A common pursuit for the X generation is to play the desert island game - if you could only bring a few records with you to this island, which ones would they be and why. The editors of this book asked a number of famous Irish and UK musicians, writers, filmmakers, artists, and people in the record industry itself to play the game, to tell them which record albums of the `60s and `70s influenced them the most as they were growing up.
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When I first picked up My Generation, I expected another attempt to lash together the multitude of musical strands that, in one way or another, have led to or away from what we have come to call Rock and Roll. That which is considered Rock and Roll seems to depend more on who is doing the considering than any specific criteria. What a Clint Black fan considers to be Rock and Roll will vary considerably from what a Metallica fan would consider it to be. Thus we have a sort of hegemonic view of Rock and Roll, as well as its evolutionary history, that can and does change depending from whose point of view it is seen. There are those that would argue that it is this nebulous definition of Rock and Roll that has enabled it to grow and expand. The accretion of Rock and Roll has led to the idea that it is indeed immortal and will continue to stand the test of time. While this statement gushes with optimistic idealism, it is close to the mark as far as defining how most fans of Rock and Roll feel about this ever changing genre of music. This idea can be generalized to apply to music itself. Anyone who has ever been moved by music in any way, shape or form understands the incredible power music has to shape and color a moment forever. It becomes the impetus to and bridge to memories that are more vivid by association with a particular piece of music is. This, then, is what My Generation is actually all about - as John Dunne puts it: "Some records I value more for the memories they evoke; others for their purely musical highs..but more than any book I've ever read, more than all the films I've ever seen, music has given me a glimpse of what I call my soul." What this book comes down to is the connection of Rock-n-Roll with the senses and emotions, with memories and events, with catharsis and epiphany. My Generation was born when Antony Farrell and his stepbrother started naming their favorite albums one late spring evening in Ireland. It became a collection of "notes towards an autobiography through sound" from over 70 contributors who were all asked to select ten albums of classic, formative rock. What the editors got in return was an incredible variety of responses, not only musically but in approach, from mere lists to in- depth narratives that detail a precise moment in a person's life when music encapsulated an experience forever with crystalline clarity. My Generation is an imperfect history, but that is one of the most intriguing aspects about it. The imperfection allows a truer, finer more verisimilitudinous experience of the history of Rock-n-Roll. The fact that each of the contributors are Irish by birth, residence or association gives My Generation less of a hegemonic slant than I had anticipated. For any one of non Irish decent, such as myself, this Irish perspective simply gives My Generation a sort of outside-looking-in feel. My Generation is a treasure to read and will open up a memory or two for anyone who has tapped into this thing we call Rock-n-Roll. -- From Independent Publisher
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Soundtracks, mainly 60s, to many Irish lives,
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This review is from: My Generation: Rock 'N' Roll Remembered: An Imperfect History (Paperback)
Paolo Tullio sums it up: Classic Rock is at the end of its short shelf-life, and this 1996 collection of reminiscences mixed with Desert Island Discs by Irish and some part-time or ex-pat Irish shows the truth of this remark. He remarks that we hear big-band music and it all probably sounds similar, although in the 40s there was much to distinguish one artist from the other. Tullio wonders if the same fate will befall the music he and his peers remember so fondly. I do agree that few of the contributors find much music memorable from later post-60s/70s eras in comparison. Is this inevitable? Do we always hearken back to what we heard when falling in love, losing our virginity, taking our first trip, leaving for college or the big city or the next country? For these writers, music formed them irreparably, and they are the better for its scars and marks.
