FIGHT: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ass-Kicking but Were Afraid You’d Get Your Ass Kicked For Asking AUDIO BOOK

Eugene S Robinson

Hydra Head

2008-03-31

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Eugene Robinson has been writing journalistic pieces on fighting for a while, though he is best known for fronting San Franciscan noise rock group Oxbow. The band’s music has often put across a large amount of negative energy, whether in paranoid, edgy atmospheres or in balls out aggression. These primal musical urges are part of Robinson’s make-up and come out in his physical activities, as his Grappling and Vice magazine pieces attest to, and this life of fighting that he has led, culminated in the book FIGHT: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ass-Kicking but Were Afraid You’d Get Your Ass Kicked for Asking. Aaron Turner’s HydraHead label, who put out Oxbow’s most recent, The Narcotic Story, now release FIGHT in its new incarnation as an audio book, with Robinson reciting his text over two CDs, also including a new chapter special to the release.

he’s been a bouncer, trained in several styles including Muay Thai and Brazilian Jujitsu and probably hit your mate that went to see Oxbow live

The outwardly comic tone of the book’s subtitle is perhaps misleading as to the nature of its content, which is of course funny though not always so outwardly so, which Robinson’s near dead straight reading reinforces. The tales of fights, some his own and some of the many characters from the fighting overground and undergrounds he talks to, are all delivered in a quasi-film noir drawl, with words often spat out and sometimes shouted or laughed as the situation demands. Robinson loves to fight, he loves to fight and win, but he’s more than happy to fight and lose, as long as he can fight in the first place. He’s been a bouncer, trained in several styles including Muay Thai and Brazilian Jujitsu and probably hit your mate that went to see Oxbow live a few years back. And taking in a whole host of characters and names, various settings, styles and moves Robinson proves both an engaging writer and narrator, the audio book making an entertaining listen — a sort of introduction slash encyclopaedia slash investigation into man’s unholy desire to bruise and box and let go of ‘thought’ throughout. Though nicely punctuated by excerpts and sections of Oxbow’s music and the odd sound-effect the record generally plays out as fairly straight-forward dictation and the text can sometimes be more interesting and informative than amusing or exiting. But there’s a load of great insights and vignettes here, think of cons dishing out the ‘slap, grab and twist’ in vicious, close-quarter ‘rock n’ roll’ combats. Crazy. Just don’t look him in the eye — because you might be finding out the answer to the question “Can I take him?” — and you might not like the answer.