Talking books with lost musical geniuses

Is reading books the new rock-and-roll? Yes, of course it is. It always was. To prove my point, only yesterday I found myself in a bookshop chatting (kind of) to a rock star (sort of). Yes, fellow bibliophiles, I was in a bookshop in east London talking books with Lawrence from Felt - aka Lawrence from Denim, aka Lawrence from Go-Kart Mozart, aka Lawrence of Belgravia, and, even, aka Lawrence of Niluccio on noise blog fame. Why so? Well, Lawrence was selling loads of his books. Why he was doing this, I don't know, but he was and he apparently managed to sell "hundreds" during a three-hour evening session at a tiny bookshop which - when I was there - seemed to consist exclusively of people chatting very familarly to the great man while tokenistically buying an old paperback from him for a fiver. Naturally, I had to buy a couple of his books. These two in fact. Two quid each ...

Why these in particular? Well, for one thing he'd apparently nearly sold out of books by the time I arrived, and apart from a few volumes at forbiddingly-high prices (£40 range) these were more or less the only ones that were cheap and fairly interesting looking. I buy secondhand books pretty regularly anyway but I must admit there was a certain appeal to buying them directly from Lawrence, a man responsible for some genuinely sublime music who I also find quite likeable precisely (despite his best efforts) because he's not a star or in any way seriously famous. Also, the bloke in the blue-tinted visor hat does, it seems, have a rather winning way with off-beat marketing. The handwritten Post-it notes on the front of each of the books for sale yesterday were far more engaging than those rather tired ones you get in Waterstones and other big book chains. With my purchases he instantly - and with a kind of uncanny accuracy - reeled off a few thoughts about the book in question when he saw I was about to buy it. These observations were almost word for word what he'd written on the long blurbs. It was as if the notes had fixed the thoughts in his memory. Or maybe he has this kind of mind? - certain things that are very firmly known. 

In any case, with the Richard James Burgess book he took my waving it in the air alongside a ten-pound note (he had to fish out £8 change) as the cue to tell me how he'd hoped the book would unlock the secrets of major-league music success à la Spandau Ballet. Did it work, I asked. No, he said, half-smiling. (I think both he and I already knew that). And then he launched into a whole thing about how he thinks Spandau Ballet's Journeys To Glory was one of the best albums of its era. Blimey, what was all this? I didn't even know the title, never mind what the LP was like. Just to show I do my research for these posts though, I'm listening to this Spandua Ballet meisterwerk from 1981 right now as I compose these very words (track currently playing: #3, Mandolin) and I have to say I'm finding it massively over-blown, over-obvious and, dare I say it, over-produced. I must be missing the nuances that appealled to Lawrence, but to me it seems to be dull and laughably over-dramatic 80s synth-pop which gets boring almost immediately. Call me unsophisticated, but I reckon a band like Simple Minds (pre-stadium rock era) were infinitely better in every way. Anyway Lawrence, a poetically-minded lost semi-genius who crumbled the antiseptic beauty in ways the Spandaus could only ever have dreamed of, might have been joking about this album. Maybe. Meanwhile I'll say this for Lawrence the wayward music critc: he looks after his books. All those volumes on sale last night seemd to be in excellent condition. Maybe a new career is opening up for Lawrence of Old Street. Bookseller extraordinaire. A kind of reinvented Iain Sinclair (author of the foreword of the other of my Lawrence purchases). Yes, you need to move on sometimes. Don't let things defeat you - make a fresh start in life.

Er, but then again the lyrics of the best Felt songs positively revel in gloom and defeatism, and that's why they're so good. I dunno, let's suspend these thoughts here while I go off to read my new-old Lawrence books. I'll leave you with these not-so-uplifting lyrics from The Stagnant Pool. Did Spandau Ballet make any songs like this? I think not.

The stagnant pool

Like a drowned coffin

Still as a deceased heart

Haunting the ghost of the noble crusader

Who recalls pellucid ice clutching the aching twigs

Never melting

Never a drop to disturb stagnation

Oh they say I'll never win

You'll always get beat

And like a drop of blood from the Devil's tap

I'm dragging the crusader behind

Slips purposely down the black hole back to hell

Steps purposely down the black hole back to hell