{"id":8307,"date":"2012-12-27T23:28:57","date_gmt":"2012-12-28T06:28:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=8307"},"modified":"2012-12-27T23:29:23","modified_gmt":"2012-12-28T06:29:23","slug":"david-menconi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2012\/12\/david-menconi\/","title":{"rendered":"DAVID MENCONI"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"D<\/strong>AVID MENCONI<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Ryan Adams: Losering, A Story of Whiskeytown\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

[University of Texas Press]<\/p>\n

\n

Ryan Adams is one of the more complex characters in music. He\u2019s a gifted and restless songwriter at home in a variety of styles, from wrenching country ballads to bombastic heavy metal. Cocky one minute, startlingly insecure the next, he\u2019s a fascinating, polarizing figure who has at times become a\u00a0rock \u2019n\u2019 roll caricature. Music critic David Menconi strives to render Adams in three dimensions, digging into the singer\u2019s origins on the Raleigh, N.C., scene that Menconi has spent the past two decades covering\u00a0 for the News & Observer<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Menconi was a firsthand witness to the rise and fall of Whiskeytown, the band that launched Adams\u2019 career and has loomed as a constant\u2014and not entirely fair\u2014benchmark ever since. Drawing on his own conversations with Adams (before the singer cut ties following a lukewarm review of Adams\u2019 2001 solo breakthrough, Gold<\/em>) and interviews with the people who knew and played with him, Menconi examines Adams\u2019 ambitions, abilities and self-sabotaging side as Whiskeytown grew from scrappy alt-country upstarts to a group on the verge of mainstream success, before it all fell apart. Although the author\u2019s fondness for his subject\u2014or at least the music\u2014is unmistakable, he sorts attentively through the contradictions\u00a0and self-inventions, exploring Adams\u2019 development\u00a0 with balance, nuance and a dash of wry wit. Whether you come away from Losering<\/em> with a different\u00a0 opinion of Adams probably depends on where you start, but Menconi offers a deeper understanding of how he evolved into the\u00a0artist he\u2019s become. \u2013Eric R. Danton<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DAVID MENCONI Ryan Adams: Losering, A Story of Whiskeytown\u00a0 [University of Texas Press] Ryan Adams is one of the more complex characters in music. He\u2019s a gifted and restless songwriter at home in a variety of styles, from wrenching country ballads to bombastic heavy metal. Cocky one minute, startlingly insecure the next, he\u2019s a fascinating, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[5577,5575,5576,5578],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8307"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8307"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8310,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8307\/revisions\/8310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}