Recent searches
Search options
Administered by:
Read an ebook sample of this earlier in the week, then found a secondhand copy of the hardback so I could read the rest.
Skiffle, that oddly British post-war bridge to rock and roll and pop, tends to get short shrift in musical discussions, probably because so many of the major stars of the sixties who started out in youthful skiffle groups saw it as suddenly desperately uncool and were keen to distance themselves from the scene. The sample, a surprisingly generous one offering several chapters, made it clear that Bragg wasn't going to treat it as an embarrassment or a novelty, tracing its origins from early New Orleans jazz and the British teens who became obsessed with that, up through the spread of live jug-style bands at a time when the average British kid was hard pressed to afford a proper musical instrument; and of course, without skiffle there wouldn't have been The Beatles.
"You can’t be Elvis if you’re British, but you can be Lonnie Donegan" – Van Morrison
Even the photo captions have a certain rough poetry about them.
"The Ghouls perform amid the salami at Orlando's"
@BigJackBrass I worked on that! Really enjoyed it.
@eleanorrees How wonderful! I got it because of the subject matter rather than the author—wasn't at all sure what to expect from him as a writer—but it only took a few pages to convince me that he was the right person for the job. Hopefully Christmas preparations (such as I can manage) won't get in the way of reading the rest 
@BigJackBrass That is a great book, and Bragg's writing style is endlessly readable. For some reason I always thought a British Fallout game would be all skiffle tunes, and not the "cool britannia" type stuff they push. Lonnie Donegan on your pip boy in a huge shootout ... magic!
@Printdevil His writing surprised me, as I didn't know what to expect from him at all. The trouble with a lot of books about elements of culture is that they treat them as if they sprang fully formed from the aether, whereas this one feels a lot more honest, perhaps because skiffle never had any pomposity and serious reputation to maintain. All very refreshing.
@BigJackBrass He's quite down in the trenches with the origins of things he writes about. He has no illusions about things springing fully formed from people's heads.
@BigJackBrass The hint of "My old man's a dustman" being the equivalent of Dylan's judas moment is funny too.