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 "A gung-ho Candide with a taste for places it is wiser to avoid. . . the reports collected in 'I Wouldn't Start From Here' are graphic, comic, bemused and properly contemptuous of faith and ideology."
- Jonathan Meades, Books of the Year, Evening Standard
"An utterly sui generis report from the world's plague-spots."
- Michael Bywater, Books of the Year, New Statesman
"I can think of no more entertaining companion on a perilous journey than the ever hopeful, wildly optimistic yet clear-thinking Andrew Mueller."
- Rory MacLean, The Guardian
"A tour-de-force of hilarious, harrowing and ultimately enlightening reportage that will remind readers of the work of P.J. O'Rourke, Jon Ronson and David Foster Wallace."
- The Washington Times
"Unafraid to portray the world's warring people not just as victims and sufferers of legitimate grievances, but also as bloody-minded bastards and ill-informed fools."
- The Kathmandu Post
"A mix of dark humour and incisive political discourse."
- CNN Go
"His sardonic, self-deprecating perspective makes for unstuffy company."
- The Los Angeles Times
"Peppered with trenchant observations that reflect a nimble, cut-to-the-chase practicality, Mueller's interviews with everyone from terrorist warlords to international peacemakers are refreshingly irreverent yet astute."
- Booklist
"Travel writing in the danger zone that maintains its hipness and humanity."
- George Dunford, Books of the Year, Readings Monthly
"An addition to the genre founded by P.J. O'Rourke's 'Holidays In Hell', but it is one that pushes the boundaries."
- The Australian
"Mueller is the embodiment of what can happen with a fire in the belly and a desire to write out loud."
- Australian Book Review
"Mueller's travel writing is as incisive and entertaining as anything he's ever written about music."
- TNT
"A joy."
- Financial Times
"Delightfully laconic."
- The New Statesman
"Alternately chilling, funny and surprising, there's some great reportage here as Mueller struggles to reach an understanding of the world, quizzing the highest minister and the lowliest peasant."
- The Glasgow Herald
"His acerbic wit is matched by true empathy. . . we need this kind of gonzo journalism more than ever."
- Wanderlust
"Mueller spins what could have been the grimmest geopolitics into the finest black comedy. Like a print version of 'The Daily Show'."
- FHM
"Lively reporting from a gently humorous narrator."
- Chris Ayres, The Times
"Touching, often blackly comic reportage."
- GQ
"Brilliantly observed, articulate, often funny and immensely readable."
- The List
"Snappy, self-deprecating and sometimes outright hilarious."
- The Age
"Indelibly humorous and heartfelt."
- Sydney Sunday Telegraph
"An instructive ricochet between cities and continents and war zones."
- Time Out
"He brings to his material the mixture of rage and earthy irony that is the mark of a great satirist
. . . rewarding, thought-provoking and ludicrously funny."
- PopMatters
"Mueller's book is an excellent example of why today's brave, lucid hacks are forced to admit fear and confusion."
- South China Morning Post
"His reporting is sharp, his experiences terrifying and funny."
- Melbourne Herald-Sun
"If you enjoy your international affairs and politics with a good dose of cynicism and black humour, then this book is one to read."
- Brisbane Courier-Mail
"Often laugh-out-loud funny, the writing is utterly engaging."
- Launceston Sunday Examiner
"Mueller's irreverent reportage from abroad is fundamentally a clever cover for the author's ruminations on race, religion, revolution, rock'n'roll and other important issues since September 11, 2001."
- The West Australian
"As hilarious and sardonic a host as this ridiculous world of ours demands."
- Shortlist
"Mueller busies himself with finding the odd, the surreal and the laughable as much as the shocking and upsetting."
- New Zealand Herald
"A real eye for surreal moments of black humour. . . Mueller's work here digs much deeper than the standard newspaper travel essay."
- Sydney Sun-Herald
"His best story, about his brief, bizarre jailing in Cameroon, reads like a 21st century 'Goon Show' script."
