Sold-out concerts, screaming fans, TV shows, Number Ones. This is the rock and roll dream, and the Wonderkids are living it. But somethings wrong. The gigs are sold out, sure, but the halls are packed with little kidsnot sexy hipsters. And that screaming? It sounds more wailing, actually. The TV appearances are PBS on Saturday morning, rather than Saturday Night Live, and as for Number Ones . . . you dont want to know. Exposed in his impressionable youth to the absurdist literature of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, the Wonderkids lead singer, songwriter, and resident mad genius Blake Lear has always written lyrics as silly as they are infectious. Why make sense, he says, when nonsense is so much more fun? Rock and roll has always been for the kids, right? This is why Blake has no objection when the band is offered a deal with the devil: the Wonderkids will be rock stars, adored and revered. The catch? Their audience will be children. They will be a kindie band avant la lettre, before the Wiggles and Dan Zanes were a twinkle in Raffis eye. The band takes America by storm, and things go very rightuntil they go very wrong. The temptations of the road are many, and the Wonderkids are big kids, too. Narrated by Sweet, a boy Blake adopts on a whim, who becomes the bands disciple, merch guy, amateur psychologist, andeventuallydamage control guru, Wonderkidis a delirious and surprisingly touching novel of the dangers of compromise, thwarted ambition, and fathers and sons, told with tremendous humor and energy by Wesley Stacethe rare writer who is as comfortable inside a rock club as he is inside a bookstore. A backstage epic of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, but also sippy cups, pillow fights, and Baby Bjorns, this is Almost Famous through the looking glass.
