Play This Book Loud: Noisy Essays. By JoeBonomo, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2025. 242 pp. <scp>ISBN</scp> : 978‐0‐8203‐7380‐5

Readers familiar with Joe Bonomo, via longer works such as SWEAT: The Story of The Fleshtones, America's Garage Band, his The Normal School contributions or his substack No Such Thing As Was doubtlessly greet his current collection with elation. Bonomo has the same dependable brilliance as glass bottled pop and Ramones albums. One knows automatically it is going to be awesome. “Touch Me, Baby” returns readers to the not thrilling days of yesterlockdown. Record shops were not considered “essential services” despite not all nourishment being consumed orally. He compares flipping through old 45 s to his job at the Museum of Natural History, seeing the first copy of National Geographic (6). Additionally, he contrasts seeing Reigning Sound in Chicago before lockdown compared to the streamed show from Memphis three months later (7–10). Recovery continues. “Home” focuses on John D. Loudermilk's “Tobacco Road,” about Marvin's Alley in Durham. Despite an extremely prolific career, Loudermilk is only remembered for that song (15). While his own version “sniffed the charts and retreated[,]” Lou Rawls, Blues Magoos, and Bobbie Gentry all took turns adding to the composition about an area he had little more than glanced at (16). He closes with essays on Quadrophenia and Sound Affects. Bonomo writes, “What some listeners characterize [Quadrophenia] as hazy or incomplete has always felt to me like adolescence itself” (34). Paul Weller drank from the same coffee bar. In “Much Too Real to Ever Disappear,” Joe gives a track-by-track breakdown of an album that “has never left my head” (54). At that point, Weller's influences drew less from Tamla Motown and more from Revolver, Homage to Catalonia, and witnessing Joy Division's performance on Something Else (52; 56). “Amplified” opens Down at the Rock and Roll Club, with Bonomo attending a Ramones concert after Johnny Ramone's severe beating. Pre-internet, when Maxwell Scott's edict “print the legend” ruled, the injuries from a fight over Johnny's ex evolved into “the result of a brawl with some skinhead” (70). In “You Don't Own Me”'s preface, Joe explains “[W]hen a band gets too famous, literally too big for the scene, I resist.” (73). Bonomo contrasts the feeling of watching Green Day play Wrigley Field with catching Billie Joe's side project The Longshot at The Black Cat (75; 86). Between, Joe catches the Detroit Cobras in Lombard (78). The segment ends flashing back to Bonomo riding along with the Fleshtones, the band playing for 30 attendees like they would three thousand (80; 87). Part 2 closes with an essay on Saturday Night Fever, the Devil Dogs' album recorded live in the style of the Beach Boys Party! After rehearsing and touring the songs, the band recorded the album at Conrad Uno's Egg Studios (105). The audience chatter offstage added to the album, out-punking the grunge giants of the 1990s (107). Eddie Vedder was a fan (108). Random Plays and B-Sides' opening essays began as entries in “March – Ness” competitions. “I'll Get Her” focuses on Van Halen's “Panama” a song mainly “about an engine” (112). Eddie's guitar conjures images of “churning gears […] gasoline and oil […] [a]bove all […] speed” (114). The next on The Cramps' “Human Fly” ping-pongs between the song and its celluloid inspiration, followed by “Nowhere” discussing the sepia-toned-to-oversaturated hues of Green Day's “Brain Stew/Jaded” video (128). “It'll All Be Over Soon” contrasts The Kingsmen's suspected obscene version of “Louie Louie” with the Stooges' blatantly obscene version (138). “No Heroes,” a review of How to Be a Rock Critic, is followed by an essay on Kings Road, house band for Pickwick's budget covers compilations (147). Dick Clark referred to music as “the soundtrack of our lives” so appropriately, this segment finishes with essays on his 20 Years of Rock n Roll compilation spinning in the Bonomos' rec room (162), followed by dancing “The Slurp” from a 1966 7–11 promotional single (170). The final fourth opens with three artist profiles. Lydia Loveless's brings matters full circle, discussing her online performances during lockdown, seeing her play live again, but resisting the urge to approach her (190; 198). Margo Price's focuses on the influence of psychedelics in her work (206). The last on the late Tommy Keene presents the sadness behind the smile, lyrics dominated by loss (221; 227). Loss closes the work with Bonomo writing on the sequential deaths of his grandmother and John Lennon in 1980 (236). Eight years later, he experienced the death of co-worker/Braille Party guitarist Lou Gigger (238). The author has nothing to report.