Luke Haines

Alle Scheiße außer mir! Das könnte man als Fazit unter diese Memoiren von Luke Haines (The Auteurs, Blackbox Recorder, Baader Meinhof) setzen; von einem der auszog, um Britpop den Krieg zu erklären. Oder zumindest bei jeder Gelegenheit klarzumachen, wie unerträglich er dieses Genre fand. Und das ist sehr vergnüglich erzählt, Mr. Haines ist eine Giftspritze der Extraklasse und ätzt gegen alles und jeden, dass es eine Freude ist. Vor allem, wenn ein Großteil der Gehassten auch zu den eigenen Haßobjekten zählt!… (más)

An autobiography by Luke Haines is never going to be able to compete with the usual celebrity memoirs that fill supermarket shelves as he is far from a household name. In fact most people probably haven't heard of him - a fact which he probably feels unjust and fuels some of the bile in his writing. For the uninitiated, I'll explain. In the 1990s, Haines was in a band called the Auteurs who enjoyed a reasonable amount of success in the indie/alternative sphere. For a time, their debut album New Wave was probably my second favourite album.

The book works through the early days of his music business career, starting in a band called The Servants, through his time in the Auteurs and then his solo project Baader Meinhof. He recounts his run-ins with record label management and bands he considers inferior that he must share the bill with - and Haines considers pretty much every band to be inferior to his. The book is filled with withering put-downs and scathing comments about this contemporaries - Blur and the Boo Radleys receiving the worst of his disdain, Suede probably coming off best. Whether he is really this bitter and resentful or if it is just a persona he has adopted is up for debate, but either way the result is a witty look at the music business in the 1990s.… (más)