| Author | Message | ||
     Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7745 Registered: 05-2005 |
Hard Core Logo by Michael Turner. The book is more than 20 years old, but I only became aware of its existence a couple of weeks ago. It arrived in the post yesterday and I read half of it in one sitting. It's a about the eponymous (fictional) Canadian punk band getting back together for an acoustic reunion tour. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7760 Registered: 05-2005 |
Boston Globe front page imagines a president Trump one year from now. Brilliant, and very scary. https://assets.documentcloud.org/documen ts/2797782/Ideas-Trump-front-page.pdf | ||
| Simon Withers Member Username: Sfwithers Post Number: 341 Registered: 08-2005 |
Neil Jordan - The Drowned Detective. Not convinced so far; the lack of speech marks smacks of capriciousness or pretentiousness (or something-ness). Whatever, it's annoying and bloody confusing... | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1284 Registered: 10-2006 |
Alex James - Bit of a blur Viv Albertine - Clothes, music, boys Two rock autobiogs, the blithe and gilded youth of Blur bass player James and the fierce, difficult tenacity of Slit Albertine, a brilliant contrast. I think annoying sexy-giraffe-boy Alex was one reason I took against Blur way back when (“I’m Alex and I’ve got a big biiiiiiiig bass” - arghhhhh): “Just because they’re good-looking,” says the homely Coxon mournfully in an interview somewhere – Albarn of course being the other part of the they – , “Doesn’t mean they have to get all the attention.” But young Alex got loads of attention – including, he hints, from royalty – and writes about it wittily and very well. He is very warm to guitarist Coxon throughout, less so towards Albarn, “domineering” and ”controlling”. He never quite addresses the fact that with two bottle-heids like himself and Coxon in the band a bit of controlling dominance might just be required to get the wonderful songs out to the world. The fact that it is Damon off somewhere on his tod with a Bontempi and a bleeding heart that funds his Rio six-way, Groucho shenanigans, cars and planes, is never really acknowledged. Viv, meanwhile, like Alex, has a fairly robust sex life but unlike him pays for it in almost Biblical spades, with some garish chapters of medical horror. Also unlike the whistling Blur shag-master, who prances through the pop world with Bambi-like cheerfulness, she details just how hard it was for a girl to get anywhere, even in those days of apparent liberty, particularly one who wanted to do it on her own terms. In the end, James makes a(nother) fortune with a football song called Vindaloo which I still haven’t had the guts to google, while Viv claws her way back towards the recording studio through fingertip-bleeding solo shows in a variety of anonymous southern English pubs. Good reads both. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7766 Registered: 05-2005 |
I liked that book, Stuart. You're right about James though. He is the second luckiest modestly-talented bass player in the world. No 1 is Adam Clayton. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7777 Registered: 05-2005 |
Post number 7777. Great interview with Cheap Trick. http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/ap r/21/cheap-trick-we-got-asked-to-play-fo r-the-republicans-we-would-have-got-swas tika-guitars-made | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1075 Registered: 04-2005 |
Nice piece in the Guardian's Cult Heroes series about Miracle Legion http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicbl og/2016/may/17/cult-heroes-miracle-legio n-the-band-thom-yorke-loved-who-could-ha ve-been-rem Their wonderful song "The Backyard" is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ78AZhz IoU | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 1794 Registered: 08-2006 |
That's great, Andrew. "The Backyard" EP is very special to me, and it kills me it's never been reissued. I have a very specific, haunting memory of driving alone through rural Vermont one winter in the 80s and listening to "Stephen, Are You There?" I saw the band several times wayyyy back and they were always terrific. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1076 Registered: 04-2005 |
Rob, Their catalogue is available in digital form https://miraclelegion.bandcamp.com/. My vinyl copy of the EP still sounds pretty wonderful. I saw them several times live too and they were always great. Once was in Mark/Ray acoustic duo form as support to Pere Ubu. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 1796 Registered: 08-2006 |
I had no idea! For some reason I thought there were licensing issues with their old material. I'm diving into that pool right now. And Mark, Ray and Pere Ubu. That sound wonderful. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7827 Registered: 05-2005 |
Very interesting article on what music of today will be remembered in 300 years time. I don't agree with it, but it's a good read. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/magazi ne/which-rock-star-will-historians-of-th e-future-remember.html?_r=0 | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3647 Registered: 03-2005 |
