Notes on Notes on Notes

I read a lot of music books, and it's very rare to find one that tweaks established formulas. That's why it was so refreshing to stumble across Bela Koe-Krompecher's "Love, Death, and Photosynthesis," a time-jumping addiction and recovery memoir, an elegy to lost friends, and a love letter to the '90s Columbus, Ohio indie/punk scene. Opening in 1988 and ranging from the early '70s to 2018, the book is a series of short vignettes adding up to a remarkably heartfelt memoir of loss, loneliness, music, and ultimately acceptance and recovery. Koe-Krompecher's loving, yet fraught relationships with Jenny Mae Leffel, his high school girlfriend-turned best friend and Jerry Wick of the band Gaunt comprise the emotional center of the book. Both are gifted musicians with self-destructive streaks and substance problems, as well as contagious senses of humor and fun that keep him hooked. Koe-Krompecher humanizes his two friends rather than turning them into caution...