Allan Jones

‘Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down’

(Bloomsbury)

E book Overview

Hilarious eye watering conflict tales from the rock n roll frontline from one of many UK’s main music writers and former editor of Melody Maker

Maybe the final of the good rock n roll racounters Allan Jones has some legendary tales to inform. The previous editor of Melody Maker and Uncut journal has type and drank and typed his method by way of the excessive water mark of the swash buckling bacchanalian excessive instances of the seventies and eighties.

In mid seventies Wales, he knew a pre Conflict and 101’ers Joe Strummer and have become a rock author within the days when the writers have been usually extra rock n roll than the bands and in a blur of hair and beards, they have been usually collapsed in the identical trenches as their musical combatants. The music writers have been city guerrillas armed with prose and have been typing typewriter titans from again within the day when legends have been fashioned and deconstructed in machine gun story telling. On this pre-punk interval music world when music and musicians have been totemic and the excessive decibel was the premier artwork type within the western world – its pied pipers have been filled with the hubris and self-importance that this standing amplified.

Allen Jones celebrates and deflates this pomposity while he hitches a trip on the rock n roll rollercoaster. His interviews and on the street items are carried out with a pointy eye and there’s a lot hilarity in these encounters. It’s hilarious stuff and  he has a devilish eye for the humour in all these fraught conditions. Egos which can be river deep and mountain excessive get debunked and but he nonetheless celebrates the excessive octane excessive of the facility of rock n roll with a humanity while recounting his personal function in lots of of those stumbling tales of wanton silliness and rampaging narcissism. Rockers are put into place and the guide is probably the perfect perception into the instances when the excessive decibel dinosaurs dominated the earth earlier than punk’s personal shorter haired pomposity made for a brand new cannon fodder and past.

Allan Jones is aware of that rock n roll is mainly very foolish and that’s why we like it and snigger at it but additionally are immersed in its superb magnificence. Regardless of all this he stays a fan of the shape while chuckling at its innate dumbness with a twinkling eye or ear that’s nonetheless deeply moved by the music. This guide of superb writing is filled with tales properly instructed and nice turns of phrases and is an object lesson within the artwork type of good rock n roll writing.