lazy sunday afternoon…
January 24th, 2010 // 1:53 pm @ andy // No Comments yet
It’s at times like this that I wish my blog had a soundtrack. As a little intro to today’s waffle I could have segued neatly from “Easy like Sunday morning” by the Commodores into “Lazy Sunday Afternoon” by The Small Faces. It’s good like that, music. You’ll hear it everywhere, used to set the mood for whatever you’re up to. Whether it’s the background to your “dining experience” in a restaurant, on the TV selling you something or just keeping you calm as you hang on the telephone trying to find out why Tesco have sent you an air bed instead of an aubergine or why your Virgin Media bill for this month is £8000.00.
I’ve been thinking about music a lot lately, I think it’s all part of my ongoing mid-life crisis. Mostly I’ve been thinking about Manchester’s music and in particular the stuff that came through the punk and post-punk boom periods. You see, having been serendipitously born at exactly the right time, about 14 years prior to the explosion, ( actually it was more of a spill and consequent seepage ), of “punk” I was exactly the right age to witness the birth and growth of some spectacularly good, spectacularly Mancunian bands. Buzzcocks, Magazine, Joy Division, Crispy Ambulance, Stockholm Monsters, Section 25, ( from Blackpool really but honorary Mancs ), and A Certain Ratio to name but a few. Naturally, all this thinking has led to lots of reading of lots of books.
Some good, some not so good and some frankly terrible. Of the good, there’s David Nolan’s “Confusion”, the story of Bernard Sumner of Joy Division, New Order, Electronic and now Bad Lieutenant. Now there’s a reason this book’s good, as opposed to Hooky’s book “The Hacienda, how not to run a club” which has some very funny moments and isn’t a bad read but isn’t really “good”. That reason is that “Confusion” is written by an author, a writer, someone who writes things and consequently uses words pretty well, while the other is written by a musician. It does make a difference you know. So saying, Peter Hook is a man of considerable talent as a Bass guitarist and I doubt very much that David Nolan could whip a crowd of 50,00 to ecstasy with a low slung guitar and some masterly thrusts of the pelvis, or compose some seminal basslines. It’s horses for courses isn’t it? Let rock stars rock and let writers write.
Although, having said that, I also read Bez’s book. And I reckon with the right drugs and a set of maracas David, or indeed myself, could pretty much do his job.
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