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[ l o n e l y p l a n e t b o y ] At one point in Barney Hoskyns' first novel, the main character - Kip Wilson - gets horribly drunk before reaching for his dad's revolver. I know exactly how he felt. Like full-length films made by successful video directors (hello Julian Temple!), novels written by rock journalists should come with a government health warning. In some ways, Hoskyns (a former NME reporter) still seems to be writing record reviews. He manages to cram every rock 'n' roll cliche into the 160-odd pages of the Lonely Planet Boy, showing a laziness that makes you wonder why he bothered. So the band that Wilson ends up idolising (the wonderfully named Sacred Monsters) inevitably practice their ``sten-gun guitar riffs'' in a ``cramped rehearsal room'' before going on the road with ``overweight bouncers'' and ``a veritable media circus.'' You get the idea. The best thing about the novel are the titles of the songs played by what one critic calls the ``Scary Monsters,'' which include Death of Desire, Evening of Light and the Art of Darkness. Sadly, Dead Zone - another of the band's non-hits - is a better description of the book.
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