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Nick likes pop songs 'almost to the exclusion of everything else'. He's been the New York Times' pop music critic, and is the author of High Fidelity (a novel that's 'like listening to a great single ... If this book was a record, we would be calling it an instant classic' Guardian) and 31 Songs ('A manifesto on why pop is so glorious, beautiful and important' Sunday Express). Nick took his devotion to rock 'n roll one step further recently, appearing on stage with Philadelphia rock band Marah. Click on the links below to find out more about Nick's favourite artists. And read the below extract from one of Nick's Believer columns to find out why, sometimes, 'music beats literature hands down':
STUFF I’VE BEEN READING
The Believer
March 2004
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| The cultural highlight of the month was a rock and roll show - two shows, actually, one of which took place in a pub called the Fiddler's Elbow in Kentish Town, North London. The Fiddler's Elbow is not somewhere you would normally expect to find your most memorable drink of the month, let alone your most memorable spiritual moment, but there you go: God really is everywhere. Anyway, against all the odds, and even though they were fighting above their weight, these shows punched the books to the floor. And, they were good books, too. Five or six years ago, a friend in Philly introduced me to a local band called Marah. Their first album had just come out, on an indie label, and it sounded great to me, like the Pogues reimagined by the E Street Band, full of fire and tunes, and soul and banjos. There was a buzz about it, and they got picked up by Steve Earle's label E-Squared; their next album got noticed by Greil Marcus and Stephen King (who proudly wore a Marah T-shirt in a photo shoot) and Springsteen himself, and it looked like they were off and away. Writing this down, I can suddenly see the reason why it didn't happen for them, or at least, why it hasn't happened yet. Steve Earle, Stephen King, Greil Marcus, Bruce, me…none of us is under a hundred years old. The band is young, but their referents, the music they love, is getting on a bit, and in an attempt to address this problem, they attempted their ancient fans with a noisy modern rock album. They succeeded in the alienation, but not in finding a new audience, so they have been forced to retreat and retrench and rethink. At the end of the Fiddler's Elbow show they passed a hat around, which gives you some indication of the level of retrenchment going on. They'll be OK. Their next album will be spectacular, and they'll sell out Madison Square Garden, and you'll all be boasting that you read a column by a guy who saw them in the Fiddler's Elbow. Anyway, the two shows I saw that week were spectacular, as good as anything, I've seen with the possible exception of the Clash in '79, Prince in '85 and Springsteen on the River tour. Dave and Serge, the two brothers who are to Marah what the Gallaghers are to Oasis, played the Fiddler's Elbow as if it were Giants Stadium, and even though it was acoustic, they just about blew the place up. They were standing on chairs and lying on the floor, they were funny, they charmed everyone in the pub apart from an old drunk sitting next to the drum kit (a drummer turned up halfway through the evening with his own set, having played a gig elsewhere first), who put his fingers firmly in his ears during Serge's extended harmonica solo. (His mate, meanwhile, rose unsteadily to his feet and started clapping along). It was utterly bizarre and very moving: most musicians wouldn't have bothered turning up, let alone almost killing themselves. And I was reminded - and this happened the last time I saw them play, too - how rarely one feels included in a live show. Usually you watch, and listen, and drift off, and the band plays well or doesn't and it doesn't matter much either way. It can actually be a very lonely experience. But I felt a part of the music, and a part of the people I'd gone with, and, to cut this short before the encores, I didn't want to read for about a fortnight afterwards. I wanted to write, but I couldn't because of the holidays, and I wanted to listen to Marah, but I didn't want to read no book. I was too itchy, too energized, and if young people feel like that every night of the week, then, yes, literature's dead as a dodo. (In an attempt to get myself back on course, I bought Bill Ehrhardt's book Vietnam-Perkasie, because he comes Marah-endorsed, and provided the inspiration for "Round Eye Blues", one of their very best songs. I didn't read a thing, though. And their next album is tentatively entitled 20,000 Streets under the Sky, after a Patrick Hamilton novel - I'm going to order that and not read it, too). |
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Nick on Music
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nottingham/music/2004/07/marah_interview.shtml
Teenage Fanclub Official Site
http://www.teenagefanclub.com
Bruce Springsteen
http://www.brucespringsteen.net/
Nelly Furtado
http://www.nellyfurtado.com/
Led Zeppelin
http://www.ledzeppelin.com/site_flash/fs_home.html
Rufus Wainwright
http://www.rufuswainwright.com/
Santana
http://www.santana.com/
The Faces
http://www.the-faces.com/
Bob Dylan
http://www.bobdylan.com/index.html
The Beatles
http://www.thebeatles.com/
Ani Di Franco
http://www.righteousbabe.com/ani/
Aimee Mann
http://www.aimeemann.com/home.html
The J Geils Band
http://www.jgeils.com/
Ben Folds Five
http://www.benfoldsfive.com/
Badly Drawn Boy
http://www.badlydrawnboy.co.uk/
The Bible
http://www.boohewerdine.net/disco/bible/bible_compilations.htm
Van Morrison
http://www.harbour.sfu.ca/~hayward/van/van.html
Butch Hancock and Marce LaCouture
http://www.mp3.com/albums/133041/summary.html
Gregory Isaacs/ Reggae for Kids
http://www.mmguide.musicmatch.com/album/album.cgi?ALBUMID=1415813
Ian Dury and the Blockheads
http://www.iandury.co.uk/
Richard and Linda Thompson
http://www.richardthompson-music.com/default.asp
Jackson Browne
http://www.jacksonbrowne.com/choices.html
The Velvelettes
http://www.velvelettes.com/
O V Wright
http://mp3.com/tracks/2977539/dl_streams.html
Röyksopp
http://www.astralwerks.com/royksopp/
Soulwax
http://www.soulwax.com/
The Patti Smith Group
http://www.pattismith.net/ |
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