RaveSalonSmith digs deeply and with care and considerable skill, bringing readers deeply into her childhood ... If you have followed Smith’s work for any period of time, you will already know some — but not all — of these stories, connections, and intersections. But now she is telling them in one place, collecting them in order to connect the dots more explicitly ... But there is also a reward here in these stories for the faithful that have always been paying attention, the callbacks to things already known and stories already told ... Plenty of new stories ... he book is not unnecessarily maudlin but rather sharply present, which is also simply an accurate descriptor for much of Smith’s life and work.
Bob Mehr
RaveSalonAuthor Bob Mehr painstakingly tells the entire story of the band, and delves into every relevant detail necessary in order to accomplish this task. It took Mehr over a decade to complete his research, talking to literally hundreds of individuals. The book is not authorized, but rather written 'with the participation of.' That doesn’t just mean that the band members granted interviews, but also that they clearly gave the nod to anyone else in the continuum of their lives and history to speak to Mehr...Trouble Boys is a tremendous piece of research and writing, and absolutely the Replacements biography we’ve been waiting for.
