Anyone who has ever had a set of drumsor tapped out a beat on a tablehas fantasized about joining a band and going on tour. This gritty and hilarious memoir by drummer Mike Lankford takes readers on a wild ride, from the raucous garage band of his teenage years to the bright lights and slick sounds of his professional but small-time road band. Playing some serious blues and rock'n'roll and pushing the broken-down van in between, Mike Lankford shows us the unglamorous side of the music businessand takes us places we never thought we'd go. A musician's life on the road may not be most people's ideal holiday scenario, but Mike Lankford offers a raucous and poignant perspective of America's Midwest. From the teen club in Oklahoma where at 13 he first saw a live rock-and-roll band and learned to distinguish between two camps of drummers to two years drumming as the "salt" in "Salt & Pepper," a Chicago blues band, Lankford's stories ring true while they entertain. Like countless other members of the boomer generation, Lankford's life was shaped by rock'n'roll. But unlike most rock'n'rollers, Lankford was able to make a living at it, at least for a while. We follow him from his struggles with the complexities of his first drum kit as an awkward 14-year-old through a series of ego-driven garage bands to a gig with two hard-living blues men who educated him in more than just music. The decidedly unglamorous life of the road musician is recounted here with humor and affection. While Lankford's musical career lasted only until his early twenties, he has given us proof that some rock'n'roll dreams can come true. Although this book does not boast the guilty pleasures of many sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll tell-alls, it accomplishes the more difficult task of allowing the reader to experience a deeply felt and fondly remembered slice of one man's life. Recommended for public libraries.?Dan Bogey, Clearfield Cty. P.L. Federation, Curwensville, Pa. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. Lankford's view of rock and roll life on the road is decidedly unromantic, peopled as it is largely by anonymous musicians, fans, drunks, and roadies. Little details like the hazards of playing the blues on cold, grimy nights in small midwestern towns make his tales of a traveling band in pursuit of the fabled big break ring true: "You could empty a hall in thirty minutes if your tunes weren't danceable. Particularly in small all-white towns, they preferred what they heard on the radio, and this meant songs like `Hanky Panky' and `Louie Louie.'" Realistic and darkly humorous, Lankford's fine "road" book shows the small-time, small-money reality of the rock music world that the movies This Is Spinal Tap and Frank Zappa's 200 Motels (with its subtitle, Touring Can Make You Crazy ) satirized. Having now found his niche as a writer, Lankford makes his time on the treadmill pay off as a launching pad for insights and good stories. Mike Tribby A witty, often endearing throwaway memoir of a young musician's professional coming-of-age in the '60s and early '70s. Lankford discovered his vocation at age 13, upon seeing his first live rock 'n' roll band. Soon he had managed to persuade his baleful mother to let him take out a loan and buy a drum kit, and after the standard period of godawful-racket-making, he joined a succession of garage bands in his Oklahoma hometown. Lankford captures the ludicrous joys and irrational woes of membership in a rock band. In one very funny set piece, the author describes in devastating detail his disastrous first and only attempt to sing lead: ``Dancers became paralyzed and clumsy, faces rigid. A certain wide-eyed unfocused look swept the room like a fog. Suddenly, everyone was just going through the motions, pretending to dance, pretending to smile, pretending to be there.'' After a stint in a band with significant local renown, Lankford got a call from a tiny blues combo passing through town whose drummer had quit suddenly. He wound up touring the country with the two veteran musicians for two years, playing invariably ratty dives and reaping the benefits of his bandmates' decades of musical and life experience. Lankford tells some excellent road stories, from hauling a wounded pheasant into the van (``I'm going to eat him,'' explains Dennis, the organist and driver) to breaking down during a South Dakota blizzard while searching for a town called Deadwood. In addition to witnessing much drunkenness and one murder, the author tried heroin once under the tutelage of the group's guitarist. The emotional and physical wear of this kind of touring drove Lankford out of the business entirely by age 23. Very likable, but essentially a string of anecdotes that don't cohere into anything larger. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Lankford spent 20 years as a drummer for a series of glorified garage bands, crisscrossing the Mid-west and spending 1,000 wild nights in juke joints and bar