- Good Reading
"A rollicking ride through some of the world's scariest scenarios."
- Kalgoorlie Miner
"A strikingly funny book about some seriously unfunny places."
- Perth Sunday Times
"Not bad for a guy from Wagga Wagga."
- The Wagga Wagga Advertiser
 "Andrew Mueller's piece about my band's tour with The Hold Steady is my favourite thing ever written about us. The fact that he is a war correspondent (though he claims otherwise) and music journalist and
approaches both with a similar slant makes him one of the most interesting
writers out there to me."
- Patterson Hood, Drive-By Truckers
"The most important critical anthology on popular music from a single author in a long time, its humour and insight equal with collections by Nick Tosches or Robert Palmer."
- KEXP Seattle
"Take one part P.J. O'Rourke, a healthy dose of Lester Bangs and a dash of Hunter S. Thompson, and you've got Andrew Mueller."
- Bookgasm
"Sharply observed and wittily constructed."
- Honolulu Star-Advertiser
"New edition of the rock classic."
- NY Press
"Mueller's humour makes for some enlightening reading."
- Biloxi-Gulfport Sun-Herald
"Sharp, witty and sarcastic."
- Chicago Tribune
 "Really rather good, in a barnstorming, country-punk sort of way. . . a highly capable ensemble."
- The Quietus
"A more than capable debut - allusive country-tough songs."
- Uncut
"The Blazing Zoos are undoubtedly fun, but they also have depth. . .
everything from Mueller's extensive use of brackets to the band's loving
recreation of classic country riffs bespeaks sincerity."
- Americana UK
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Music as punishment
The Guardian, February 2004
YOU may have heard this yarn – it’s one of those things people email each other, that they might share a chuckle at the foibles of our American cousins. It’s the one about how a Florida judge, Jeffrey Swartz, sentenced a motorist, whose car stereo had breached commendably strict noise nuisance ordinances, to listen to “La Traviata”. Most of you, whether you forwarded it or deleted it, probably thought little more about it. I submit that this deserves further contemplation. Judge Swartz, I believe, is a judicial genius, an heir to Hammurabi and Solomon, who has hit upon a cheap and efficacious means of vastly improving urban life.
The facts of the case are these. A 32-year-old club promoter, Michael Carreras, was driving his Jaguar, windows down and sunroof open, listening to a 50 Cent CD, at five in the damn morning. This would be an affront to decency anywhere, but in Miami Beach, happily, it is illegal for your car stereo to be audible from 100 feet away. A passing cop issued Mr Carreras with a summons. When Mr Carreras fronted the beak, the great Judge Swartz said “You impose your music on me, I’m going to impose my music on you”. He presented Carreras with a choice: a US$500 fine, or sitting through two and a half hours of “La Traviata”. Carreras opted to endure the worst Verdi could throw at him. He subsequently claimed, possibly to vex Judge Swartz, that he quite enjoyed it – though one imagines that he learnt his lesson.
The estimable Judge Swartz has recognised that there are few greater menaces to the happiness of the city-dweller than the person – I say “person”, I mean “ignorant, anti-social cretin” – who deliberately broadcasts unnecessary noise. A generous dose of their own medicine is the least these vermin deserve. It is time, surely, to update the legal code in this country, to enable judges to sentence the noisy to a punishment that truly fits their crime.
FEW things are as distressing to the spirit as music we don’t wish to hear. The reason that nothing spoils a night out like a bobble-hatted idiot DJ with a stupid beard, inexplicably hired by the owners of an otherwise perfectly pleasant bar, is the same reason why music could be such a potent corrective: you cannot escape it.
“Aversive noise can create great distress,” says Dr James Thompson, a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at University College London. “At high volume, it’s hard to block the ears – you’re taking it in through the cranium, so fingers are not enough. Sound goes straight into the mind. That’s why of all the things people complain about, noisy neighbours are way up there.”
