The Tompo of the Ringing answers this question-if an eclectic garage and roll band earning three dollars a night split five ways explodes in an empty Tenderloin bar at 3am, does it make a sound?

Tracy Santa offers evidence that someone was listening to that ping in the cosmos. And furthermore documents the journey of a pre-adolescent naturist whose buddies-like Nashville Cats-all play guitar twice as better than he will, out of the tail end of the 60s, through mixed-up confusion in the 70s, rising and crashing in the D.I.Y. free market of the 80s.

Rock bios chronicle the triumph of the chosen few. What of the rest of us? Tracy Santa's story of a life in and around the music of his youth works to fill that gap. Thrill to the origin story of Joe Doy, weird scenes inside the sex mine, and being ignored by the Go-Go's.

Misunderstandings, marching out of step, and not quite getting it right dominate The Tompo of the Ringing. We've read about playing the Hollywood Bowl doped to the gills. Isn't it time we examined the simple pleasures of watching cartoons with Dee Dee Ramone? Or the strand of dental floss connecting "Wooly Bully" and Caesar's Gallic Wars? And just what-when all is said and done-is The Tompo of the Ringing?