himself is a bit less than enthused about it, though he can look back at that part of his life pretty readily and count himself among the more informed people who could be teaching his students. A little lost between both the mundane and everyday world of regular life and the punk life of his past, he’s still trying to find where he fits in his current life when Parker, his old bandmate calls him up and eggs him on to join him and a couple of others on a spontaneous tour of Europe born out of new interest for the old band. With some reticence, and the awareness that he had left for a reason, but no idea why he’d decided to, Chet starts to get ready for the middle-aged version of a garage punk tour de force-except what will he do about the life he’d just started to invest in? Will the woman he just connected with still be there when it’s over? Will HE still be there when it’s over?

This book is an absolute blast and more than worth your listening time! Paul Burt does an excellent job of conveying the scene, it’s characters, and the shifting changes of mood and character throughout, even doing a nice job with the musical bits. The book itself is just as complex and engaging as the punk rock scene it portrays, I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for more books from Jeremy Tuman. If you’re looking for a general idea of the mood before listening or reading, think of things like SLC Punk! and High Fidelity, where both dramatic mood and humor are in play, all blended together with music and chaos.

[Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story starts with Chet, an American teacher a little dispirited by his students, who gets a call from Parker, a member from their disjointed band long ago, with an invitation to get together and go on a tour to perform around Europe for one last time. He seemed to hesitate at first, but the temptation to play their music and met girls was too much for him and accepted. The Stereo Killer is once again!

On their journey they go! You get to meet so many interesting characters and places on their ride. You also get a glimpse at the crazy life some musicians go through, when trying to perform in different places night after night. The scenes, the people, the music, the ambiance feels very real that you almost can smell the alcohol and hear the ringing of the music in your ears.

We also get some flashbacks throughout the story, were we get to learn the stories of all the Stereo Killer's members: Nancy, Sam, Parker and Chet. How they discovered music, who they met, how they met, how they got together, and much more. They all had very different background and personalities, but you can see the deep love of music they have and how that is the bond that holds them together before and now.

So many shenanigan's happen during their trip, it keeps you entertained from the beginning to the end. It does take some getting used to someone like me. Like with Punk Rock, there is a lot of screaming, anger, alcohol, swearing, fighting, etc. It was refreshing, thought sometimes a little tough, to read from what I am used to.

This book is also about self-discovery. As they go on tour, our main protagonist does a little reflection about who he is, his place in live, loneliness, his band, and punk rock. This book was certainly enjoyable. If you love music, and you love rock an' roll or punk rock, you will definitely enjoy reading this.

[I.O. Scheffer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this! The style of writing was fantastic and I felt like I was on the edge of my seat a lot. The main character (Mr. Thompson) was easy for me to sympathize with and had an entertaining narration style from start to finish. Could be because he was a teacher and I tend to naturally feel for teachers, haha. This book is best read by anyone who loves guitar music and mannish hijinks.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Firstly, the whole despair of the Boomer/Gen X over the superficialities and vapidity of Gen Z is very real and very well depicted. Next, beware the Belgian bathroom scene - it’s stomach-churningly described in detail. Worse, I think I’ve been there. Thirdly, I will never enjoy Pavement. Lastly, no matter how old our bodies get, our inner selves rock on.

[Virginia Serna · Rating 4 out of 5]

To begin with this book will introduce you to the world of Punk Rock as it was in it's beginnings. The descriptions of that world and the characters is so vivid you can lose yourself in it. It is way more scary than I ever imagined, as a parent of that generation. The trials and tribulations of the tour, the uncertainty of the audience reaction to an older group, and the crazy leader of the tour make this book a crazy ride. I really loved it and was worried about the safety of the characters the entire book.
Chet is a teacher that has a sort of secret , he has somethings to decide and when his "friend " calls and says "Let's get the band back together." He takes that chance to see where he's going?

I recommend it because even though it is advertised as fiction ,I feel Jeremy knows whereof he speaks.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed Stereo Killer by Jeremy Tuman. The book with its cast of characters takes you behind the scenes of the punk underground with all of the machinations of what goes on in order to put together a punk show during a tour. The book also illustrates the difference between mainstream rock and pop music and punk music which is mainly the raw energy and sense of community rather than the listening experience that the music and scene creates that keeps loyal fans coming back for more. Combine that with the DIY ethos the punk scene is known for and you have a formidable unground movement that challenges the best of what the mainstream has to offer. I felt this book did a great job of bringing that aspect of the punk scene to light told through the experience of the Stereo killers band getting back together for one more tour. The interactions between the band, its fans, and road crew told against the backdrop of the dingy club scenes in Holland, Paris, Spain, and Italy are priceless and well worth the read for the lessons they reveal about basic human nature at its most base level.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure where to start with my review of this book, except to say I'd be a little more generous with my rating and say I'd give it a 3.5 instead of 3 because I liked it a little more than a 3 lets on. It's just not my usual cup of tea. Specifically, what I liked most is the author's unique I'm-gonna-write-from-the-mouth-of-a-teenage-punk-rocker prose. It made the story come to life more. The description that the prose is very real and in your face like actually being at one of these concerts is spot on actually. Which made it both hilarious and more realistic at times, while other times I was ready to move on from all the describing of the shows and audiences. That's why I also struggled to move through the read because it became Stephen King-ish at times with overwhelming descriptions since some of it was going over my head anyway. But the story was a real and entertaining experience throughout, like watching a heartfelt movie with an epic journey and a happy ending...except this book isn't completely heartfelt but it's pretty epic in many parts, hilarious in others, and incredibly realistic in its underlying theme - that despite the hell they go through on the tour with trying to relive the good ole days, and dealing with each other's faults (mostly Parker's), they still are having the best time of their life. Like the quote from the narrator near the end - "the stereo killers were me. And as much as I hated the truth, I would never escape it."

[Dr. Raye of Sunshine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book sounded so good to me and I was excited to read it. It was an okay read, but it really wasn't my cup of tea. The premise is a good one: a teacher reunites with his band and they get up to shenanigans. What's not to love, right? Unfortunately, there was a ton of profanity that really just seemed to take away from the telling of the story for me. I'm not timid about cursing, but I think it was just too much of it for me in a way that just did not fit with the narrative.

I did enjoy seeing what the band got up to and it feels almost like the story is autobiographical in some ways. It is entertaining and a decent enough read if you don't mind extensive cursing and other foul language.

Thanks to the author and Booktasters for a complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Bill]

If you are a musician or just a music fan I highly recommend this book.

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A story of a once upon a time punk bands valiant attempt at making a return. A must read for the musically inclined.