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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 in public: the case against
The Independent on Sunday, April 2003
NOBODY, not once, has said, or consciously thought, this: “I am not going to eat in that restaurant, or drink in this bar, or spend in that shop, because these establishments do not play any music. Instead, I will go to their competitor, who plays loud jazz.” It is equally unlikely that any of the billions of living human minds, processing uncountable gazillions of judgements every second, will today articulate, internally or externally, the following: “I would like to enjoy the conversation of my friends with some accompanying food, or buy some new clothes, or have a coffee while I go through the morning papers. My appreciation of these activities would be greatly enhanced if they could be carried out to a soundtrack of music I don’t like played at a volume which would be sufficient to level Jericho all over again.”
Many restaurants, bars and shops play music. This is not the same as muzak. Muzak – an adversary which querulous columnists have been battling valiantly but uselessly for years – is bland, barely noticeable, string arrangements of pop hits. The music played in public spaces now is loud, inescapable and, frankly, difficult to comprehend. Most people do not like most music. Even if you own and love 10,000 albums, that is a tiny fraction of what is available – the chances that a shoe shop is going to play something you are pleased to hear at a moment you will wish to hear it are about the same as dialling a phone number at random and getting Saddam Hussein’s valet.
It makes no sense. Shops, bars and restaurants deliberately do something that makes them less pleasant environments for their customers. In search of explanation, I rang Pret A Manger, the outfit whose adherence to this policy happens to vex me the most – I like Pret’s sandwiches, I think their prices reasonable, and I appreciate their no-smoking policy. But they play awful, honking wine-bar jazz of the sort that not even jazz fans would listen to, and jazz fans will listen to anything. Jazz, for example. Pret’s in-store music is not only music that nobody wants to listen to while they’re eating, it is music that nobody wants to listen to, ever. I would be willing to wager a substantial sum that the people who recorded it were wearing earplugs.
The nice, if bemused, people at Pret A Manger gave me the number of Alan Hall, Market Sector Manager at DMX Music. DMX is a company that programmes music for businesses, including Nike, Safeway and Pret – there is more to it, apparently, than just sticking a few CDs in a machine. DMX’s somewhat terrifying website doesn’t have much truck with the foolish, romantic notions encapsulated in Aaron Copland’s dictum that “The greatest moments of the human spirit may be deduced from the greatest moments in music”. Rather, DMX promotes music as something which is “essential for creating the retail experience you need for success”. And, strange though it seems, discordant, migraine-inducing jazz shifts sandwiches. Indeed, during Pret’s busiest, noisiest hours, the music is turned up.
“In a retail environment,” explained Mr Hall, “music is part of a brand identity, just like Pret’s packaging and furnishings are. It’s about attracting a certain type of customer, persuading them to extend their stay, and encouraging repeat visits.”
It may just be me, I suppose, but music, especially loud music, in a shop or restaurant, only ever encourages me to go somewhere quieter.
“Retailers are not in the business of driving customers away,” argued Mr Hall, reasonably. “And as you say, there are hardly any that don’t play music, so it must work for them.”
Have any of these retailers ever tried not playing music for a bit, and seeing if their customers prefer it?
“Not that I know of, no.”
If you put a ghetto blaster on your restaurant table and pressed “Play” on, say, AC/DC’s “Highway To Hell”, the waiters would have a word with you pretty smartly. If you were to sit down in a quiet pub and tune your radio to KISS FM, you wouldn’t have to wait long before the bouncers, or the other patrons, invited you to pick a window. If you walked into an Oxford Street newsagent, set up your decks and cranked up the volume on your favourite twelve-inch dance records, the staff would phone the police. Yet we tolerate – or even, judging by DMX’s success, desire – similar pollutions by the people who run these places.
The only explanation that makes any sense is that silence scares us, that we’re frightened that without distracting external stimuli, we’ll discover that we’ve nothing to say to our friends, and that there’s nothing going on inside our heads. There are presently moves afoot to ban smoking from public places to ensure that people can breathe. Would it be a less noble cause to enact legislation that permits people to think?
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