Judge Swartz’s use of opera as a sonic rod of correction has also been the subject of discussion among musicologists. Professor John Deathridge, King Edward Professor of Music at King’s College, calls Swartz’s approach “bizarre”, but concedes that he might be onto something.
“I noticed,” says Deathridge, “that he wasn’t playing people ‘Carmen’, because that has lots of pretty melodies. He’s right that they’ll suffer. It’s like Wagner deliberately making hard seats at Bayreuth, this idea that penance should be involved. But something by Bruce Springsteen could have the same effect.”
It is clear that for music to function properly as a punishment, it needs to be loud – very loud. Professor Deathridge notes that when authorities in Copenhagen tried to dissuade itinerant drug addicts from the city’s train station with Bach’s “Toccata & Fugue” and the supper scene from Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” (“They’re both in D minor, which is the key of Hell”), the junkies simply bought earplugs. Dr Thompson is also initially sceptical about Judge Swartz’s tactic (“I doubt you could torture people by showing them pictures of badly decorated rooms. . .”) but warms to it the more we discuss it. Volume is the most important caveat.
“It’s always better,” says Dr Thompson, “to encourage positive behaviour. But if you’re going to use aversive conditioning, you’d have to play people loud music – really loud music – for at least two days, solidly. That might just about work. But there’s not much chance of that, in these lily-livered times.”
How sadly true that is. But in environments where the namby-pamby concerns of politically correct milquetoasts hold less sway, strides are being made. During the siege of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity in 2002, Israeli soldiers, perhaps mindful of the splendid results their ancestors had with trumpets at Jericho, blasted the occupying Palestinians with heavy metal. American troops blockading Panamanian dictator – and opera-lover – General Noriega in 1989, bombarded him with Bon Jovi and AC/DC (although not, disappointingly, Van Halen’s “Panama”). Deafening rock’n’roll was among the inducements tried, with admittedly less success, on the Branch Davidians at Waco before the tanks went in – the soundtrack included looped repetitions of Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made For Walking”, and Billy Ray Cyrus’s “Achy Breaky Heart” (the latter, at least, takes this sort of punishment well and truly into the realm of the cruel and unusual).
American soldiers in Iraq are employing similar methods. Army psy-ops teams have helicopter-mounted loudspeakers with a range of three miles, and similar equipment which can broadcast as loud, if not quite as far, from Humvees and backpacks. While much of the racket they generate is militarily and psychologically obvious – engine noise of tanks that aren’t really there, suggestions that the enemy might be better off surrendering – music has also played a part. The soundtrack used to berate Iraqis this time out has included old favourites AC/DC (one hopes AC/DC’s management are hitting the Pentagon for the appropriate royalties) and Jimi Hendrix’s apocalyptic version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” – conceived, ironically, as a protest against a previous unprovoked American war.
Ultimately though, it is the potential domestic applications of music as punishment which are the most exciting. Enforcing Anti-Social Behaviour Orders with electronic tagging is fine, but think how much more intimidating an ASBO would seem to your Nike-and-Burberry-clad hooligan if accompanied by forced endurance of Wagner’s 15-hour “Ring Cycle” (“That could work,” agrees Professor Deathridge. “Some opera lovers find that punishing”). The tactic could also reap rewards in terrorist investigations, as non-violent torture. Speaking for myself, about 15 minutes of Dido’s dishwater wittering, even at mild volume, would be sufficient to induce a confession to just about anything, up to and including the possession of weapons of mass destruction.
Again, America’s military are ahead of the curve here, though they have yet to develop Judge Swartz’s instinct for what will most terrify their captives – something that would need to be researched on a case-by-case basis before any British judges passed sentences of this sort. Last year, newswires carried the story of Mohammed Jaber, a Lebanese man who visited Iraq on a pilgrimage to Shi’a holy sites, only to be apprehended on suspicion of being a foreign insurgent. Jaber claimed that American soldiers subjected him to thunderous rap music, all day – but they made one dreadful miscalculation. “I like rap,” Jaber was quoted as saying. “Just imagine them playing jazz.”
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