Free Pizza for Life, or The Early Days of Plan-It-X Records
- Feb 23, 2017
- 3 min read
★★☆☆☆
If you’ve ever thought your life was interesting enough to write a book about it, or if you’ve got a bunch of friends constantly telling you that you have such great stories to tell and you should write a book about them, do yourself a favor and read Chris Clavin’s Free Pizza for Life, or The Early Days of Plan-It-X Records before you do.
That’s not why I came to the book, which was loaned to be my cousin, Sid. Free Pizza for Life came with no specific recommendation other than that it was written by someone who orbited the same punk music scene in Bloomington, Indiana that we did. Though Chris Johnston (aka Chris Clavin) and I weren’t friends, we knew each other (or knew of each other), and the book is filled with enough familiar bands, people and places from my college town and surrounding areas (Louisville, Vincennes) to make it, initially anyway, a fun read.
While the subject matter is completely different, I am reminded of Denis Johnson’s excellent collection of interconnected tales Jesus’ Son, which could have served as a guidepost here. Unfortunately, I suspect Chris Clavin isn’t much of a reader, and it’s hard to be a good writer without being a good reader. Spellcheck, a proofreader, and some grammar assistance would have helped, but it wouldn’t have saved Clavin’s rambling, unfocused narrative. What the book needed was a good editor (though an editor is listed in the credits), but where would the poor bastard have begun?
Back in the day, Free Pizza for Life would have been a zine that could dole out these sometimes connected, sometimes not-so-connected stories over subsequent issues. These days it would have been much better served up as a blog, giving readers another slice of pie (no pun intended) over time. Even repositioned (and so reworked) as a collection of short stories a la David Sedaris would have been a huge improvement. If you’re going to turn the events of your life into a book, if you want to make some portion of your history into a coherent whole, you have to have a plan and work to that plan, and you have to know what point you’re ultimately trying to make. Rereading the back cover of the book, maybe Clavin accomplished exactly what he was after: “This is the story of a kid named Chris and his best friend Samantha. It’s about their adventures in pizza. It’s about them discovering the DIY punk community and starting a record label. It’s about a lot of other stuff too.” Maybe so. He just could have done a better job doing it.
Unless you lived in Bloomington in the '90s, know or knew Chris, or are or were a fan of any of his bands or his record label, I can’t really recommend this book. Even if you do satisfy any of those criteria, I still wouldn’t recommend it. But that’s not to say I found Free Pizza for Life a complete waste of time. For personal and professional reasons that aren’t really worth getting into here, there was one crucial line that made reading the book worthwhile. It came at the end of a chapter about Clavin’s decision to open a record store with some friends. They had come into some money, needed jobs, didn’t want to work for anyone else, loved music, and so decided that having their own shop would be great. For all kinds of reasons they hated it, and they closed after just three months. He concluded, “I learned a valuable lesson that helped me form a theory that I always share with my friends when they tell me that they want to start a record store or a restaurant or whatever. I say, No, you don’t want to start a vegan diner, you want to go to a vegan diner, don’t get those ideas mixed up.” Unfortunately, Clavin’s theory found me five years too late.
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