Work: slow today, and I am slowly getting bogged down in sci-fi hardcovers that need to get shelved. Most of them are published by Baen Books, a company whose work I find immensely unappealing, but that is neither here nor there. The Breton tattoo is healing quite nicely and has yet to start itching, which is a nice change of pace from my last tattoo, which had my right arm feeling like it was encased in amber for the better part of two weeks (my forearm was just one giant scab with knuckles and a thumb attached).
Play: a double dose of music criticism. I managed to finish reading this book on my lunch break:
Outstanding book. Granted, I'm a bit biased because Reynolds is my favorite music writer. I've lost count of the number of artists I've gotten heavily into because of the way Reynolds wrote about them (A.R. Kane, for example; a fantastic shoe-gazing pop band that I never would have known about were it not for Reynolds' talking them up in his "Blissed Out" and "The Sex Revolts" books). As an overview of underground music in the late 70's, the book manages to cover a lot of ground. Tons of great bands, both revered cult icons and esoteric coulda-been-contenders, are talked about in "Rip It Up": Public Image Limited, Gang Of Four, Talking Heads, Wire, The Slits, Echo And The Bunnymen, The Meat Puppets, Flipper, The Residents, Devo, Pere Ubu, Swell Maps, The Fall, Joy Division, The Specials, James Chance And The Contortions, Black Flag, Mission Of Burma, The Mekons, Cabaret Voltaire, and Scritti Politti, among many others (including some groups I've never heard of, like Tuxedomoon, whose work I'm now deadset on checking out). It covers a lot of ground that other books have toiled over, books like Michael Azzerad's "Our Band Could Be Your Life", Clinton Heylin's "From The Velvets To The Voidoids", Jon Savage's "England's Dreaming", and yet still manages to say some new things about subjects that the aforementioned books went into great detail about (incidentally, if anyone still reading this shares a love of music writing, I strongly urge you to pick up the books I just mentioned; they're great reads, and they opened up a lot of doors for me in terms of getting turned on to new and incredible records). Another plus is that Reynolds doesn't bog down the book with philosophical tangents and over-analytical theories (as much as I love "Blissed Out" and "Sex Revolts", I can only take so many references to French deconstructionist theory before I want to toss a book across a room screaming); his writing is more clear, concise, and direct than anything he's done in the past.
The down-side: because he covers so much ground, Reynolds doesn't have enough page space and time to flesh out the more interesting groups. I couldn't give a shit about Frankie Goes To Hollywood, who get their own chapter; I'd be much more interested in reading about why Gang Of Four ditched their killer rhythm section and released shitty New Wave records. As much as I love Talking Heads, I've already read a bio on them; tell me more about the Meat Puppets, Reynolds, they sound a hell of a lot more interesting than ABC. Groups like The Mekons are talked about, but because Reynolds restricts the book's scope to a set time period, the interesting artistic evolutions that many artists undergo are never detailed (out of all the bands in the book, The Mekons have one of the most interesting career arcs: they go from being an agitated, sloppy Leeds punk band to being an agitated, sloppy Leeds punk band with a huge boner for old-school country music; I would love to read how the band made that decision to make their Hank Williams love public, rather than read yet another piece about Joy Division). And there are some curious omissions: where is X? The Gun Club? The TV Personalities? It seems strange to write a chapter on the English DIY pop scene and not talk about the TV Personalities; it'd be like talking about the British Invasion and neglecting to mention The Rolling Stones, or The Kinks.
All minor complaints aside, its a great book, a nice hefty tome that will have a place of pride on my nonfiction shelves. Side note: I payed extra to get the original U.K. edition of the book. From what I've read online through Reynolds' site and Amazon, the U.S. edition has over 200 pages of material cut. Four chapters have been cut, and several other chapters have been trimmed down. If anyone reading this has any interest in reading "Rip It Up", I would strongly urge you to pay those extra greenbacks and get the UK edition. For a book as big as it is, it still feels incomplete, and that is just the U.K. version; I can't imagine how unfulfilling and disappointing the American version must be. Plus: the cover art for the U.K. edition beats the hell out of the American version.
Other bit of music criticism: watched this DVD tonight.
I loved watching the concert footage of the Minutemen. They play their music exactly the way it sounds: in herky-jerky motions, hopping up and down, sweaty and spastic. The interviews with the surviving band members are interesting in that both Mike Watt and George Hurley come off as being inarticulate and insightful at the same time: they (especially Watt) give off a stoned guru vibe, full of immense wisdom but too laid-back to lay it all out at once. Its a nice companion piece to the Minutemen chapter in "Our Band Could Be Your Life". Can't really recommend this to anyone who isnt' already a Minutemen fan, because the doc isn't very engaging on a visual level. There are no fancy visual tricks, bells, whistles, or thrills in "We Jam Econo": the entire film is interviews with the band, interviews with band admirers, and concert footage. That is all. So it may seem boring in comparison to a film like the Sex Pistols doc "The Filth And The Fury", which is jam-packed with film clips, music video bits, and all sorts of cartoony visuals that set the tone for the era the film takes place in. For better and for worse, "We Jam Econo" lives and dies as a film solely on the merits of its subjects, and there is probably no average-joe band in the world more deserving of a documentary than the Minutemen.
