Live!
Why We Go Out
-
- $9.99
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
'ABC', as perfect as anything I've ever witnessed up until that point in my tiny little life. Three minutes of divine delirium.
In 1972, when Robert Elms was thirteen years old, he saw the Jackson 5 play live at the Empire Pool. At some point during the performance, he found himself in a state of otherworldly perfect synchronicity with everything happening around him. This single event would set him off on an endless pursuit for that same height of pleasure.
Since then, Robert has lived his life through live music, from pub rock to jazz funk, punk to country, and everything in between. Each gig is memorable in its own way, and his snapshots of musicians past and present are both evocative and startlingly concise: Tom Waits showboating with an umbrella, Grace Jones vogueing with a mannequin, Amy shimmying shamelessly like a little girl at a wedding, Gil Scott-Heron rapping with a conga drum.
While in our changed times, Robert notes that we have found new ways of listening – of being part of something special by uniting fans with their favourite performers online – there is not, nor can there ever be, anything quite like the live experience. Live!: Why We Go Out is a memoir and a musing on why experiencing live music really matters.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
BBC radio broadcaster Elms (The Way We Wore) delivers an effusive if haphazard ode to concerts and other live musical performances. Casting a wide net, he rhapsodizes over the pleasures of clubbing as a teenager ("You watch each other rather than a band... the music is the soundtrack to your story"); bemoans a disappointing show during which Al Green spent most of his time "handing out roses ‘to the laydees' and praising the Lord"; and reflects on a more recent Paul Weller concert that fostered "a tangible feeling of unity, which gets so much rarer as we get older, more distanced, more alone." Such moments vividly capture the appeal of live music, though they're hampered by the author's tendency to name-drop (Amy Winehouse sent him a platinum copy of Back in Black as thanks for having her on his radio show) and veer into tangents, including a series of strained comparisons between music and soccer. The result is more a hodgepodge of anecdotes than the focused study the title suggests. Readers will need patience to separate the wheat from the chaff.
