Review pinched from GoodReads.Bad Wisdom
This book is at once insane, wise, foolish, serious -- a plausible travelogue and a wild fantasy of sex, violence and effigies of Elvis. And much else. It's among the most gripping, compelling hoots of a book I've read in the last ten years. In musical terms (it was written by two British musicians) it shifts from the mellow strangeness of Syd Barrett to the more ominous strangeness of, say, Harvey Milk or even Dark Throne, to a fantabulous intensity -- imagine the most violently juicy parts of deSade's 120 Days of Sodom performed with breakneck intensity by 1980-era Bad Brains. The book has two authors and the tale of a pilgrimage to the north pole is told from the three perspectives of the three protagonists, whose outlooks on the same events can be so wildly disparate and imcompatible that it all gets a bit confusing in places -- but never less than a joy to read.
Their music... I guess it's cool, got a few of the twelves kicking around. But I much preferred Bad Wisdom and Wild Highway... though maybe it was the parts by Z (Mark Manning) that elevated them. Shame Zodiac Mindwarp the band are so disappointing.
Review pinched from GoodReads.
Very successful though. And didn't that band Edelweiss have a hit by copying the formula from How To Have A Number One? So clearly they knew what they were doing...hm. not sure it has very much to do with the music! never took that aspect of them very seriously. always saw the black dog as being the musical wing of the KLF if i'm being honest.
I’m listening to these. They’re good.
I know a guy who used to live next door to Gimpo in Newham, E London. I've met him a few times.
Also, Bill Drummond once made me soup in Nottingham. Not just me, he was at someone's house going on about how he wanted to make a diagonal line across Britain made of soup and another made of broken McDonald's windows with Nottingham as the centre of the cross in a statement about fast food and soup. I could’ve hallucinated the windows bit.
Ah yeah I remember that soup thing - think he mentions it in the 45 book.Email reply from a mate
He used to own that bar in Shoreditch didn't he? I liked the thing on the floor which was so you could drive a car in and then it just span round so you could drive out again cos there was no room to turn round, I think that was a hangover from the previous usage of that place.
I did not know that but my parents had that in the bathroom when I were a lad.Sure you all know this but Jimmy Cauty did this for Athena. Very popular poster.
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terrible music obviously but i really liked the book John Higgs wrote about them. made me feel like i was tripping. not many books can give you that kind of contact high.