by meandthestereo
“I’ll tell you again for the last time. The music is not important. It’s the desire for success that counts.”
Author: Gipi
Title: Garage Band
Publisher: :01 First Second
Medium: Graphic Novel
Decision: 4/5 Short, but great, read
1. About the Author
Gipi’s full name is Gianni Pacinotti. He’s an Italian cartoonist, and though he’s been producing work for quite a while, this is the first graphic novel of his that I’ve come across. In 2006, he won an Eisner award for a series called The Innocents! That will probably be the next piece of work by Gipi that I pick up.
2. About the Book
Gipi utilizes the classic form of comic storytelling with a very freehand and messy style of drawing all finished with watercolors. The graphic novel is a quick 114 pages, and is translated from Italian into English, for the version I read. The art style complements the attempted live action of the band’s practice sessions, as the flurried and overlapped drawings give you a sense of the energy the boys are creating. The watercoloring is very detailed, dark and dusty, which seems perfect for the city the author has created which seems dirty in itself.
There are four main characters in this story, but they aren’t your typical teenage boys. Each of these characters is very different; they all have different backgrounds, different reasons for playing. This is great to see from an artist: Gipi realizes that not everyone is the same, that not all teenagers go through the same crap. It’s very refreshing to see an author understand the uniqueness of life. The boys are in a band, trying very hard to record a 5-song demo to show to a music exec, end up doing some stupid things, and, in the end, continue playing the music that means so much to them and helps get them through their young lives.
There are no attacks on lifestyle, not even any focus on what type of music the boys are playing. This graphic novel quietly, but beautifully, states how important music can be for four young men trying to get to the next stage of their lives.
3. The Decision 4/5 A short, but great, read
I raced through this graphic novel very quickly and was struck hard by its message. I believe that all of us, as musicians, as songwriters with dreams of playing to huge crowds and having albums on store shelves and teens with our band names on their shirts, we all understand what the music industry is like, but yet we don’t understand. The quote at the top of this post was my favorite from this book, because it presented the message so clearly and brutally. Yes, we know the music industry does not care about our music. But why have we kept trying?
For true musicians, this book gives you that answer; an answer which we always really understood. Success is important to a musician. It means that the one thing we want to do for the rest of our lives can actually make us money. But that’s not the success we’re talking about here. We want to know that our band, our album, our message was so powerful and so beautiful that it was deserving of a record deal. We want to know that anyone who comes upon this piece of art will ask themselves why the whole world isn’t aware of it. And this book did a great job of showing that these characters cared so much more about their music than a quick ‘in’ to the industry. It showed that beyond the record deals and the merchandising and the screaming fans, before that is even a possibility, the music we create is the most important thing in the world.
