So not the longest story ever told by any stretch of the imagination and what is strange is the man is a gasbag and so you’d expect him to tell the story long and hard. I remember seeing him at the “Spectacle” gig years ago and he kept on stepping all over his guests line…
Naturally, the reason for “After The Dance” is money. But also, and I say this without benefit of reading the book, maybe something else: “That I lost myself in someone else — someone as remarkable as Marvin Gaye — is no longer cause for self-condemnation.” Can’t we all claim the same?
Crawford’s book is not unlike the man himself, he seems unassuming but he takes you by surprise, he doesn’t shout in his writing, he lets his wide knowledge and wry humor work for him. He expects you to appreciate his writing and you? You’ll dip into it with Spotify on, and before you know it hours have passed
Among the many many things I admire about the book is just how unsentimental it is, how to the point, how it doesn’t deal in life in abstraction but rather it deals in life as flesh and blood. There is a stubborn resilience to it. Over and above the fun of reading about people you know is the fun of reading about a world you have no clue about
telling her story as an artist, a wife, a mother and as one of the first women of rock and roll, in the 80’s and 90’s in New York. ‘Girl in a Band examines the route from girl to woman in uncharted territory, music, art career, what partnership means—and what happens when that identity dissolves
I’d love to see Page bring out the Zep catalog on stage one more time but he has a huge problem, who do you get to play Page? Adam Lambert? Eddie Vedder (right attitude, wrong key). Anyway, buy tickets for the November 3rd conversation at the 92nd Street Y here.
Koch has done an excellent job summarizing the life and legacy of a truly underappreciated and original American voice. As for me, I’m ready for a Saturday night choo choo ch’ boogie reet petite fish fry. Take me right back to the track, Jack.
The academics hate Gladwell, they think he is dumbing down when not getting it all wrong, important questions about sociology but layman like me appreciate his storytelling and if he gets stuff wrong, he gets stuff right as well. I mean, David did beat Goliath, right?
It’s all well and good that Cash was admired by Bob Dylan and Tom Petty and Bono and various rock critics and was a peer of Elvis and Jerry Lee and Carl Perkins. However, it’s somewhat mystifying that Hilburn would rely on third party quotes and recognition instead of trying to define the gravitas of Cash in his own voice.
He may well be a great storyteller but he isn’t a great stylist and his metaphors are banal and obvious and therefore he isn’t a great novelist and this is so far from being a great novel as to be, indeed, a very ordinary one.
Moz mixes intense ego with unconsolable self doubt. In his mind, even in his 50s, he seems to see himself as one of the victims of the Manchester Moors murderer Myra Hindley, running in the dark as horrors come out at him from every direction
In his new book, he covers the history of the label, the personalities involved, the business decisions, as well as the social and political climate of the time. Most importantly, Gordon has the critical chops to get to the heart of the matter – all the timeless music that Stax produced
The writing here is Dickensian in its outrage, and while it is, of course, outrage at harm done to him himself and not to society, the ramifications are indeed for British society where the law is at the whim of a senile old bastard. Morrissey knows his “Bleak House” and by the end of the 40 pages, you can join Morrissey in absolute fury at the nonsense justice meted to him.
why would Morrissey choose not to discus his sex life in any detail in an autobiography? I mean, if Moz was in a serious homosexual relation for years on end, what songs did he write about it? Why reveal if only to conceal, if you don’t want to write about yourself, for fucks sake don’t write about yourself, but what price prudish concealment?
There is something small minded in Morrissey’s not being able to be happy. It is something very Nicholas Nickleby, very Little Dorrit, in the young Paul getting beaten by ignorant vicious school masters and something much less so in Moz complaining about Travis not appreciating him enough for saving Rough Trad
One of his closest friends dies in a car wreck, another from cancer, on visits to his sister in the US nothing stems the depression so great Morrissey is nearly comatose and he can’t even get a part time job at “Targets”.
I loved glam as well, and essentially the same bands as well: T-Rex, Bowie, Roxy, Mott -you know the rolecall. And Moz writes about them with all the positive passion where until then the passion was seriously negative. 80 pages in and I’m loving it.
Whether Morrissey shall turn out to be the hero of his own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, this post must show.