Some of our old posts, actually. I was doing a search for (I think) Andrew's account of the Associates break up in an Edinburgh hotel which I intended to paste into an email covering the final pair of Associates songs sent to a friend who's never heard them. I never did find that post but the threads were fun to read. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7830 Registered: 05-2005 |
I did something similar recently, Randy, and found some very funny comments, particularly from Rob and Andrew. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7871 Registered: 05-2005 |
Jonathan Lee – High Dive. It gets some things about Northern Irish Catholics wrong, and it gets some things about teenagers in the mid-80s wrong, but it's still great. Really great. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7883 Registered: 05-2005 |
Leonard Cohen article some of you may be interested in. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/a ug/07/so-long-marianne-leonard-cohen-wri tes-to-muse-just-before-her-death | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1097 Registered: 04-2005 |
Richard Flanagan's "The Narrow Road To The Deep North" Superb, yet an absolutely harrowing story. I love the writing and there are occasional phrases that could be straight out of one of Grant's songs. | ||
| Simon Withers Member Username: Sfwithers Post Number: 379 Registered: 08-2005 |
The news about 'Big' Sam Allardyce and his phenomenal greed and stupidity. Three million (pounds) a year and his dream job not enough!? And being scammed by strangers in a pub must rank as, er, rank stupidity. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7974 Registered: 05-2005 |
But he leaves on a high, with a 100% win record. No on can take that away from him. | ||
| Simon Withers Member Username: Sfwithers Post Number: 380 Registered: 08-2005 |
Makes him the most successful England manager ever - result, son! And that win was some of the worst football I've ever see England play (which is quite a statement...) | ||
| Billy Unregistered guest |
Apparently he was drinking a pint of wine when discussing things with the strangers. Fat Sam, what a legend (in his own mind) | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1310 Registered: 10-2006 |
The May edition of the TLS, which has one and a half highly appreciative pages on Radiohead! Oh the tiiiiiiiimes they are a-chaaaaaaaaaaaa..... | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 1803 Registered: 08-2006 |
Bruce Springsteen - "Born to Run." Only about halfway through but it's a winner. It's more candid than I expected and it exhibits all the writing traits - good and bad - you'd expect from Bruce. There are some overwritten passages and then some lovely moments of genuine illumination. Overall, it just sounds like Springsteen. If you're a fan, even a casual one, here's a pretty interesting look into a pretty extraordinary life. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1320 Registered: 10-2006 |
Karl Ove Knausgaard – Dancing in the dark Volume 4 of this amazing autonovel or novelography or whatever on earth it could be called, and still as intensely absorbing as ever, certainly the best literary adventure I’ve been caught up in for years. Here, Knausgaard evokes (mainly) the individual textures of a Norwegian adolescence with unique detail, moving almost casually from all-encompassing male teenage lust to the heartbreaking banality of visits to the grandparents to salivating over the latest album buy to offhand comedy – with his last pair of Y-fronts compromised by a wet dream, which should he wear to school, those from the night before or a sopping wet pair just out the washing machine? Hmmmm. A family fjord-side Christmas is pure and painful poetry, until the Christmas tree collapses on a Heidegger-obsessed uncle… He’ll only be 48 next year, but I doubt if anything deserves a Nobel more than this remarkable and courageous rampage through one man’s life. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8059 Registered: 05-2005 |
So Say The Fallen, by Stuart Neville. Not grabbing me as immediately as his previous books (all of which I've read), but still very good. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8118 Registered: 05-2005 |
So Say The Fallen came good in the end. Now reading The Spy Who Couldn't Spell. It wouldn't be believable if it wasn't true. Fascinating stuff. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8132 Registered: 05-2005 |
Lee Child - Never Go Back. Got it free with a Sunday paper in London in November. My first Lee Child book, and I don't think it'll be my last. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3718 Registered: 03-2005 |
Mariusz Szczygiel -- Gottland, Mostly True Stories from Half of Czechoslovakia. The author is a Polish journalist. The book is a unique collection of "mostly true" intertwined vignettes from Czechoslovakia's difficult times under Nazi and then Soviet rule. Though a very easily digestible 267 pages I have often found it necessary to put the book down until the next day because I'd started screaming. Szczygiel lends a dark humor to these stories that plumb both the weakness and strength of human beings and introduces a new foreign word for my personal lingo: Kafkarna, which I might indo-anglicize to "Kafkarma." A totally riveting book, particularly apt for us Yanks in this era. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8212 Registered: 05-2005 |
