The Slits - "Adventures Close to Home"
The Slits - "Instant Hit"
I knew I was going to love Viv Albertine's Clothes Music Boys for a long time. I waited all the way through the hardback run and then when it came out in paper I bought it and put it on the shelf over my records, along with England's Dreaming and Lipstick Traces and the scabrous Peter Hook memoirs and Tracey Thorne's really quite lovely Bedsit Disco Queen and my other books about punk. This week I finally pulled it off the shelf and, oh my god, it is so good. Albertine's prose is simple and plain but completely alive and honest and makes me feel again what it was like to fall in love with music and politics and culture when I was a teenager. Ooh, it's brilliant. I'm just at the part where she's dating Mick Jones and has bought her first guitar. I know what happens next from all the punk chronicles I've read, but reading this book is a reminder that nothing that happened was a foregone conclusion. Albertine makes the reader feel what it was like to live through the beginning of UK punk and it's like sticking your finger in an electrical socket. Thrilling!
Posted by Jeff at January 5, 2016 11:38 AMIt took me exactly as long to read up to "oh my god" as it took Adventures Close To Home to build up to its first pause, like we'd all just had the same realisation at the same time. I tried again, just to see if it was a fluke, and it felt just as surprising! Please tell me you planned this - or didn't, both versions as brilliant as each other.
Posted by Ryan at January 5, 2016 5:09 PMThat's amazing! Definitely not planned, but I'm so happy it worked out that way. Thanks so much for sharing this, it really made my day.
Posted by Jeff
at January 6, 2016 12:07 AMThe image source is probably this Guardian arty?
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jun/01/the-slits-viv-albertine-punk-violence-domesticity
Yup, must be from there. Updated the post, thanks Frandroid!
Posted by Jeff at January 6, 2016 11:40 PM"Adventures Close to Home" m'a parfois fait penser aux premiers titres des Sugarcubes de Bjork.
Posted by mickaël at February 6, 2016 12:02 PM
and it will begin playing. All songs are also available to download: just right-click the link and choose 'Save as...'
