Saturday, May 06, 2017

It´s not London `77, or Summer of love. It´s Glasgow `85

If i could travel anywhere in time it would probably be Lepzig, Germany 1842. For obvious reasons I suppose for those how know me.
There are so many iconic periods in time that people has looked back on and thought "it would have been great to be there, if only for one night". Woody Allen, a personal favorite, has made at least one film about romanticizing an area of time, in his Midnight in Paris the main character is able to travle in time to what for him is the single most interesting era in Paris history, and get to hang out with the people that made the era spesial. Only that when he invites someone to come with him the one he brings takes them back to somewhere else in the rich history of Paris, and who can blame her, Paris has a rich history and have housed a lot of important events and figures over the centuries , and still will forever be a place people will be drawn to for big things.

What Marin St John writes about in his "PSYCHEDELIC CONFESSIONS OF A PRIMAL SCREAMER, The tambourine years 1984-87", is as revealed in the title not London 77 when punk broke, or the summer of love in San Fransisco, or even even the heydays of Merseybeat in Liverpool or the spawn of Norwegian Black Metal in Oslo in the early 90s, no, its Glasgow medio 1980. I once read that Lenny Krawitz was willing to offer his right arm to get to meet Jimi Henrix, i dont know anyone who would have wanted to sacrifice any limbs to spend a night out in Glasgow in 85.

The author hiding behind his weapon of choice 
on flip side of  early single. 
But that doesn't matter, because the autor didn't spend his important youth years in London or Oslo, he spends them i Glasgow and that's a story worth telling. And its a great story.

The Scottish band Primal Scream serves as an excuse to write and publish this book for the author, he was once in the band in its embryonic years, toured and released singles,  and can easily take credit for introducing the band and its members to both music and films that would shape the band that eventually ended up being a million selling act in the 1990s. And it's the band that takes the protagonist around Britan and at one point even over the channel, but the band doesn't get all the attention as there is only so much to write about a band in its embryos state.
 Instead the author brilliantly tells a story about friendships, clubbing, tripping and fooling around. And he never feels the need to excuse the fact that this story isn't that important due to its location (Glasgow 85) but tells it with the same eager as it would have been any iconic peiode in time. 

Its all about the music and love for it.
I read a lot about music i suppose, but seldom do i encounter writers with the same kind of passion for it as Martin St. John reviles in his book. He is honest about it. And the honesty in this book is what makes it great. Dare to say when its good, and dare to say when its s#it, dear to say "yes i was there, but i was far to wasted to even remember ho w it was".

The best thing about the book is how his obvious love for the music and the area is manifested in the way he tells the story, he write as if he want everybody to be able to take part of it. When too many books like this goes: "this is how it went down, i was there, you weren´t", St. John includes the reader by not only naming people, pleaces, events and music that I, a small-town boy from the north of Norway, haven't heard of, but includes the reader with naming people, places, events and music that everybody can relate to. 

When i read "Last shop standing" by Graham Jones i grew bored by the way he always talked about the shops in the same manner. And St. John could easily have fallen in to the same pattern, but instead he treats each town, venue and gig differently, and if nothing out of the ordinary happened, don´t bother writing about it.

I didn´t know the end of the story, only thing i knew was that there were no tambourin guy in Primal Scream when i saw them for the first time in 2002. And the building up to St. Johns departure is obvious throughout the book. This part of the book is probably the most honest and well written. After this there is an appendix "Aftermath" that really took me by surprise. For me the fact that St. John waited so lang with this book, instead of writing it it 1989, made this retrospective view possible, an utterly sober and insightful view on how his and other people around him had their life shaped by spending their important youth year both in and outside Primal Scream medio 1980 in Glasgow. 

Bought mine here

Yours truly, 

Herr W

PS.
Woody Allen on time travel:


"Nowhere before the invention of the penicillin"