The New York Times obituary of Jimmy Breslin, the legendary journalist who interviewed the guy digging JFK's grave when others were struggling for something new to say on the death of a president. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/19/busin ess/media/jimmy-breslin-dead-ny-columnis t-author.html?emc=edit_th_20170320&nl=to daysheadlines&nlid=33795071&_r=0 | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8213 Registered: 05-2005 |
By the way, the Lee Child book turned very dull, very quickly, with far too many "Oh, that was lucky" moments. I'm reading Adrian McKinty's latest at the moment - Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly, and so far, it's his best in years. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3766 Registered: 03-2005 |
A great commentary in the NYT by Irish Times columnist Fintan O'Toole. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/opini on/britain-ireland-brexit-leo-varadkar.h tml?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSo urce=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col- right-region®ion=opinion-c-col-right- region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region &_r=0 Wow, that looks like an awfully long link. Hope it works. I just spent a few days in London last week, centered in Tower Hamlets as I usually am. It was an extremely short visit, but I enjoyed wandering down teeming Whitechapel Road and the smaller but similarly vibrant Bethnal Green Road. The absorption of expats from its former colonies helps keep the U.K. globally relevant. Its promise of an alternative pathway to citizens from other EU countries is the other force that buoys it up. Brexit is a national suicide pact. Consider where I'm writing from; we know something about national suicide pacts. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1379 Registered: 10-2006 |
The Italian newspaper reports about Morrissey behaving like a hysterical fool in the centre of Rome, when his driver apparently slammed their car at top speed the wrong way down Via del Corso, after recent European attacks one of the most heavily guarded streets in the country. Instead of apologising for the panic caused, it seems he ranted and raved at the policemen who stopped him, and then immediately cancelled all his concerts here. He will always be one of my heroes, but he certainly doesn't make it easy. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3780 Registered: 03-2005 |
Stuart, at the moment the only truly famous pop star type I can think of who isn't a complete jerk is Springsteen. I've never been much moved by his music but I've only ever heard nice stories about the guy. I still listen to classic Fall records periodically but I sure as hell wouldn't want to be trapped in a room with Mark E. Smith. Morrissey? Let's just say I'm grateful for the zillions of other groups he and the Smiths inspired. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1380 Registered: 10-2006 |
Was it just Moz's personality that kept you from falling for the Smiths, Randy? I mean, otherwise, on so many levels, they should shape up as an ideal group for you! | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3781 Registered: 03-2005 |
Stuart I actually like them better today than I did back then. A music friend of mine brought over the first Smiths album one evening. It was a new release at that point, before "Hand in Glove" had done anything commercially, at least in Los Angeles. I remember really liking its spare guitar-oriented sound at first but by the second side of the album I started to get kind of bored with the presentation. And then I forgot about them until they were big. I had no awareness of Morrissey as a gay man or anything until they were big. He was just this very mannered droning mumbling singer who didn't exactly switch me on. As is still true today I tended to find people by nearly random means. When the Smiths landed on the scene I was really into Magazine who I had just discovered when the postmortem collection "After the Fact"' was issued, in 1982. I liked Gang of Four once they got just a little bit pop. I was also into Siouxsie once McGeoch moved in (though I didn't yet know that was the reason why). And my taste for pop sounds drew me to some of the more 60's pop-oriented UK bands like ABC and English Beat. I loved, loved, LOVED Ellen Foley's album ("Spirit of St. Louis") produced by her Clash boyfriend even though I had no time for the Clash themselves. I also liked rooting out some of the lesser known old school soul and R&B artists who tried to buck the disco trend. (My best find was Bettye Lavette's sole Motown LP when it was new in about '82; she would not get recognition until around 2000 or so.) And I was still unearthing a lot of 60s people. When the first Smiths album arrived I was still about a dozen years from hearing the Go-Betweens and even the Fall were about three years away. I had a bipolar taste for punk and pop and the Smiths just fell into a void between those poles: they weren't pop enough for me and they weren't punk enough either. But, seriously, there are SO MANY great little regional independent groups who happened only because of the Smiths and that's enough to justify them forever because those little regional independent groups made a lot of great records that are being reissued by anoraks now. TMI but there it is. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8281 Registered: 05-2005 |