Yeah... not much else to say. That's my schpiel for the evening/morning. Take care, folks, and I hope you all have a pleasant day.
Play: a double dose of music criticism. I managed to finish reading this book on my lunch break:
Outstanding book. Granted, I'm a bit biased because Reynolds is my favorite music writer. I've lost count of the number of artists I've gotten heavily into because of the way Reynolds wrote about them (A.R. Kane, for example; a fantastic shoe-gazing pop band that I never would have known about were it not for Reynolds' talking them up in his "Blissed Out" and "The Sex Revolts" books). As an overview of underground music in the late 70's, the book manages to cover a lot of ground. Tons of great bands, both revered cult icons and esoteric coulda-been-contenders, are talked about in "Rip It Up": Public Image Limited, Gang Of Four, Talking Heads, Wire, The Slits, Echo And The Bunnymen, The Meat Puppets, Flipper, The Residents, Devo, Pere Ubu, Swell Maps, The Fall, Joy Division, The Specials, James Chance And The Contortions, Black Flag, Mission Of Burma, The Mekons, Cabaret Voltaire, and Scritti Politti, among many others (including some groups I've never heard of, like Tuxedomoon, whose work I'm now deadset on checking out). It covers a lot of ground that other books have toiled over, books like Michael Azzerad's "Our Band Could Be Your Life", Clinton Heylin's "From The Velvets To The Voidoids", Jon Savage's "England's Dreaming", and yet still manages to say some new things about subjects that the aforementioned books went into great detail about (incidentally, if anyone still reading this shares a love of music writing, I strongly urge you to pick up the books I just mentioned; they're great reads, and they opened up a lot of doors for me in terms of getting turned on to new and incredible records). Another plus is that Reynolds doesn't bog down the book with philosophical tangents and over-analytical theories (as much as I love "Blissed Out" and "Sex Revolts", I can only take so many references to French deconstructionist theory before I want to toss a book across a room screaming); his writing is more clear, concise, and direct than anything he's done in the past.
The down-side: because he covers so much ground, Reynolds doesn't have enough page space and time to flesh out the more interesting groups. I couldn't give a shit about Frankie Goes To Hollywood, who get their own chapter; I'd be much more interested in reading about why Gang Of Four ditched their killer rhythm section and released shitty New Wave records. As much as I love Talking Heads, I've already read a bio on them; tell me more about the Meat Puppets, Reynolds, they sound a hell of a lot more interesting than ABC. Groups like The Mekons are talked about, but because Reynolds restricts the book's scope to a set time period, the interesting artistic evolutions that many artists undergo are never detailed (out of all the bands in the book, The Mekons have one of the most interesting career arcs: they go from being an agitated, sloppy Leeds punk band to being an agitated, sloppy Leeds punk band with a huge boner for old-school country music; I would love to read how the band made that decision to make their Hank Williams love public, rather than read yet another piece about Joy Division). And there are some curious omissions: where is X? The Gun Club? The TV Personalities? It seems strange to write a chapter on the English DIY pop scene and not talk about the TV Personalities; it'd be like talking about the British Invasion and neglecting to mention The Rolling Stones, or The Kinks.
All minor complaints aside, its a great book, a nice hefty tome that will have a place of pride on my nonfiction shelves. Side note: I payed extra to get the original U.K. edition of the book. From what I've read online through Reynolds' site and Amazon, the U.S. edition has over 200 pages of material cut. Four chapters have been cut, and several other chapters have been trimmed down. If anyone reading this has any interest in reading "Rip It Up", I would strongly urge you to pay those extra greenbacks and get the UK edition. For a book as big as it is, it still feels incomplete, and that is just the U.K. version; I can't imagine how unfulfilling and disappointing the American version must be. Plus: the cover art for the U.K. edition beats the hell out of the American version.
Other bit of music criticism: watched this DVD tonight.
I loved watching the concert footage of the Minutemen. They play their music exactly the way it sounds: in herky-jerky motions, hopping up and down, sweaty and spastic. The interviews with the surviving band members are interesting in that both Mike Watt and George Hurley come off as being inarticulate and insightful at the same time: they (especially Watt) give off a stoned guru vibe, full of immense wisdom but too laid-back to lay it all out at once. Its a nice companion piece to the Minutemen chapter in "Our Band Could Be Your Life". Can't really recommend this to anyone who isnt' already a Minutemen fan, because the doc isn't very engaging on a visual level. There are no fancy visual tricks, bells, whistles, or thrills in "We Jam Econo": the entire film is interviews with the band, interviews with band admirers, and concert footage. That is all. So it may seem boring in comparison to a film like the Sex Pistols doc "The Filth And The Fury", which is jam-packed with film clips, music video bits, and all sorts of cartoony visuals that set the tone for the era the film takes place in. For better and for worse, "We Jam Econo" lives and dies as a film solely on the merits of its subjects, and there is probably no average-joe band in the world more deserving of a documentary than the Minutemen.
Yeah... not much else to say. That's my schpiel for the evening/morning. Take care, folks, and I hope you all have a pleasant day.