Metamatic Forums Socialising The Green Room What are you reading these days

Liverpool Eric's (all the best clubs are downstairs everbody knows that...) by Jaki Florek and Paul Whelan. This is an A4 500 page book and has taken me half a year to finish reading it! It's got everything on the music scene in Liverpool from the skiffle days through the Stadium right to Eric's and Brady's. The book is not only about Liverpool and Wirral bands but also all the bands that played at Eric's.

Ultravox! and John Foxx gets briefly mentioned in the book. On 18 December 1976 Ultravox! and Eddie & The Hot Rods happened to have played the final Stadium gig. "They were like the next step, preparing you for punk".

Eric's used to get really packed when Ultravox with John played and were the most lucrative gigs for the club. However, as everybody knows Roger Eagle's enthusiasm for music made the club a music scene rather than a profitable business.

Ultravox were really popular, from "The stage was dark, a lone voice accompanied by acoustic guitar was singing I want to be a machine" to "Foxx used to put his heart and soul into his performance. One night one of the beams had to be repaired where John Foxx had gone mad and banged his head against the beam in the ceiling that went across the stage, there was plaster everywhere."

John when interviewed on Eric's "I remember Eric's, a lot of small episodes - if it was a film they'd be cut out bits that you'd keep somewhere, strung together and not in any sequence.....There was a girl who used to come and watch us, I was talking to her and she said "Don't forget me!" It was really moving. It really got to me....I put it into a song..."

The Quiet Men track gets a special mention, "A dancefloor classic...it's got that beat, but at the same time it's got this oddness, this otherworldliness..."

At times the book goes beyond Eric's and mentions that the elusive but pioneering Wirral band Dalek I Love You supported Ultravox with John at the Factory Night at the Russell Club in Manchester.

All in all, an entertaining and encyclopedic book on Eric's.

Chris

Well done on completing it Chris and thanks for the Foxx/Vox bits.

Great stuff Chris, thanks for sharing

I'm just reading some factuals online at the moment about the fascinating Novgorod Codex



The whole concepts of palimpsests appeals to me, although I can't begin to understand it and couldn't say why.
To me in many ways it is a way of representing John Foxx career - many layers and ideas overwriting and not quite obscuring one another.

Probably just this week's whim, but its nonetheless intriguing for that. This image itself reminds me very much of the "My Sex" exhibit at DNA, which was one of my favourite pieces

Finally managed to track down a slightly battered copy of Geoffrey Fletcher's The London Nobody Knows without selling a kidney (I already sold one for Manafon and I've been reliably informed by Dr. Johnnie Walker that to sell the other would be detrimental to my health...).

It's a beautiful slim volume written in 1962 by Fletcher (Slade art grad - so there's lovely line drawings throughout) as he wanders the back streets of east London, Islington etc.

I've been after it for a few years as there was a documentary made based on the book with James Mason back in the 60s that was shown alongside the Saint Etienne produced London documentary Finisterre back in 2005.

I'm sure Foxx has mentioned it around the release of My Lost City as an inspiration. The film of The London Nobody Knows (1967) is freely available (I think) on various archive sites, the book however, does go for silly money and really deserves a re-print.

1. Fawlty Towers By John Cleese and Connie Booth (Currently on "The Germans" episode - you'd never get away with this now..)
2. Hobby Electronics (magazine) December 1981, I think, the one with the "Drum Synthesiser" project in it, anyway.

Blitzed!: The Autobiography of Steve Strange . It's an honest account of the face of the New Romatic movement. Boy was he in the limelight! Sadly, as countless other stars once the fame and money goes all that is left are drugs. It was an interesting read which I started and finished during the Christmas vacation.

Another Christmas read was Another Green World by Geeta Dayal . The book is an in-depth study of the album and like other 33 1/3 series books also talks about the album preceeding it and the one folllowing it. These books are smart, it can fit nicely in your pocket and you can read it anywhere.

Duran Duran: Notorious by Steve Malins. Read it for the second time and enojyed it more. I like the style used by Steve where the biopic develops nicely from beginnings to present day, all nicely condensed from exhaustive research. I look forward to Johns' book one day

The Ambient Century: From Mahler to Trance - The Evolution of Sound in the Electronic Age by Mark Prendergrast . Now, this is the most encyclopedic book that I've read in ages. Very thorough and noted down a few recommendations. An essential addition to my library of music related books.

Krautrock: Cosmic Theory and its Legacyby by Erik Davis, Michel Faber, David Keenan and Ken Hollings. A welcome surprise. At last a book on this music genre that's easily available. It's a perfect insight, very colourful too. A well presented document indeed.

Vintage Synthesizers: Groundbreaking Instruments and Pioneering Designers of Electric Music Synthesizers by Mark Vail. At times too technical but an essential account of these vintage musical instruments. There are even contributions by Bob Moog. It's such an exciting book that it has a health warning in that too much indulgence can lead to parting with your cash on any of these vintage instruments displayed in the book. This is true from experience!

Chris

Poetry.

I always find poetry fills the gaps when there are no books I feel inspired to read.
I'm as bad with books as I am with music - so often nothing I own is what I want to listen to.
Gormenghast has gone back on the shelf...

So I fall back into poetry.

At present, I'm trying to read Longfellow's classic Evangeline but finding it difficult to concentrate for long enough.
I enjoy reading Eliot, Manley Hopkins (but you have to be in the right mood) and - by way of contrast - Baudelaire and Rimbaud.

Les Fleurs du Mal is probably my favourite series

ROUGH RIDE Paul Kimmage

mid 80's Irish doméstique/gregario's and now Sunday Times sports journalist first person account of life on two wheels at that time and his own personal crusade against illicit substance abuse in cycling Talking of which , I've got a Milano/San Remo to get to with Mark Cavendish wearing the no 1 jersey ! Laters Les Foxxheads !!

In the middle of reading Peter Hook's book "How Not To Run A Club" and it really is a good read he has a brilliant sense of humour.

Gary

I've started reading again!

And I'm currently half way through John Christopher's The Death of Grass.

Yet another SF classic written in the 50s which seems all too close to reality today.