Not TMI, Randy. A rather lovely summation. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1381 Registered: 10-2006 |
At first, whenever Peel announced another Smiths session, I groaned aloud, not that whingeing bunch again! And at that point, many years unemployed, I was mainly listening to classical stuff anyway. Then terribly pissed one night in a pub/club in Edinburgh's Cowgate, suddenly what seemed one of the best things I'd ever heard in my life crashed out... "Who IS that?" I yelled. "Oh, that's the Smiths," someone yelled back. "William it was really something or something." "Let's DANCE!!" I yelled. And I NEVER dance. And that was that. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8285 Registered: 05-2005 |
I was a very late starter with the Smiths too. I can't remember what my epiphany was. It might just have been buying a best of to see if they lived up to the hype. I had liked some of their songs before that, and loved the first Morrissey solo album, so I don't know what I was holding out for. Probably a case of too many bands, too little money. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1161 Registered: 04-2005 |
I confess that I was an early fan ! « Hand in Glove » was such a brilliant debut record. The band was awarded a TV concert even before the first album came out and I taped the sound onto a cassette which I listened to 10 times a day. My shirt collection blossomed with many flowery additions and (with a male friend) we were probably unbearable in terms of turning up at Edinburgh flat parties, sticking our own compilation tapes on and dancing (badly) with half the flowerbed hanging out of the back pocket of our Levis. Ah, sweet memories. But to be serious for a moment the band encouraged us to feel more at ease with not being rugby-playing macho types. Alongside all the other earnest fey songwriters of the era...step up the Go-Betweens and Orange Juice. Edwyn was forever being heckled in Scotland as a “poofter”. What I cannot stand today are the ridiculous claims for The Smiths now...I’m sure Mojo came out with “The Beatles of their Generation” and did a top 50 songs...they can’t even have recorded that many more ?! They were an very influential group, who made some wonderful records but by that dreadful last album were finished. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3782 Registered: 03-2005 |
This is a fun thread! I am amused to find out how many of us were late to the Smiths party. Andrew you make me aware of something I never thought all that much about: how heterosexual guys could feel trapped and boxed in by the "rugby-playing macho types" every bit as much as gay guys were. I always thought of the gender bender pop stars as calculating circus clowns that people could cluck at. I am referring to people like Prince, Jagger and Bowie and I tend to lump Morrissey in that group. It never occurred to me that sometimes these guys just gave other guys some breathing space to be themselves. Rather than compare the Smiths to the Beatles I'd suggest Velvet Underground. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1382 Registered: 10-2006 |
I think if I did feel like making ridiculous claims for the Smiths then it would certainly be for the lyrics. Had I heard them aged 14, say, they would probably have meant the whole world to me, carving out a perspective, a geography, a stance, with wit and intelligence and literate skill that really even at 25 seemed something brilliantly new in the pop I was familiar with. If I'd been a teenager, they would have justified a way of looking at the world that was a huge part of myself and didn't seem to exist in anything I heard around me. As it was, as a sort-of-on-my-way-to-being-a fully-formed adult, I still found them mightily impressive. And they could make you laugh out loud too. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3786 Registered: 03-2005 |
This: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre e/2017/jul/15/empire-histories-ireland-i ndia-my-family Perhaps it is pure escapism from the pathologies now ascendant in my own country but I find myself endlessly fascinated by the cross-currents that come from the British Empire. It could just as honestly be an artifact of my genetic inheritance from my father whose surname could originate from just about any part of Eire or Great Britain. Anyway I love this short rumination on the intersection of Ireland and India. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8290 Registered: 05-2005 |
Randy, it was me who placed that story on the Guardian front yesterday! It's a great piece. I've loved Ian Jack's writing since the first piece I can remember reading by him, which was a Granta piece 30 years ago about the killing of three IRA members in Gibraltar. Back then he didn't know about his Irish Catholic heritage. One thing though, enough with the Eire. No one in Ireland refers to our country as Eire. Ireland will do just fine. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3789 Registered: 03-2005 |
