Books of the Year, Part 2 - Non-fiction

Some books,
 earlier today.

I used to read nothing but novels. Then I veered in the other direction, until I realised that much as I enjoyed biographies and history books, I could never remember much about them once I’d finished. So now I mostly read fiction again, and the non-fiction I pick up is only stuff that I really, really want to read. And that’s why this list is shorter than the Fiction list. And why I don’t know as much as I should do about important historical events, but I can tell you the names of all the albums that The Raincoats released on Rough Trade records.

Document and Eyewitness – An Intimate History of Rough Trade by Neil Taylor (Orion Books)

Clearly you’d have to be more than interested in British indie-pop in the late 70s and 1980s to get much out of this. But the anecdotal rewards are deep if The History of Rough Trade would be your chosen specialised subject on the fading leather jacketed saddo’s version of Mastermind. Once you’re past the ponderous intro (and I’d rather have had an index than the footnotes), the stories and their characters take you right back to a time when you didn’t have to give a shit about anything besides drinking, music, and appearing to know what you were on about (I gave up on that one in the end).

Throwing Memories

David Narzico, by an amateur photographer

I'm reading Kristin Hersh’s memoir Rat Girl, which is just the book to take you back to 1985 in Rhode Island and Boston, inside the head of a funny, sassy, precocious teenager diagnosed as bipolar and writing some of that decade’s most thrilling, frightening music. It’s also prompted me to unearth the photograph above, my one and only experience of trying to take ‘proper’ pictures at a concert.

It shows Throwing Muses drummer David Narzico at the Town & Country Club in March 1991, the month that Hersh’s band released their stunning album The Real Ramona. My friend and chronically untidy house-mate Tim Bradford was working for Amateur Photographer magazine at the time, and was always bringing home new cameras to try out and abuse. We took along one each, and smuggled them in to the venue, then edged our way to the front. The cameras must have looked fancy, because people kept making space for us, like they thought we were real photographers. That the above picture was my best shot testifies to the fact I didn’t go on to make a career out of it (nor anything else, for that matter).

When You Can't Let Go Of Kristin Hersh

Kristin Hersh brought out her seventh solo album earlier this year, ‘Learn To Sing Like A Star’. I bought it, because I always buy the new Kristin Hersh solo album, just as I always used to buy records by her band The Throwing Muses. But it would it be a lie to say I was excited at the purchase.

The record is pretty much what you’d expect. It’s a good record, but it’s not outstanding. It’s a good Kristin Hersh record, but not an outstanding Kristin Hersh record. I wasn’t surprised by it, but then I didn’t expect to be surprised by it. So why did I buy it? Because I just can’t imagine a new Kristin Hersh record coming out and me not buying it.

Why can’t I move on? When I want to listen to Kristin Hersh, why can’t I listen to one of her six other solo albums instead and save myself twelve bucks? Maybe it’s brand loyalty. I think that when Kristin brings out a new disc, she expects a certain level of sales among her fans. She has four children to feed. It would just feel wrong to leave it on the shelf.

Kristin is the only one of my indie-pop heroines ever to have spoken to me. At a show at the Iota Café in Arlington a couple of years ago, I was watching her from my seat at the bar. As she came off the small stage at the end of her performance I moved my legs so she could get by. “Thank you,” she said courteously.

How could I not buy her new record after that?