i’ve read alot of books since christmas, and now i don’t remember what they were haha. i did finally read “u2 by u2”. it was pretty good. i can’t say i really learned anything new about the band, and alot of what they said came from interviews i had already read so it felt a bit like de ja vu. I did put down a a few quotes from the book…
Bono – “one thing I really liked on the reel-to-reel was a folky duo called Hunky Dory. I loved that duo. It was years later I discovered it was David Bowie and Hunky Dory was the name of the album.”
Edge- ” I discovered that being a loner and having a superiority complex works quite well, as your distorted self image is never challenged by engaging in any way with the rest of humanity”
Edge – ” I once said to Bob Dylan, “people are going to be playing your songs for thousands of years.” He said, “Man they’re going to be listening to your songs too. It’s just no one’s going to know how to play them.” Sometimes, I might add, that includes us.”
Bono – ” One of my definitions of art is the discovery of beauty in unexpected places.”
In the meantime I’ve still been plodding through “A fiction of the past, the 60s in American History.” I got through the music in culture section and it made me want to read more about bands from that time…so I have bob dylan’s autobio on the pile to read, and i borrowed “the doors by the doors” from a friend at work. it was pretty interesting as i really knew nothing about the history of the doors or jim morrison. it was just like the u2 book, exerpts from jim morrison interviews, and seemingly new interviews with the other band members specifically for the book, plus tons of photos.
I read “A Canticle for Lebowitz” a post apocolyptic book my mom gave me when she finished it, which was pretty good but not mind blowing or anything.
And now I’m reading “Take A Walk on the Dark Side: Rock and Roll Myths, Legends and Curses” by R Gary Patterson. I’ve heard him on Coast to Coast AM a few times and he is full of interesting stories of rock bands (mostly brit invasion 60s/70s era), so I picked up this book. Well…the stories are interesting, but boy does it need another edit. Things just seem very out of order. You read one paragraph and then he switches subjects to something that seems very irrelevant, but then pages later there will be a random sentence that really REALLY should have gone with the paragraph ages earlier. It also seems that sometimes he is grasping at straws to make a connection between artists, or themes or events. Like The Buddy Holly Curse…just because someone dies in the same month, years later, doesn’t mean anything. It’s a 1 in 12 chance haha. In a chapter about Alestair Crowley he mentions Daryl Hall (from Hall and Oats? I dunno…) and the things he has said about studying Crowley…and at the end follows up with “Ironically, Hall’s birthday is October 11th, Crowley’s is October 12th”….like that has any relevance at all. He also over uses the word “ironic” and may be misusing it as well (or maybe I’m just missing the irony). There have also been a few things mentioned that relate to The Tea Party…lyrics to a Robert Johnson blues song that are also in Sun Going Down, and a reference to the book Master and Marguerita. So…it’s amusing but could have been put together better, and it really doesn’t need so many “ironic” grasps at straws to connect things. These stories are interesting on their own.