Nick Kent's memoir, Apathy for the Devil is a strange read. Sometimes he gets things entirely right. Captain Beefheart, Lou Reed, Al Green, Stooges, Television. Sometimes he misses the target altogether.
'Those who gleefully recast the time as one long happy-go-lucky punky reggae party evidently weren't present at the same events that I beheld. Or maybe it's just that we come from such different perspectives. Take for example The Slits. Others viewed them as a bold and liberating feminist clarion call. I thought they were a bunch of talentless exhibitionists. Watching them in the early days shrieking and stumbling cack-handedly through their tuneless repertoire was as grim an experience as going to get my wisdom teeth removed by an incompetent dentist. How had this concept that you could legitimately stand onstage holding a musical instrument even though you couldn't actually play the thing taken root and why was no-one else viewing it as a musical version of the emperor's new clothes.'
Because they were right and you were wrong Nick. Even those who weren't there.
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