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Overview
Bottlecap, the Virginia-based group introduced in Jeff Gomez's cult favorite Our Noise, traded in life as a small band on a struggling independent label for a lucrative contract with a big Los Angeles company. This should mean more money, more attention - more of all the stuff that comes with fame. But from the minute Mark, Steve and Gary arrive in Los Angeles, they enter a world they don't quite understand. Mark, as a leader of the band, tries to keep things under control, but his own life and his relationship with his new girlfriend Corinne - a native Angeleno and inveterate mallrat - begin to spin out of control. Steve falls under the influence of a neighbor with bad habits while Gary scours the city's thrift stores searching for Atari memorabilia and a love of his own. Confusion reaches its peak when the record company's plans take an unexpected and, to the band, unacceptable turn. They must either completely sell out and surrender the band or take a stand, relegating themselves to commercial obscurity. Or is it already too late? Gomez limns the lives of three young men who are geniuses at everything except what matters.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
After signing their first major contract, Mark, Steve and Garymembers of the Virginia rock band Bottlecaptravel to L.A. in Gomez's hip but long-winded sequel to Our Noise. Far out of their element, the boys are immediately intimidated by California life and see bad omens for their album around every corner, but only the band's front man, Mark, notices the band's real-life obstacles: a combatively scrupulous producer, a slimy, manipulative executive and a jealous and ambitious mailroom boy. Along the way, the boys have relationship troubles (Steve can't find a girl; Mark can't live alone). In the end, it comes to a decision between selling out and throwing away their big chance. Gomez suffers from a generalized, reductive view of his characters' generationa view unsharpened by the laundry lists of (undeniably accurate) brand names and pop-culture references. It's a shame, because so many of the minor characterslike Mark's new girlfriend and her parents, or Sam, the guy next doorare promising but poorly used. Instead, Gomez dwells, ad nauseum, on the boys' immature views of their relationships past and present (the violins are deafening here), drowning out the most interesting part of his tale: the question of what it takes to make it big in the hit-driven music business of today. (Oct.)Kirkus Reviews
Deftly beguiling sequel to a Gen-X soap opera (Our Noise, 1995) about the misadventures of the Virginia bar band Bottlecap.Beginning where Our Noise left off, Mark, Gary, and Steve have ditched their hometown manager, jilted their girlfriends, and burned every bridge they can to take an all-expense-paid trip to Los Angeles, where they plan to record their first CD for Subterfuge Records, a trendy "alternative" label now owned by a giant Japanese entertainment conglomerate. While bassist Gary and drummer Steve pillage the mini-bar of their way-cool Mondrian Hotel suite, guitarist Mark naively signs a deal memo with weirdly blue-eyed Henry James, a record company executive who then announces that, after listening to a tape of Bottlecap's earlier songs, he doesn't "hear a single" that radio stations would want to play. Wondering if he hasn't made a deal with a devil, Mark bumps into Corrine, a film studio production assistant, who seems to enjoy him for reasons that have nothing to do with his affluent parents or the music he plays. While moving into a condo owned by Subterfuge, Steve meets Sam, an unemployed actor and drug dealer whose neurotic friendship will ultimately doom the band. Meanwhile, Gary, envious of Mark's success with women, finds salvation in doing his laundry. The collision between Bottlecap's artistic pretensions and the record company's commercial interest is no surprise, but Gomez inventively dodges every cliché: His Hollywood settings find depth in the very fact of so much shallowness, and his clueless slackers find far more than they deserve as they traipse down the boulevard of broken dreams.
A gentle, broadly appealing tale of fumbling love and slick betrayal from a writer who's been there, done that, and still has plenty to say.