The Whyte Python World Tour, by Travis Kennedy: Don't Need Nothin' But a Good Time

In John Wray's recent metal novel Gone to the Wolves, there's a scene at a party in late-1980s LA. The characters, who are into death and extreme metal, take in a full room of glammed-out buttrockers and wonder, wouldn't this whole scene just come crashing down if one person were to look around and laugh at them. I mention that now both because that is an absolutely hilarious observation, and because it's a perfect preamble to this review. 

Sure, the 80s glam/buttrock/hair metal scene seems objectively funny in retrospect. But what if there was a method to the hairsprayed, headbanging madness? In Travis Kennedy's hugely fun debut novel The Whyte Python World Tour, we are taken on a wyld ryde with the world's greatest glam rock hair metal band as they quite literally endeavor to change the world. 

Wow, is this book fun...and yeah, a lot silly. 

Our star is one Rikki Thunder, a drummer for a just-hanging-on hair metal band called Qyksand. But Rikki finds his fortunes turn when a beautiful woman named Tawny (if you didn't read her name and, like me, immediately think of this 1987 Whitesnake video, well, I'm sorry your sexual awakening wasn't more fun) enters his life. At first, Tawny seems like a typical 80s metal groupie, prowling the Sunset Strip for her next score. But as Rikki soon learns, Tawny is much more complex. She gets him an audition for the up-and-coming band Whyte Python, which he nails, and the band begins its quick ascent to rock stardom.

But here's the question: Can butt rock really change the world? In the waning days of the Cold War, it just might. Whyte Python whips around the world, playing for rock-starved audiences behind the Iron Curtain, as various intelligence agencies and secret police organizations jockey for control of the band's tour and the hearts and minds of its fans. 

The flap copy for this novel describes it this way: "Crafted on the satirical knife-edge between high suspense and headbanging hilarity." I'd say it very much crosses the line into hilarity -- it's more spoof than satire. But what it does well is make you keep turning the pages to find out what ridiculous goofball scheme these rock stars will get up to next. And of course there's a big twist. 

Unlike Whyte Python's power to change the world, this book may not change your life. But it will leave you with so many good laughs. If you dug the Mark Wahlberg vehicle Rock Star or the more recent Netflix movie Metal Lords, which my brother Geoff and only partly facetiously call "the greatest movie of all time," you'll love this book, too.

Like a butt rock song itself, it's pure brain candy -- 400 pages of dumb fun. I had no idea this book was in the world until a few weeks ago when the brilliant Liberty Hardy of Book Riot fame posted about a new novel that's an "80s metal band spy adventure." I freaked the f&*k out, honestly -- talk about a book written squarely in my wheelhouse. And it delivered: What great fun! Bret Michaels even makes an appearance. 🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