Every Christmas, for any number years now, I've received a generous book token from my dear Aunt Jane, one of my father's younger sisters, who is now making her way with dogged resolve through her late Seventies from her homebase in Dorchester, nearby to the bungalow where her parents moved from Hoylake in the early Seventies and spent their retirement years.
Continuing to send me these tokens every year without fail is a great act of incredibly selfless generosity on Jane's part. I certainly don't expect it but the appearance of her envelope every Christmas Day and inside it her card and token among the pile of cards and gifts waiting for me downstairs is always welcome and exciting, particularly at a time of year when my finances are almost invariably tight. I always try to use them carefully and well.
At the moment I'm in Canterbury staying with my parents and I went into Waterstones in the parade a couple of days ago just planning to browse. My eyes settled quickly on a copy of Revolutionary Spirit the memoirs iof Paul Simpson once of The Teardrop Explodes and The Wild Swans. A quick skim through ws enough to persuade me to buy it. The book has only recently been published and has already been critically garlanded. It boasts a back cover cluttered with the most glowing recommendations from the likes of Bill Dummond, Will Sergeant, Bob Stanley and Bobby Bluebell.
Simpson is someone you'd probably describe as a musician's musician. The very definition of a Cult concern. He's not terribly well known except by those that make it their business to dig deep into Rock & Roll and Indie lore. He left The Teardrops in 1979 before they actually had a hit and his most famous song, the Wild Swans Post Punk classic single Revolutionary Spirit is remembered most fondly by scenesters and didn't grace the actual grown up charts or propel them onto Top of the Pops.
What's immediately obvious from the books opening pages is that Simpson is a highly gifted writer of literary flair, wit and self depreciation. He writes like a dream frankly. He has read the books and understood their subtext, seen the films, listened to the records and lived the life. Written on virginal white pages and devoid of photos Revolutionary Spirit will be a book about life and its poetic, straining rhythms and cadences as much as Rock & Roll though Rock & Roll provides the backbone and the undertow.
Chapter One. Wild Swans, inexplicably, years after they have parted ways, are big in The Philippines.
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