The Commitments (1987)

This irreverent tale shows how Jimmy Rabbitte converts a group of misfit Dubliners into a band to preach the word of Soul. The book is very raw and real (not for anyone who is militant about writing rules or clean language). If you have a taste for Irish peskiness, this'll give you a generous shot of it.

P.S. Also recommend the movie version. ( )

If you can get used to the fuckin language this is a fuckin good read. Beware though if you are also offended by the c*** word!

Seriously: Roddy Doyle has a knack for bringing his characters to life. They seem so real:- faults, foul language, and all.

I enjoyed listening to a 2004 recording of an audio discussion with Roddy Doyle about this book that I found in the World Book Club archive of the BBC World Service.

( )

Dodgy young Irish blokes get soul.

http://freesf.strandedinoz.com/wordpress/2012/05/the-commitments-roddy-doyle/ ( )

In which a bunch of working-class Irish youths simultaneously discover James Brown, their own musical talents, and that mysterious quality known as "soul." Various reviewers have already mentioned the film that was made of this novel just a few years after it was published, and you can see why somebody thought that this one would translate well to the screen: the most fun part of "The Commitments" is the lively, profane and riotously funny dialogue that ricochets back and forth between its characters. I'm sure that you'd have to be from Dublin to understand all of it, but, luckily, you don't have to be Irish to find it funny. The rest of "The Commitments" will seem familiar to anyone who's watched a few episodes of VH1's "Behind the Music" series: the band has a thrilling start, a few moments of glory, and a fast fade. Doyle has fun with some of the genre's cliches, though. The novel features a pretentious lead singer, a world-weary Soul Man, an unhinged drummer, and a woman who blows the band apart. Still, the stock character I enjoyed most was Jimmy, the record nerd-cum-Svengali who realizes that having the right influences and getting the right look counts for an awful lot in the music business. Curiously, Jimmy's character also makes "The Commitments" seem like a relic from a time before globalization and the attendant rise of internet culture. His hard-won musical expertise, and his idea that an Irish soul band is exactly the innovation that the Dublin music scene needs, seems quaint in a world where kids in Cape Town, Kyoto and Cork can download the entire Motown catalog in mere minutes and sample it at will. As an American, it's hard for me to believe that there were once teenagers who lived in a first-world nation who didn't already know exactly who James Brown was or couldn't sing a few bars of "I Feel Good" at the age of twelve, but, well, maybe that's just how they did music then, back in the old days. ( )

not a bad read however not a patch on the wonderful film ( )