BlackDog

Old good expression, ‘what goes around comes around’- is the perfect description of “Black Dogs: the possibly true story of classic rock’s greatest robbery” written by Jason Buhrmester book’s plot. This means, that all characters in the book harm someone else, and ultimately pay some sort of price for their bad behavior.

            The story follows a group of Baltimore punks who want to become big time thieves. The leader, Patrick, comes up with the idea of stealing money from the Led Zeppelin- the biggest rock band on the planet at that time (the book takes place in 1973). Surprisingly (or not) his or his friends’ ideas become the reality in every step they make. The book is written mostly from Patrick’s point of view, but in the first couple chapters, the author just tells the reader that Patrick is a Black Sabbath fan and from there makes the reader guess everything else about him. That is what Buhrmester does with every character-give each one of them just enough detail to help the reader to visualize them. Besides Patrick, the other three main characters in the book are his three good friends and partners in crime- Keith, Alex and Frenchy. Keith, dirty, always broke dude who installs and then steals the same stereos for a living, Alex- ex-convict, who was locked up for eight months for robbing Tina’s house was described as a tough lady’s man who grew up around blacks and tried to fit in by acting black, and Frenchy- who works at Record Barn and has couple cover bands playing at bars and private events. Overall, the gang is described as a group of long-haired stoners who are trashy, filthy thieves that love to smoke pot, drink beer and steal.

The author fills each chapter with needed plot device to make the story go at an incredibly fast pace, but he never takes a break to reflect on the story or its characters. It just gets so twisted and complicated, that at some moments it seems that Buhrmester loses the focus of the main concept  of the book and adds new and unnecessary information which extends the length of the story but does not make it more interesting or intriguing.  The main idea of the book was to rewrite the partially true story about the robbery of the Led Zeppelin rock band, so the author created this flat plot of many different robbery stories to finally reach the culmination in last two chapters and to describe “the robbery”. The main events start to take place when the gang decides to rob the Haven Street Pawn shop that is owned by Backwoods Billy-mean and psychotic convict and a leader of “Holy Ghosts” gang, to steal a guitar that they plan to sell to Led Zeppelin. They unwisely steal some very important tapes that are in the Billy’s safe, which ultimately forces them to rob Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin after selling him a 1958 Les Paul guitar. Eventually, they accidently succeed and get away with all the cash that is hidden in the guitar case. True fact: during Led Zeppelin’s 1973 tour, someone stole 203,000 dollar from Led Zeppelin’s safe deposit box at the Drake Hotel in New York after the band played the sold out shows at Madison Square Garden. The thief or thieves were never caught.

‘What goes around comes around’- according to the Jason Buhrmester, the rock band Led Zeppelin stole songs from Willie Dixon, Sleepy John Estes, Howlin’ Wolf, Bukka White and that’s how they became rich and famous…the group of stoners and small scale thieves eventually became just rich…