A series of reminisces and interviews about Memorial Device, a band whose live shows could sound “like an autistic Joy Division,” and the scene they were part of in the 1980s in Airdrie, North Lanarkshire, Scotland. “The thing about Memorial Device was that you always had the feeling that it was their last gig ever, like they could fall apart at any moment.”

It was the type of atmosphere in which a group of boys drop acid and take turns masturbating in a bathroom. “After that it was inevitable we would form a band.”

The sweet and sad moments of the life of teenagers, and some adults, everywhere are captured in the book. “I fell in love with so many girls; it hurt so much.” “She seemed nervous and delicate but also poetic and a little unhinged. In other words she was ticking all the right boxes.”

What the book describes is people attempting to escape what they deem as ordinary and to define themselves as different through music and art in the process. Except for those who were truly mad. They didn’t care. This book aches with the love of music, love of fandom, and the promise of youth. Complete with a Memorial Device discography, appendices, and an extremely thorough, and thoroughly pointless, index. ( )

This book about an entirely invented music scene is lots of fun - the chapter titles such as 'He Tried to Have His Testicles Removed on the NHS' and 'I Thought They Had Cut the Top of His Head Off and Were Spooning Out His Brains' give you a flavour of the sort of content. It's written as an oral history with interviews and letters from the bands and fans that were part of the scene, it's really well observed, and I would definitely be up for seeing most of these bands live, even though they sound alternately pretentious, dreadful and unlistenable. It does in places feel like a joke that is going on for too long though, and I'm not sure it hangs together as a novel. ( )

I love Keenan's earlier book (England's Hidden Reverse) on some of my favorite bands (Coil, Current 93, etc.). So when I found out he wrote a work of fiction about a band that never was, I was intrigued. Reading it feels a lot like talking to the guy we all knew growing up who was super weird and talked too fast and just knew obscure details about music and bands but you never quite knew if he was telling the truth. (I grew up obsessed with a handful of bands in an era before the internet, so hunting for that one record your favorite musician played with a different band that no one has ever heard of was our regular weekend routine). So I totally get Keenan's aesthetic and who he's writing to (I think it's me). But I also had a hard time reading the book, mostly because Keenan's writing style really does emulate the language of a teenager who's trying really hard to keep up with all the music fans around him who he's sure know more than he does. I get it. It's 16-year-old me. But god, 16-year-old me was apparently annoying.

I totally get what's going on in this book, and I love it in principle, but it was still a slog to get through.

Is Scotland as bleak a place as its authors make it out to be? Or is it just Scottish authors of a particular generation who have such a downbeat outlook on life? This is Memorial Device is, ostensibly, the story of an obscure Scottish band that had its brief moment of--well, maybe not glory, but at least a place in the dingy spotlight. But this book isn't about music; it is about the band and the circle of people related to it in one way or another and about slices of their life during and after the band's existence. It is difficult to keep track of who is narrating as there are two main narrators and other chapters told from the point of view of other characters. In the end, it doesn't matter, because it is not a linear story with a beginning, middle, and end. It's more like a series of snapshots you have to arrange yourself--and when you do, the collage you end up with is bittersweet, tragic, occasionally funny, and never less than engrossing. As an American reading this, I was swept into an alien landscape, only vaguely familiar from other novels or music. I didn't identify with any of the characters, and I didn't want to be any of them, but I did find myself trying to hold on to the fleeting bits of happiness they occasionally find. i still can't quite imagine what Memorial Device sounds like, which is probably a good thing given the author's descriptions of their various shows. But I can understand the place the band filled in the lives of these characters, who, despite their peculiarities--or because of them--don't seem fictional at all. ( )

I want to echo a review I just read about this book, that there is a handy appendix with all of the characters who are "interviewed" or even just mentioned at the back of the book- this should very much be in the front of the book. When describing this book to friends, I would say that it is like reading a bunch of oral histories about a famous band (let's just say The Clash) except you have NO prior knowledge about the band at all- not about the members, their music, NOTHING. Which makes it a very confusing book to read. It took me months to read this book, mostly because it was so hard to get into. I was never quite sure who was talking about whom, what the time period was... I am considering re-reading the book, with special attention to that appendix I mentioned. But it's frustrating to think that I would have to read a book twice just to get the general gist of it, even if it would probably be a very good read the second time around. Who has time for that? Not me, usually. ( )