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Books
reviews
by Simon Ounsworth, and Stephen Drennan
American
Heretics
by Ben Myers
Codex, £12.99 pbk
| Yet
another chance to road-test Frank Zappa's immortal
dismissal of rock journalism ("people who can't
write interviewing people who can't talk for people
who can't read"), courtesy of Hove-based publishers
Codex and London freelance Myers, who interviews ten
of modern American music's gadflies and bad boys in
an attempt to prove that the spirit of musical rebellion
didn't die with the Seventies. |
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As
you might expect, the assorted snook-cockers make varyingly
impressive cases for themselves and their worldviews -
and by and large it's the old timers who come out best.
Henry Rollins, Jello Biafra and Ian MacKaye (Minor Threat/Fugazi)
are as inspirationally set against rock's corporate strait-jacket
as ever, and Public Enemy's Chuck D (black music's only
representative) is a welcome, if slightly muted, presence.
Second rate clowns Slipknot, meanwhile, come across as
being even more pointless than they'd already convinced
me they were. Quite why they're in the book is anyone's
guess: perhaps someone should have pointed out to the
author that aspiring to make money by being the phase
teenagers go through does not constitute rebellion.
Myers'
prose isn't entirely free of rock journalism's signature
failings. Sentences that are too long rub shoulders with
sentences that are too short; bad language and hyperbole
are self-consciously deployed in an attempt to give what
is in fact purple prose a veneer of irony. But overall
this is an interesting and uplifting reminder that not
all musicians are working for the yankee dollar. SO
Feeling
Safe
by William Bloom
Piatkus, £7.99 pbk
| Security
- a definite seller's market in what it's become obligatory
to refer to as "this post 9-11 world". Bloom
takes the familiar new-age pick 'n' mix approach in
this brief guide to finding a sense of inner safety:
a smattering of Jungian psychology here, a smidgeon
of quantum mechanics there, and of course an enormous
great dollop of eastern philosophy just about everywhere. |
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From
the moment a pregnant woman 'sails through' her driving
test after emitting a Native American war cry on page
14, cynicism is a definite option. But if just one of
the techniques in this book works for you, then eight
quid will suddenly look like a bargain. SO
Eccentric Style
by Deidi von Schaewen
Taschen, £5 pbk
| My
personal pick-o'-the-bunch of Taschen's wide-availability,
budget 192-page colour Icons series, second wave.
If you devoured world-trawling outsider architecture-examining
Jarvis Cocker's C4 series, this'll do you fine. Walls
decorated with seashells, hubcaps, smashed crockery,
religious texts; junk sculptures; transformed environments. |
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This
is pure self-taught expression, existing outside of the
conventional art channels. This enthralling photo-intro
usefully includes contact details for many of the locations
featured, plus addresses of relevant organisations. The
minimal text might irk hardliner outsider devotees, but
Icons are about images, and this one performs handsomely.
SD
Angels
Passing
by Graham Hurley
Orion, £12.99 hbk
| Forget
cathedrals and bits of paper from the Queen: the one
must-have accessory for any self-respecting city nowadays
is surely a fictional super-sleuth.This third instalment
in Graham Hurley's series of Portsmouth-based police
procedurals sees the genre firmly entrenched on the
south coast, |
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with
baggage-laden coppers Joe Faraday and Paul Winter investigating
the mysterious death of a 14 year old girl, whose fall
from a tower block may or may not be connected to the
murder of a small time drug dealer. Gritty realism, then
- but while anyone can do gritty, Hurley's gift for the
'realism' part of the equation is an altogether rarer
talent. Now - who's going to do the same for Brighton?
SO
The Soho Don
by Michael Connor
Mainstream, £15.99 hbk
| An
account of the life of post-war London and Brighton
crime don Billy Howard. Presumably its appearance
now is based on the calculation that, with all of
the key protagonists (including the Krays) safely
in the ground and the roads programme on hold, no
one involved is liable to end up propping up a flyover. |
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The
novelised style does leave one wondering how literally
true some of the events described are; but read purely
as entertainment it's a well-written, pacy tale that doesn't
fall too far into the 'they was proper villains in them
days' nostalgia trap. And discovering which local pubs
were once the haunt of gangsters is an added bonus. SO
copyright The Insight 2002
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