Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The God's Got Three Faces and The Child's Got No Name, February 25, 2005
Nurse With Wound, Coil and Current 93 are musically manifestation of the same creative force. They are interdependent and each compliments the others. David Keenen describes this connection beautifully in this work. It begins by describing the musical scene out of which the bands all took their shape. In the strange days of the early eighties the post punk musical world was really going into several directions: oblivious pop, new wave pretension, industrial and Goth and finally bands like Current 93 Coil and NWW. These sounded more similar in there early days than they do now but still have the same vibe. What's most interesting about them is that they keep artistic focus and this book tells this story in a beautifully bound form.
The book uses a lot of quotes and pictures to tell the story of these bands using information from collaborators of the bands. It is very well researched and while many have said it reads like journalism it seems more like academia to me. The style is great and with so little actual documentation to work with quotes are one of the few viable options. It is really interesting to peer into the lives of these individuals and sometimes it is stranger than fiction: Tibet Balance Stapleton and Christofersen lead bizarre lives. This is a part of why they make such interesting work. It would have been more interesting to me if there was more said about the specific influences of the artists and the works. While we can infer much there could certainly be more here. Nevertheless what is written in this book is very enlightening to me. We as fans of the work often dissociate Coil and John Balance as a distant cousin to c93 and NWW but reading this really put the perspective in order. This book puts the artists in perspective so that even a non fan would find it interesting.
Overall I really appreciated reading this book. Being a huge fan of these bands I would be happy with anything and have often been placated by reading incomplete web pages and bad 'zine articles. This book is far better than that and really makes me appreciate the music all the more. It is by no means definitive and is missing many other bands (most notably Death In June). But I guess the book would loose focus if it were to contain more bands. This is a book that you will love to have and read again and again. Being fans of musicians that the mainstream media doesn't care about or cant understand we are thrilled to see stuff like this.
This is a Reprint of the Original... Lower Cost Same great material
-- Ted Murena
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
brilliant, June 6, 2004
The first question that comes to mind is: how can there be a biography of three bands in the same book? For me, the answer is quite simple...c93, NWW and Coil are pretty much three different and very individual manifestations of the same thing that moves all of them: strong vision and its brave living/making manifest through art, passion and honesty that come with it and, of course, complete integrity. So, actually i can't understand people who like coil and dont like c93, or like nww and dont like coil etc...i guess that reason for such "disliking" is pretty much always lack of understanding. Everybody's soul is potentially large enough to understand everything that is or can be.
The book is beautifully produced, just like every other reviewer has said. It is very well written, meaning it is very well investigated, with lots of information and many providers of these informations, so when the book discusses something, you will always get opinions from pretty much everybody relevant for the particular discussion. It follows bands chronologicaly, and there is no real "story" element, like many reviewers have said, but i quite like this since i find it more objective because of this. Also, the "lack of criticism" that other reviewers have mentioned is definitely there, but i like that too, since Keenan doesnt push his opinions on us, but rather lets people whose biography this is talk, and also lets us, the readers, have our own critic approach to the untainted facts and thoughts of people who we are reading about.
When it comes to balance between the three bands in the book, i guess its pretty much even, every band gets about one third of the book. Also, i don't think Keenan is drooling over david tibet in it, like some reviewers have stated.
It has to be mentioned that the first part of the book also deals with a lot of other relevant bands, since they were/are in one way or another related to nww/coil/c93, bands like whitehouse, crass, and, of course, throbbing gristle and psychic tv, and i mention this since they are MUCH more than just mentioned here. also, the book provides us with a great number of informations/thoughts from lots of people (pretty much everybody) involved with nww/coil/c93 throughout their history.
Another thing that i really like is that the book NEVER interferes with the really personal stuff of balance, sleazy, tibet or stapleton, like really specific things about relationships, friendships and so on...there is always some distance when it comes to privacy, which makes the whole thing really decent. this book lets privacy stay sacred and there is absolutely no voyeurism that is otherwise so present in today's media that it completely sickens me.
all in all, this is a great, very well done book, beautifully produced, and if you have the money and love these bands, just buy it, i really dont think you'll regret a single penny.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Gorgeous & informative but superficial, October 14, 2003
By A Customer
I was awaiting this book with anxiety, as there isn't much literature on these three bands - who I have followed for quite some time.And when I finally received it through mail, I was very pleased with how it looked - really very well published, with beautiful rare photographs and a cd. Unfortunately, the actual reading was a bit of a disappointment - after a while reading quotes all the time gets quite tiring. You can feel very strongly that the writer is a journalist, and the chapters feel very much like articles for a magazine. And a series of these articles do not make up a very gripping tale. I felt that David Keenan should have reflected more on the music, instead of just filling the pages with quotes and commenting now and then superficially on the music, in a typical journalistic way. I would have liked some more insights on musical development, some kind of concluding thoughts about what these artists are all about and - well, in general, more reflection instead of mere citation of insiders. But still this is an invaluable book, with loads of information and background on these intriguing and brilliant artists.
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