Sock Free Hideaway

 

BEATS OF LOVE 

77. A-Side: Are Your Dreams at Night 1985 Sizes Too Big? by Graham Holliday

ACCORDING TO its blurb, the publisher behind The Grass is Green in the Fields for You shuns self-opinionated hyperbole in favour of collaboration, community, and conversation. Any book casting the Jazz Butcher himself, Pat Fish, as a catalyst for change is an absolute must-read.

Yet despite the publisher's communal intentions, author Graham Holliday relies on eyewitness accounts of an iconic, backroom Spacemen 3 gig to validate his own memories. In doing so, his blog-turned-book morphed into something far bigger than a mere concert recap.

Watching small gigs is in the main voyeuristic and only rarely a communal experience, but when it is it transcends the stadium experience coz, the acts themselves become as encompassed in it. There are no barriers, as this book testifies.

Jason has become the minor rock star he was on his way to being when I first fell under their spell. These lucky attendees saw something different. He had stood up for a start and was too young to look anything other than normal. Prompting Fish to write 'Here come your girlfriend's little brother's mates.'

The gushing praise for the band is great to read but unsurprising. That a tape is actually out there of them being booed is revelatory. Will Carruthers bitterly funny, exaggerated, and self-opinionated anecdotes sort of bring everything into better focus when counter balanced with the book's enthusiastic fanboy accounts. Holliday nails it when describing the stark divisions inside the Spacemen 3 affiliated Reverberation club. 

'Territorial regulations applied: how old you were, how you dressed, what school you went to, (or had gone to), what music you liked, who your friends were, where you lived, how you lived, maybe even how you talked, if you smoked, if you drank, or if you took drugs.'

They could apply to most clubs in the mid to late eighties. And most likely today.

Ultimately, the project is written, edited, and spearheaded by Holliday, and honestly, thank goodness for that, irrespective of the publishers' original plans. He even went so far as to include a list of what he listened to throughout the creative process. I am actually checking out some of those tracks right now.

That, to me, has been the real highlight, discovering seldom heard peripheral acts

and finding some fresh raw garage treasure in the process. And then playing Spacemen 3 records ridiculously loudly, of course.