Tag Archives: book reviews

(book) Garry Bushell – ‘Sounds of Glory: The Punk and Ska Years’

Gary Bushell is famous British writer, journalist, columnist, comedian and what not. Well, he once worked for a magazine which was legendary in punk and ska scene during the eighties so he decided to tell his best stories and anecdotes in couple of books, thematically divided into metal, hard rock, punk, ska years. This one is about punk and ska years and it contains many interesting and great stories and what I love about and miss a lot in regular biographies, being anecdotes and stories from the road. I will mention only couple that I found most interesting to read in this book, that being Judge Dread, Bad Manners, Blondie, The Cockney Rejects, then boxing match organized by The Eurythmics because Garry wrote bad intro about them in Sounds and so on. I was also interesting about Lars Fredriksen’s of Rancid fame life of crime, juvenile home, stealing and taking drugs. This is bare truth, ugly and funny. Not something to remember forever, but decent book.

3,5/5

(book) Mortiis – Secrets of my kingdom: Return to dimensions unknown

Dayal Patterson and his crew at Cult Never Dies are responsible for re-release of this expanded and renewed version of the book by dungeon synth/dark ambient godfather Mortiis. This interesting creature from Norway has his roots in black metal scene having played bass for Emperor in their early and decisive days of demos which later brought them to legends they are. Then he decided to go his own way and start his one man alter ego Mortiis which is so much more than mere music and project and this hard cover rich book is a best proof for that. This book contains rich illustrated poems and texts by Mortiis which explain his Era I as it is called, meaning his first opuses and later era with more songs and albums with vocals on, and less dungeon synth/dark ambient as in earlier opus. Illustrations are superb, courtesy of Mark Riddick, Juha Vuorma, David Thiérrée. Besides texts and poems, this book contains unreleased drawings and interviews with Mortiis(interviewed by Dayal himself, very interesting and extensive), interviews with all the illustrators, Proscriptor, Balrog, Forgotten Kingdoms, Chaucerian Myth and more. This is worth having and reading, I will get back to it every once in a while and read some parts again. Great release indeed.

(knjiga) Ljubica Anđelković Džambić – ‘Tijelo otpora Satana Panonskog’

Ovo je ogromna knjiga od petstotinjak stranica koja Ljubice Anđelković Džambić, koja je osim sudjelovanja u Tabor festivalu pripadnica underground scene i sudionica i članica bendova. Zapravo, ova knjiga je njena doktorska dizertacija i secira Body Art i povijest te vrste subkulturne umjetnosti u Jugoslaviji i kasnije u Hrvatskoj. To čini kroz seciranje lika i djela Ivice Čuljka, poznatog kao Satan Panonski i Kečer II. Za one koji ne znaju, Satan je bio punker po narodnosti, a prijatelj po zanimanju hehe. Rođen je 1960., a poginuo je u ratu pod čudnim okolnostima 1992. Za to kratko vrijeme svog života stvorio je mit o sebi o kojem se priča i u ovoj knjizi, snimio nekoliko albuma, boravio u umobolnici u Popovači zbog ubojstva i izlazio van držeći koncerte koji su zapravo više bili performansi zvani ‘hard blood shock’ koristeći svoje tijelo kao platno za body art. Ljubica secira sve aspekte, od bolesti, djetinjstva, odnosa s majkom, glazbe, punka i kreiranja antimodne odjeće do puštanja iz umobolnice i pogibije. Dio knjige koji se odnosi na Satana samog mi je bio zanimljiv za čitanja, no ima i puno znanstvenih citata i objašnjenja pojmova i povijesti nekih pojmova što je bilo dosadno za svladati. Isto tako, knjiga sadrži puno odličnih fotografija, Satanovih pisama, kako privatnih, tako i onih koje je slao radi pomilovanja raznim institucijama, pa i samom Tuđmanu. Tako da, nekome će ova knjiga leći nekome ne, meni je onako pola-pola. Nije biografija, nego znanstveni rad i to detaljan, na kome kapa dolje, ali meni je bio malo too much i pretežak radi previše meni nepoznatih znanstvenih pojmova i takvih poglavlja.

2,5/5