| Here’s part one of a few
things that have focused my mind over recent times.
One of my all time favourite musical epochs is
the period of the late 70s, & early 80s, what’s become
known as the post punk era (as opposed to new wave). Punk had kicked
open the doors with attitude, but musically was often just Chuck
Berry licks played badly & then along came a seeming explosion
of musical energy smashing in the windows. Misfits rather than musicians
formed bands, politics & experimentation, rudimentary electronics,
women not just in front of the stage but on the stage, independent
record labels (as opposed to “indie” which the majors
contrived to make a genre) & a vital singles culture, all contributed
to an accelerated musical mutation almost too rapid to keep up with.
Everyone seemed to be audiophonically action painting, not just
a new record, but a new sound almost everytime all of the time.
PiL, Joy Division, Cabaret Voltaire, Talking Heads, Throbbing Gristle,
Devo, Pere Ubu, The Pop Group, 23 Skidoo & so many more. And
it was global! It was too good to last & it didn’t.
Careerists & record companies took back control
& a lot of people just got exhausted. But not writer SIMON REYNOLDS,
who’s enthusiasm, insight, intelligence, opinion, first hand
experience & impeccable research makes RIP IT UP & START
AGAIN THE HISTORY OF POST PUNK 1978 _ 1984 such an invigorating
read. At almost 600 pages, Reynolds has written the definive history
of the era & one of the best music books on an era ever, that
in spite of it’s length is a constantly compelling journey.
Free of trainspotting detail, “this happened then this happened”
sort of extended Mojo article, the book’s a work of genuine
scholarship. Simon is an intellectual, his blissblog site is often
inpenetrable but equally as thought provoking, so don’t expect
any kiss & tell, gonzo post Lester Bangs blurt, but his references
to political history & post modern theory are never heavy handed
& he avoids all Greil Marcus style “ look at me”
polemics. It will have you reaching back into your collection for
the records of the time or building a new one. Franz Ferdinand who?
There will be a companion CD released next year to coincide with
book’s American release.
Robert Hughes called him the Breugel of his generation
& I see his point, but he misses that fact that really ROBERT
CRUMB’s art is all about him. Rarely has an artist bared his
fears, phobias, fetishes & fuckups so entertainingly through
his art, an excellent draughtsman & perspective manipulator
& it seems that once a pen is in Crumb’s hand his psyche
is set free. The released 9 years ago definitive collection of his
art THE R CRUMB COFFEE TABLE ART BOOK is highly recommended &
now he’s teamed up with the same collaborator on THE R CRUMB
HANDBOOK a visual & word story of his life, a creepy comic obsessed
childhood, the Haight Ashbury San Francisco scene & the comix
explosion that he helped detonate, his discomfort with fame &
his ruthless self examination. It’s a great ride punctuated
with visual treats & the dry dead pan serial biography that
he tells. Much hilarity. But what surprised me & lifted the
book above the merely excellent was the latter section that I found
particularly moving & vivid, he’s virtually prepared his
own elegant elegy. A meditator since the mid 90s, a resident in
the south of France & seemingly content with his longterm wife
Ailene & their daughter he seems to have attained a kind of
higher innocence in the most human of ways & that’s always
been his struggle. At almost 500 pages with a 20 track musical sampler
CD of the various bands that he’s played with over the years,
an avid 78rpm record collector & afficianado of the era (he
scorns modern music) Robert does love his banjo. It’s a perfect
introduction or consumation of the man’s muse. By the way
the CHE HANDBOOK in the same series is the most concise & detailed
word & photo on the great man available.
When THE LATHAM DIARIES was released, the media
frenzy, the seemingly universal tut tutting was infuriating &
tedious, while the “ analysis” seemed like lockstep
mock shock & indignation. So I bought the book just to shut
out the noise. What I couldn’t get over was the way that the
book was spoken of as if it were claiming to be the definitive history,
a political thesis or even biography. Can’t they read! It’s
called the diaries! Surely the most personal subjective & candid
mode of literary expression. A snapshot in time seen through someone
else’s eyes. And what a dismal world it is through Mark’s
jaundiced eyes, miserable mediocre men, the agony of policymaking,
the emptiness at the heart of power, the curse of the compromised.
Maybe that’s why the pollies & their media tics were so
disapproving, the book lifts the veil of all the pomp & self
importance & reveals venal opportunism on all sides. As such
it’s a unique political view from the inside & really
doesn’t dwell overly on the kiss & tell, or hero/villian
dichotomy, he does however get the boot in & push a few policy
barrows, the book could have benefited from a good editor that would
cut it down by a third, but that said, if you live here, it’s
an interesting if depressing look into a world that would call itself
your government.
Almost 10 years ago, LEGS MCNEIL wrote the great PLEASE KILL ME
the oral history of punk, a rashomonlike book where he interviewed
all the key players in the scene & synthesised it into a compelling
narrative of the time. Now he’s just released a similarly
structured book on the history of porn in America called THE OTHER
HOLLYWOOD a 600 page (where are all the good editors ?) that charts
the tawdry industry from it’s primitive beginnings when some
people first realised that you could not only make sex into a spectator
sport, but that you could charge for it, make easy money & turn
it into a multi million dollar industry. Peopled with madmen &
women, mobsters, misfits, politics, police, religion & wanton
excess, it’s a strangely compelling tale that focuses not
so much on what happened on screen, although Deep Throat, John Holmes
& other controversies are exhumed, but on the even more extreme
behaviour that happened behind & between the scenes. Stranger
than fiction, everyone’s a victim.
I know IAN GAIMAN’s work from his epic comic
series / graphic novels The Sandman, which he scripted with a number
of first rate artists to create a phantasmagoric epic tale rooted
as much in the supernatural as in everyday life. He’s now
turned his prodigous imagination to novel writing & his latest
THE ANANSI BOYS continues his to play with time & space, character
& fantastical plotting, featuring gods, creatures & real
characters, all depicted equally vividly. Far more good natured
than Stephen King, there’s a playfulness & compassion
afoot here, with the feeling that the author’s having fun
& wants the reader to enjoy themselves as much as he does.
When I bought MICHAEL CONNELLY’s THE CLOSERS,
the bookshop owner smiled & said “ I love selling Connelly’s
books “Why ? “ I enquired. “Because people always
come back for the others “ he replied . It was my first book
by Connelly, but looking at his prolific catalogue I had a lot of
choices, THE CLOSERS is the 9th in his series that follows Harry
Bosch & his journey in & out of the LAPD. It’s a self
contained book that charts his character’s return to the force
after a brief try at private investigation & retirement. It’s
a gripping character driven police procedural that traces the step
by step slow grind of investigating unsolved cases that gives the
book it’s title. Tightly plotted & rooted in reality,
no jumping out of moving cars or superhuman feats of danger, simply
the human emotions & heightened intelligence involved in the
dogged pursuit of the truth. And yes, I’ve just bought his
Connelly’s THE LINCOLN LAWYER.
More about that next time.
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