I meant to refer to the geographic islands rather than countries in that sentence Padraig. You didn't like "British Isles" in an earlier post so I tried something else. Sigh. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8293 Registered: 05-2005 |
No need for a sigh Randy. Just be willing to take advice from someone who knows what they are talking about and learn from it. | ||
| Simon Withers Member Username: Sfwithers Post Number: 460 Registered: 08-2005 |
Grant and I. And what a good writer Robert Forster is. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 1829 Registered: 08-2006 |
Liner Notes: Loudon Wainwright III. With Dylan, Patti Smith, Springsteen, Forster, Keef and now this, I feel like we're in some golden era for memoirs from the musically inclined. As you'd expect, LW takes the form for himself; the book is funny, painfully, brutally honest, and unexpectedly poignant. It's pretty much like the best Wainwright songs. He'll tell a joke, then twist then knife, then make some observation that just breaks your heart. Got to see him do a Q&A/book reading this week, which was noteworthy mainly because only about 30 people showed up, which was surprising because he has a big Chicago fan base and typically sells out shows. More proof, I guess, no one reads. It was in the auditorium of the Old Town School of Folk Music, so our little group just gathered around him and it turned into an hour-long chat, which was unexpected and quite wonderful. With a glass of wine in hand, he read a bit from the book and if something triggered a song he'd get up and get his guitar and play a verse or two, and we'd lob whatever questions came to mind. I don't think I've ever had that kind of personal time with a musician I admired, especially outside an interview setting. Plus, I was able to correctly feed him a D chord he was having trouble remembering during a rarely played old song. I blurted it out, he looked pleasantly surprised, said thanks, and I recoiled, calculating the very good likelihood I could have been wrong. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8331 Registered: 05-2005 |
Rob, that's a wonderful, and sad, story. I'm shocked to hear only 30 people showed up. Maybe it wasn't well promoted? | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8332 Registered: 05-2005 |
I've just looked at a link I posted above 18 months ago to a page where the Boston Globe imagined what a Trump presidency would look like. They got it wrong. It's far worse. https://assets.documentcloud.org/documen ts/2797782/Ideas-Trump-front-page.pdf | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8333 Registered: 05-2005 |
And I'm reading The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter. Wow, was a thriller writer ever so well named. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 1830 Registered: 08-2006 |
Padraig, I didn't mean to make the Wainwright turnout seem bad, or sad - it was on par with other author events I've been to, actually. I guess given where it was, and the fact I'm used to seeing him with a couple hundred other folks, it was fewer than I'd pictured in my head. | ||
| Simon Withers Member Username: Sfwithers Post Number: 462 Registered: 08-2005 |
Author events are strange beasts, and I speak as an avid book collector. The first time I went to an event with James Ellroy I was one of about eight people; the last time it was a sellout of 300. I've been to very few music-related book events, though Andy Partridge was very entertaining in a rare session last year. And a few years ago the great Kristin Hersh did a book event/played a few songs at Bath's library (2011 according to Google). | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1402 Registered: 10-2006 |
Thanks for the LW3 news - I had no idea he had a book out!! | ||
| Fred Tadrowski Member Username: Ftadrowski Post Number: 63 Registered: 03-2015 |
In Love With These Times: My Life with Flying Nun Records by Roger Shepherd. I recommend it for any fans of The Verlaines, The Clean, The Chills, or The Bats. There are two short passages about Grant and Robert plus there is a photo of them with the Flying Nun Label cricket team, which they joined for a day in the late 80's. | ||
| Simon Withers Member Username: Sfwithers Post Number: 464 Registered: 08-2005 |
John le Carré - A Legacy of Spies (signed first edition, said I was a bit of a book collector, but JLC is a very, very fine novelist, and I read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold in preparation for this). | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 1839 Registered: 08-2006 |
An old college buddy of mine just surprised me with a copy of the new Lou Reed bio by Anthony DeCurtis. Was hiding in my mailbox this morning. It's been a damn long week and that was a lovely surprise. I'll report back. | ||
| Jerry Clark Member Username: Jerry Post Number: 1208 Registered: 08-2004 |
Set The Boy Free - Johnny Marr Slowly getting through my books I received last christmas. | ||
| Simon Withers Member Username: Sfwithers Post Number: 486 Registered: 08-2005 |
Ashes coverage on the Guardian's website, complete with Go-Betweens video... https://www.theguardian.com/sport/live/2 017/nov/24/ashes-2017-18-australia-v-eng land-first-test-day-two-live |