Most of the writers were at the age when one hears as a teen the music he or she forever after cherishes, if defiant of all good taste perhaps. Lost of the music is Anglo-American pop, as to be expected. Irish groups were only starting to make an impact beyond their borders. Many writers include Dylan, especially Tangled Up in Blue as his best song if not off his best LP. Beatles, Stones, Van's Astral Weeks, Jimi: these touchstones of the baby-boomer bildungsroman appear often. Irish groups do also arise, if less frequently than they would for contributors I reckon closer to my own age. Recommended as counterparts to the scene that these contributors re-capture, but concentrating on the various musics: Mark J Prendergast's 'Isle of Noises' and Gerry Smyth's 'Noisy Island' on the evolution of Irish rock and pop. Colin Harper & Trevor Hodgett's 'Irish Trad, Folk, Blues' also fills out the story of how Irish caught up, a few years delayed, with the rest of the counterculture and the swinging 60s, if more in the 70s within Ireland itself. (I reviewed these three books on Amazon.) A few who could have contributed much are missing, such as Eamon Carr, Sinéad O'Connor, the members of U2, the Undertones, Van Morrison or Christy Moore for example. Jake Burns of SLF, members of bands such as Phil Chevron or Steve Rapid of the Radiators (from Space) or Gavin Friday of the Virgin Prunes would have given a much needed perspective from the punk era. I also wondered why there were not more entries from those younger-- the demographic here is overwhelmingly born in the late 1940s/early 1950s, and therefore (as the title implies) tied to the 60s as the zenith of their musical experience. This skews the book too much towards the attitude of "if you weren't there in '68 or '72, you did not know what it was like, maaaan" type of half-stoned, half-dreamed musings. The late 60s and early 70s gave most creative Irish the same choice many contributors here had to make: leave for success in London, America, somewhere mid-Atlantic but not exactly in Ireland itself. Sex, drugs, freedom from the Church and the "valley of the squinting windows" beckoned and these albums were the soundtracks of these artists, writers, musicians, poets, and malcontents' young adventures. Author Timothy O'Grady, writer Peter and film director Jim Sheridan, Kathleen Williamson--the contributor who below previously reviewed this book below--observes insightfully that Robert Plant seems to be imitating Janis Joplin! Bassist Barry Devlin of Horslips, writers Paul Muldoon in typically gnomic verse, Patrick McCabe, Joe O'Connor (Sinéad's brother but he never seems to admit this in what he publishes at least here), Desmond Hogan, a too brief entry by Nell McCafferty, and musicians such as Alec Finn, Noel Redding, Shane McGowan, Mick Hanly, Terry Woods, Ron Wood (whose drawings elegantly grace the covers), Marianne Faithfull, and P.J. Curtis all weigh in on their peers and inspirations. Many, such as Fintan O'Toole, Roddy Doyle, Rhonda Paisley, Paul McGuinness, Mary Kenny, and Hugo Hamilton, mix their musical maturation with heartfelt, intelligent renderings of their own coming of age. They capture a realm of dazzling potential that to those like myself (only a child then) seem as if from ancient tales of wonder. Hard to imagine today in our more constrained attitudes and harsher economic and political and familial realities how one back then could with a few quid and a few beers imagine that you could be master of all you surveyed. Heady talk for the Irish raised in post-war restriction and constraint and begrudgery> Emigration continued for many of the writers here, but it was admittedly done at least at times for one's own liberation and not only for one's survival. The stories here among those who at the time of writing were looking back twenty-five or thirty years unfold as if half-recalled legends. Those who lived then tell of it again, wistfully. They had the good luck to emerge into their own brief Eden, amidst such a realm of possibilities that those of us who have followed have had both to hear so much about secondhand "when I was back in the 60s..." Yet we slightly younger folks are beneficiaries, and at times victims, of the liberating powers for idealism and ambition and admittedly some voodoo and bad vibes since then that continue to swirl about our Western world's playboys and hoydens.
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the most enjoyable formats and reads for Rock fans,
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This review is from: My Generation: Rock 'N' Roll Remembered: An Imperfect History (Paperback)
I am honored to have contributed one of the many essays in this book. Mine (only one of approximately sixty essays) is a rare instance of a feminist critique of Rock n' Roll, whilst raving about how deeply I love rock, why, what happened, and what ten albums I would require while stranded on a desert island. Now that I've got the conflict of interest confession out of the way, let me tell you something about the rest of this great collection of rock essays. Other contributors include Noel Redding, Ron Wood, Marianne Faithful, Roddy Doyle, Donovan, Terry Woods, Mary Coughlan, Ian Whitcomb, Nell McCafferty, Philip Casey, and a long list of really cool experienced people, musicians, and/or writers who have connections with Ireland. Antony Farrell, Vivienne Guiness and Julian Lloyd, as editors and conceptualists for this collection, have brought a very hip and longlasting nostalgic donation to rock social history with this book. Each author contributes a highly personalized narrative about their favorite rock music and their experiences within that dimension of this garden of earthly delights. Kathleen Williamson, J.D., Ph.D., CD, artist, song and prose writer, general PROVOCATEUR
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