Word On Books
with Jeremy Fenton
You Talkin' To Me?
By Anthony Sharwood, Published by Allen & Unwin
 In the lead up to the Sydney Olympic Games plans were being made across the country to cash in (as it were) on the droves of visitors to Australia.
While most backyard (and bigger) entrepreneurs were contemplating schemes involving food or merchandise, Anthony Sharwood was hoping to mine the Olympic period for his own nefarious purposes: Getting into print.
The result is the extended piece of lightweight journalism, The Diary of an Olympic Cabbie.
Full marks to Sharwood for realising his self-admitted project of 'making a name for himself'. Actually going out and getting your taxi licence, driving for twelve hours a day, arriving home to write for several more, and putting up with an obnoxious American tourist or two must have taken its toll - and the results make for an enjoyable read.
While not a fully realised work, You Talkin' To Me certainly has its moments of humour and insight in its 14 day account of life on the road. Although stating that You Talkin' to Me? will do for the Olympics (or taxi driving for that matter) what He Died With a Falafel in his Hand did for shared households, is an unsupportable claim by the publishers.
Overall, Sharwood is just cheeky enough to have given himself a reasonably sure foot in the door of publishing. His future works will be worth keeping an eye out for.
Long Way to the Top
By James Cockington, Published by ABC Books
 This is the obligatory book to accompany ABC TV's very enjoyable series on Australian rock and roll.
Anyone who has been tuning in (and the show has been attracting some huge audiences on Wednesday nights) will know the basic stuff the book covers. Only there is probably more emphasis on the wider background to many of the stories told on the box.
Rock and Roll madness was about so much more than the music, and Cockington's book delves behind the scenes to reveal some of the distinctly Australian takes on what began as an American phenomenon.
Tales of bodgie sex parties, the zoot suit, the cardigan cult and the Mod Squad, the Go-Go Queens, Sunbury (our first hippie rock festival), and a young music fanatic named Molly Meldrum are wedged between accounts of the rock stars themselves, the locations and Cockington's own experiences.
Representative of the whole are his descriptions of the Post Punk‚ era in Melbourne (which gave us bands as diverse as the Models, Hunters and Collectors and Nick Cave's The Birthday Party), the story of Cathy Wayne (who was killed while entertaining the soldiers in Vietnam), and the clash between surf culture and Rock and Roll.
The author, James Cockington, was himself a member of a now forgotten band (Forearm Jolt) that actually made it to the high-of-highs by being played on Countdown.
His other qualifications for writing the book include a misspent portion of his youth as a teenage sharpie and writing Mondo Weirdo and Monda Bizarro, about Australia in the 1960s and 1970s respectively.
This is one of those rare instances where I think television actually has it over the printed page. Its combination of sound and image is the perfect vehicle for rock and roll's visceral delivery (it's either that or a sweaty, smoky pub!).
But the book has its own delights and shouldn't be ignored by anyone really, er, digging the show.
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