Books

Reviews:
"The Air Guitarist" may turn out to be one of my favorite stories ever...” -Janis Ian

"Got a road trip planned? Then we recommend you download the audio version of Tony King’s latest creation, Fishing for Music, for your listening pleasure.
And if the road isn’t calling, but the couch is, you’d do just as well to flick through the print version of this little literary and audio gem.
There isn’t much that musician, songwriter and multifaceted creator Tony King does that isn’t worth hearing.
His most familiar incarnation is performing in the duet Beautifully Mad with partner Nina Vox –a.k.a. Kris Ralph – at venues across Australia and internationally.
Whether it’s witty lyrics, virtuoso guitar, or disentangling the world’s woes over a beer, a session with King is rarely dull. The fella’s a yarn-spinner extraordinaire. 
It’s therefore little surprise that, between songwriting and playing gigs, the award-winning Australian troubadour taps out short stories, and they are mighty infectious mini-sagas indeed.
Fishing for Music serves up a comical potpourri of tales that spring merrily from the ridiculously fertile imagination of a chap who has been around the block and seen a thing or two.
With a musical thread running throughout the compilation, King spans history, the arts, politics, the news, literature, pop culture, cultural foibles, the eternally silly human condition…and, well, most the world as we know it – or would like to!
He hops from quirky vignette to kooky fable like a hyperactive performing flea, and each story is entirely unique and entertaining.
The book is available in hard copy as well as an audio edition, the latter being presented by King himself in a startling array of nuanced accents and vocal eccentricities.
There’s the Scotsman in “Is the Bagpipe a Real Instrument”, the Aussie bushy in “Iron Bark Bob”, the drawling southerner in “The Last Blues Man”, the old coot rapper in “The Rapper Retirement Village,” the cockney east ender in “The Organ Grinder’s Monkey,” and on it goes.
This vocal versatility is regularly intermixed with instrumentals to create the mood and set the scene, and it’s obvious King had a ball putting it all together.
“It is a bunch of crazy and humorous short stories caught by using music as bait,” he says of his eclectic collection.
“I’d say it is diversional therapy for people needing a laugh and distraction from this cruel world.
“I have used music as bait to fish out the weird and whimsical characters of the music world.
“These people are the bent coins I found stuck inside me, and I have finally poked them out with a pen,” he says.
He sure has, and what an entertaining mob they are. Chuckles guaranteed, folks!"
-Peter Rigby- thestarfish.com.au



"Tony King is one of Australia’s finest singer-songwriters, with a lateral and feverishly enquiring mind.Organically creative, the guitar grows out of his hands and the notes are harvested like so much sweet fruit- who better to write a book of delightfully quirky short stories about the weird and wonderful world of musicthan the quintessential muso’s musician?"
- Jonathan Biggins 
 
"Tony King employs words as one would musical notes in these finely honed mini-sagas. His modifiers don’t dangle, they jangle as his pen dances between descants of Keith Jarrett humming free jazz to aliens,to ageing retired rap artists complaining of“hip-hoperations”.  A delightful collections of humoresque symphunnies from Mr King. These earworms for the eyes will stay with you long after the non-gender specific large-boned human sings.A major work in a minor font."
- Paul Livingstone (AKA Flacco)