Bracewell Is Back!

Interesting thread. I look forward to more of this. Where's Teresa Tzara when you need her?

My advice to you is to stop faffing around and sniping subversively from the edges: bite the bullet and actually come and work at Melody Maker.

Whaddya mean it's folded??

Is the world ready for a 1992 revival?

i didn't agree with some of his angles and so on,but he is very good at drawing links between people and ideas,and giving some idea of a particular "atmosphere" or "feeling" for want of better words
i wasn't alive for the vast majority of the time covered by the book,so it could be full of wild generalisations,but i suppose it is a personal interpretation of pop as much as anything else

it seems like the type of book a lot of people on ilx would like to write,even if they may not actually like this specific book,so i'm surprised there hasn't been more discussion of it

also,tom,how was that nineties book?

It has been discussed before. I'll try and point you to the spot.

Above all else there are some really excellent idosyncratic turns of phrase in 'England is Mine'. Description of Major Tom as 'Reggie Perrin at the ass-end of space' is my favourite thing this week.

I enjoy it more as an amusing tour of reference points than a verbatim account of the Truth, but I don't remember violently disagreeing with much of it all the same, possibly through not having studied many of the non-postpunk subjects in much detail. Which bits are Very Wrong?

If Bracewell hadn't been so chummy with Morrissey -- often writes about Morrissey and is also the husband of Morrissey's best friend, Linder -- I probably wouldn't have bothered reading "England Is Mine."

However, one memorable thing I liked was Bracewell's reference to a joke about "dark, satanic chip shops."

Bracewell ought to be recognised; "England is Mine" is a fine book, though not sure about its manner of ending. Just sort of petered out, without much of the conclusion or end-piece.

from what i've heard, The Nineties sounds like it follows the pattern above only moreso, so I've avoided it.

It is funny how Morley has taken over the Bracewell thread!

But let me repeat myself: EIM I am vey fond of: it's stimulating. 90s is not in the same class, really. Nothing is magnificent, though unlike Mr May I took several weeks rather than 3 days to read it. W&M is up and down and celebrates too much music I don't like.

I am deeply fond of both writers, even when or where I actually don't like what they've written or said.

Did anyone see him on an epic Newsnight Review confrontation last Friday night?

'What it reminded me of was the golden age of incomprehensibel postmodernism...'

the book looks pretty tasty.

When is Bracewell's 'Roxyism' coming out? It is almost as much delayed as Marcello's book.

The only info I can find on 'Roxyism' has it coming out September 2004.

Here it says 'Roxyism' has been put back to 2007! This will come as no surpise to people who have worked with Mr Bracewell.

ayo

well then?

Anyone else read Re-make/Re-model, the Roxy book? I liked it, mostly. If anyone went in blindly expecting a biog of Roxy, they'd be disappointed, but as a study of the art schools (Newcastle, esp - you learn a lot about Richard Hamilton), total-style-as-meaning, Pop Art -> pop, Aesthetic revival, &c (all as regards England, 60-73), the lesser-known figures in the Roxy circle and Ferry as self-created art work, it's very good (not that I know enough about this stuff to have a balancing view.)
Agree with patchiness of England is Mine; likes the right stuff as far as I'm concerned, nice writing, but a bit all over the place. Re-make feels more coherent at least.

Reading the Roxy now. I don't have much confidence that he knows much about the music side of things. Bracewell claims--twice--that the Beatles marked the end of the beat boom!

A lot of stuff in the Newcastle section I already knew, but I got an art history degree there and my mother lived in the same street as Ferry at the time so maybe I'm not the typical reader. I'm about to get into the Eno/Mackay section.

read england is mine, felt i'd sort-of read it before but maybe not, and it's terrible!! but very influential, or at least familiar-seeming. some of the connection-making is desperate stuff, and the writing is often really, really bad.

I enjoy it more as an amusing tour of reference points than a verbatim account of the Truth, but I don't remember violently disagreeing with much of it all the same, possibly through not having studied many of the non-postpunk subjects in much detail. Which bits are Very Wrong?

-- ferg (Ferg), Wednesday, April 14, 2004 2:06 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark Link

yeah... i think if i'd read it a few years ago (ten years ago) i'd have liked it more because it might have directed me to new stuff.

i think he's basically wring about englishness, the concept of 'arcadia', pop music, popular culture before the 1950s, the highbrows he cites (auden, waugh), kitchen sink cinema, and powell and pressburger.

Must finish Roxy book.

still wanna read that... wonder if he's doing a second volume: isn't it just up to 1972?

Bracewell is back.

https://www.whiterabbitbooks.co.uk/titles/michael-bracewell-2/souvenir/9781474622318/

Just read The Conclave and then Unfinished Business - enjoyed both a great deal (although I think The Conclave runs out of puff a bit 2/3 through).

Somehow felt very "seen" to use the disgusting contemporary term - maybe it is just reading a book that examines middle-aged, middle class suburban masculinity thru an unsparing but not wholly unsympathetic lens.

The recent book in particular is beautifully written. I am a bit surprised nobody made more of a fuss about it, but maybe it isn't what people wanted to make a fuss about in 2023. I suppose in the UK he is perhaps just part of the cultural background noise?

Previous form with Bracewell = Roxy book (loved), Perfect Tense (loved), England is Mine (patchy but many good bits), Souvenir (weirdly elusive but some sections incredibly evocative). Tried to read The Crypto-Amnesia Club once but moved it swiftly to the charity shop pile.