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Chris S View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Topic: David Cousins - The Strawbs
    Posted: February 11 2014 at 23:29
Good news, autobiography out this year

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 12 2014 at 02:34
Originally posted by Chris S Chris S wrote:

Good news, autobiography out this year


Thanks, that will be an interesting read!  
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 12 2014 at 20:12
Nice.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 13 2014 at 14:12
Hi,
 
UPDATE:UPDATE2 (03/26/2015)
 
Finished Marianne's book, not sure how to review it yet. Good book.
 
Finished Pattie Boyd's book, and I am not sure I will review it. Not impressed.
 
Finished Robert Wyatt's and the review has been posted on PA. GREAT!
 
Finished David Cousins' book. Nice!! Also good on folk history instead of the other side of the coin in Robert's case! Nice contrast! Not all folk, but at least one portion of it that was closer to pop music, I would imagine. Adding review below here, as soon as I can word it.


Edited by moshkito - March 26 2015 at 08:29
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 13 2014 at 17:15
^ Just about to start Robert Plant's A Life, must look out for Marianne Faithfull's book, I am sure that will be rivetting stuff
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 28 2014 at 08:51
anyone read "Exorcising GHosts" yet?  I have read most of it.  It's very breezy and entertaining.  Quite a character, and it shines through in a lot of the text.  I can imagine his unique voice telling it to us on audiobook.
One thing that really shocked me is that he claims his excellent solo album "Two Weeks Last Summer" from 1972 sold only 5000 copies in the UK at a time when its chronologically closest Strawbs albums were ringing up upwards of 70,000 sales.  If you missed this album to check it out.  I believe it has some CD re-releases in print
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 08 2014 at 10:15
I've gone through most of it and if you're a diehard Strawbs fan that knows almost everything about them (like me), the book is very disappointing. It's a true autobiography in that Cousins writes of his boring childhood and also of the radio station jobs (he was a radio station programmer from 1982-2002) that he had after the late seventies break up of the Strawbs. There's nothing new or revealing here except that Cousins does come off as a truly warm individual and is probably the reason for the Wakeman's family affection for him. If you don't know the details of how Cousins 'discovered' Sandy Denny and Rick Wakeman, then this book is for you. If you're familiar with these stories than skip this book and just listen to some later day Strawbs albums like the two 40th anniversary albums titled Strawberry Fayre Vols.1 and 2 , as I don't see them making any new albums  in the future.


Edited by SteveG - November 12 2014 at 10:37
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 01 2015 at 11:04
Hi,
 
There is one thing that I am really enjoying at the start of Robert's book, is the lack of fear and ability to also mention and discuss, however slightly, other artists ... already Burroughs, Ginsberg, Graves and others have been mentioned, and it just clarifies what i believed all along ... many of these folks in "progressive" stuff, were quite literate ... but too many of them could only discuss their "stardom" ... and the stardom is not interesting, and the only groupie book that had bullocks was the one about the Iranian girl ... that one is a fun read, because you just never know what's next!
 
I'm getting a bit tired of bleached out blondes and stars ... in any book! At least I could not smell the perfume in Marianne's book, unlike Patties.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 26 2015 at 08:54

Originally posted by SteveG SteveG wrote:


... It's a true autobiography in that Cousins writes of his boring childhood and also of the radio station jobs (he was a radio station programmer from 1982-2002) that he had after the late seventies break up of the Strawbs.
...

There is a very nice sidebar to this. It's most interesting that he did not "discuss" the music played and such, but at the very least it shows the development of radio in England, of which he certainly was a part, however minor that might be.

Some good details though ... FM radio in England appears to have been about 5 to 6 years behind America. I'm double checking this even more ... as this is very important and telling of how a group was capable of being heard and got a chance. In the early days of FM in America, until it started going hardcore/corporate commercial around 1977 or so (give or take a month or two), the amount of freedom in most of these stations was pretty much up to the disk jockey ... and by 1980, this was over in most of the same stations over here.

I'm a firm believer that without the FM radio, specially in America, that a lot of this music would likely not have made it at all. I imagine that the stuff that was more "pop music" oriented might be checked, but the rest would likely not. Radio folks, without trying to be mean, are generally not very well versed in "music listening", that we could determine, since they never played that many different things, and in all those years in Southern California, I only met one guy that actually listened to the music, and PLAYED IT.

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 26 2015 at 09:33
It would be fair to say that there is no FM Radio in the UK in the American sense of the terminology. It is a completely different animal that bears no comparison, it is neither behind nor ahead. 

We do not delineate radio by frequency band or modulation type, simply because it doesn't make sense to do so, we classify radio broadcast by operator type Public (BBC) and Commercial (Independent) and then subdivide those into National and Regional (Local), so we have:

Public broadcast (BBC)
Public local broadcast (BBC Local)
Independent National Radio (ClassicFM, Absolute Radio and TalkSport)
Independent Local Radio (regional commercial stations)

With only a few exceptions all those that play music are essentially Top-40 stations, the number of Rock stations can be counted on your digits without having to remove your shoes and socks, and those few are either Indie Rock or Classic Rock.

What?
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 29 2015 at 11:01
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

...
Independent National Radio (ClassicFM, Absolute Radio and TalkSport)
Independent Local Radio (regional commercial stations)
...
 
Then, it would seem that David Cousins, spent a lot of time (20 years) on these, and his history of the regiinal commercial thing is extensive. I might have to read it again, some of these parts, but I think that all these were in Stereo, but don't remember it being said.
 
And he does say that he played a lot of new bands, though he did not exactly specify that he played anything of his own in many of these stations that he helped get off the ground.
 
I did not get a sense that he explained the radio over there very well other than ... BBC and then Pirate Radio and then ... something else, and I thought it got a bit muddled at that point, since it would be hard for a band to make it if it was played in only one local station and London and everywhere else, no one heard it!
 
A review of the book, won't help it get better, and at this point I am skipping it. I may write one, but not sure when at this point. Nice book, and has funny bits, but in discussing a man's musical journey, it fails ... you know nothing about the albums or the music at all ... kinda strange! Not that we had to know that Ghosts or this or that was written for this or that ... but where the muse and music comes from ... hard to believe that it was just a song ... here and there all along! The book seems to me incomplete.


Edited by moshkito - February 06 2016 at 13:47
Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
www.pedrosena.com
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