The Verge/UB Battle of the Bands – The Staff Blues Band wins!
Christopher Gutierrez really cares.
He cares about kids, and he cares about chasing the dream. He cares about punk music, touring and people accepting themselves as they are.
His latest book, “Notes from the Deep End: A Year in the Life of a Touring Author,” is exactly what it claims to be. It’s the life of a straight-edge former hairdresser with a major martyr complex.
Following the do-it-yourself ideals of punk rock, Gutierrez self-releases his own books, as well as a DVD and spoken word CD, under the guise of The Deadxstop Publishing Company.
Building a fan base of Internet friends, Gutierrez tours the U.S. and Europe in the same style, and often on the same tour, as many punk bands. He relies on his fans, who are also his friends, around the world for his well being.
He was the Myspace-sponsored spoken word artist on the Vans Warped Tour in 2007, but he usually appears at small venues and coffee houses.
Gutierrez first built a following with his blog, “AskHeyChris,” and the grammatical and other errors often found in amateur blogs overpopulate the book.
While such messy writing is acceptable to most blog readers, it does not translate well in print form.
Gutierrez has plenty of passion for his work, but he unfortunately lacks any real writing skills. His stories are of sexual abuse, self-loathing and abandonment.
The guy has clearly led a rough life.
His work is less about the negative, though it shows in every paragraph, and more about denying the negative to take control.
More often than not, his stories evolve into rants. It is easy to picture him yelling at a crowd that it is never okay to give up and giving out hugs to kids half his age.
It is easy to see why angry or depressed teenagers would look up to him. There are, as Gutierrez says repeatedly, too few adults who really care about these kids.
But, as with most punk bands, the appeal does not translate to a broader audience.
Passion is enough to make a person relatable, but it is not enough to make error-riddled, unfocused ranting very readable.
The Verge/UB Battle of the Bands – The Staff Blues Band wins!
Congratulations to the Staff Blues Band, the winning band at The Verge/University Board Battle of the Bands!
