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posted by
davidt
on Wednesday January 22 2003, @10:00AM
Benton writes:
From 11th January, The Guardian The Smiths: Songs That Saved Your Life, by Simon Goddard (Reynolds & Hearn, £14.99) The author has explicitly modelled his book on Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head, the song-by-song masterwork of Beatles criticism. The template works fairly well, although Goddard rarely says anything very sophisticated about the music, and the language can be confused: he contrasts "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" with Wham!'s contemporaneous "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go", and calls the latter "the antithesis of hedonistic Thatcherite pop", when he surely means the opposite. (This is also a superficial and wrong-headed account of the art of Wham!, common among those who feel that to value indie music is necessarily to despise what is commercially successful.) Goddard has interviewed bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce, and ploughed through the latter's archive of outtakes and rehearsals. Fans will be sated with fascinating facts, even if the book is unlikely to convince the faithless. Steven Poole
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"Songs That Saved Your Life" - a short review in The Guardian
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"the art of Wham!" (Score:1)
(User #2426 Info)
come on... (Score:1)
is this guy serious? granted i don't play any instruments or have had any music training, but there was a lot of stuff in this book about chord structures, etc., that went over my head. hopefully i wasn't the only one in this boat. good read though!
(User #865 Info)
new book (Score:0)
"Sueing the Smiths saved my life"