Current mood: BRUUST
Category: BRUUST Music
So, I've worked my way through this book from C to C and here comes the overall verdict...
As I might have already said, My Napier Bell originally set his stall out to write a memoir of his life and times in the music bizz as manager to a string of top selling artistes. This original idea then mutated into a general history of pop music in the UK, with the basic premiss being that it was mostly driven by Homosexuality and Drugs....
Having now read it and allowed it's findings to settle, I would say that in it's original intention Black Powder worked very well...
I mean, I basically liked this book for the anecdotes....
Yes boss, when it comes to music writing, I want to know about the things the music doesn't tell me. I want to understand the people and the characters and the bullshit that surrounds the business, and this tone was full of this kind of myth building and shimmy stories, the like of which make you wonder how and why the music bizz has remained legal.
I mean Jesus James Christ, what other business is so corrupt, so dependent on deviancy and drugs and hasn't been shut down on public and moral health grounds??
It's a wierd world...
Anyway, what made this book worthwhile was annecdotes like this one..
Lit Roza was proud of being a quality big band singer.
She was signed to Decca where her A&R man was Dick Rowe, later to become famous for turning down the Beatles. Among singers he worked with, Dick was well-known for his lack of sensitivity.
One day he called Lita to say he had a song for her. He had an American hit by Patti Page that he wanted her to cover for the English market. When Lita got to the studio and heard the song she insisted
"I'm not recording that rubbish!"
Dick insisted that she sing it, so Lita sang it through just once, then told him:
"I'm never going to sing that ever again"
The song was 'How Much is that Doggie in the Window'. Lita's once-sung version went to No. 1, the first time ever for a British female vocalist, but as promised, she never sang the song again. Later she told the collective heads of Decca how upset she was about the way they treated their artists.
"To try to calm me down they sent me a Hoover"
As far as Black Powders mutated intention - to catalog and record the progress of music history - I found it to be far too scattershot to be taken too seriously.
Yes boss, large swathes of people and acts Mr Napier Bell didn't know or work with, like Lee 'Scratch' Perry and Joe Meek, who were, or remain, vitally important, were barely or not mentioned and therefore implied to be irrelevant or even non-existent..
Now, I don't mean to suggest that a history has to completely factual and not at all anecdotal to be worthwhile, but for my full belief and attention there were too many big names skimmed over in this way without any real worth given to their contribution for the simple reason that Mr NB didn't know them well enough to comment and include them...
But nevermind that for too very long, you don't have to take it seriosuly, and I'd certainly suggest reading this for the simple hell of the stories and the keyhole peep it gives into the decline of Western Civilization that is the music bizz......
So there...
 | Currently listening : Score By Matthew Herbert Release date: By 09 April, 2007  |
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