The visual, auditory and written multiverse of Dr Simon Strange
Ok ok so it’s another day, another year. Excellent stuff and thanks for everyone who has read my posts, my books, listened to my music or looked through my photographs. Next year is time to release book number 2 into the world, an exploration of music scenes through my eyes.
Have a great New Year and hope the world can finally get its act together in all ways.
So its that wonderful time of the year when top 10, 20, 50 lists are compiled by all and sundry, books, albums, tracks, exhibitions, TV programmes, films etc.. Culture laid bare by the usual protagonists. In my world of popular music culture the lack of diversity and retrospective nature of the so called music books of the year I find staggeringly depressing. Topping the Times list is the alternative mainstream funk of Sly Stone, sound interesting to me, but the rest include tombs on Madonna, Bowie, the BeeGees and Barabara Streisand. OMG. Surely music books of the year should not be so biographically in the past and mono cultured. There is a whole other array of music writers and publishers that the regular mainstram of White Rabbits, Faber, Rough Trade have a slightly more eclectic mix, including Jeremy Deller’s Art is Magic, although it does include Rick Rubin’s rambling rough ruminations on creativity. He aint no Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi that.s for sure. Too many male authors too, lads talking about lads in bands. Boring. Atleast Audrey Godden’s reconstruction of Factory Records hits many a list. Whatever year final retrospective you view there is a lack of black identified music genres including grime, jungle, reggae, or global music outpourings around South American, Asian, or African music cultures. Music is also of the hear and now, not just for getting back to the Beatles and their ilk.
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