Amp'd: A Father's Backstage Pass

Gary Fincke

Breaking Benjamin are one of the country's most exciting rock and roll bands presently working. And luckily (for us, anyway), their guitarist happens to have an award-winning poet for a father who really, really digs alternative rock. Said father turns in a quasi-biography quasi-memoir on five years of his son's rock and roll life, from Strangers with Candy (winners of MTV's Ultimate Cover Band contest) to Lifer to Breaking Benjamin. And it's great, great stuff. Fincke takes as much (if not more) pleasure in chronicling his family and friends' reaction to his love of the music as he does in chronicling the music itself, and the chronicling of the music spends as much time talking about the drudgery of day-to-day life as a "rock star" as he does about dealing with labels and being on stage.

Fincke's style is very much indulgent father, and there's rarely a critical eye to be found anywhere in the book, its only weakness. But as far as the whole vastly overdone memoir genre goes, this is by far the best of the lot I've encountered. In fact, one of the best books I've read this year, in any genre.