Luke Haines

Alle Scheiße außer mir! Das könnte man als Fazit unter diese Memoiren von Luke Haines (The Auteurs, Blackbox Recorder, Baader Meinhof) setzen; von einem der auszog, um Britpop den Krieg zu erklären. Oder zumindest bei jeder Gelegenheit klarzumachen, wie unerträglich er dieses Genre fand. Und das ist sehr vergnüglich erzählt, Mr. Haines ist eine Giftspritze der Extraklasse und ätzt gegen alles und jeden, dass es eine Freude ist. Vor allem, wenn ein Großteil der Gehassten auch zu den show more eigenen Haßobjekten zählt! show less

An autobiography by Luke Haines is never going to be able to compete with the usual celebrity memoirs that fill supermarket shelves as he is far from a household name. In fact most people probably haven't heard of him - a fact which he probably feels unjust and fuels some of the bile in his writing. For the uninitiated, I'll explain. In the 1990s, Haines was in a band called the Auteurs who enjoyed a reasonable amount of success in the indie/alternative sphere. For a time, their debut album show more New Wave was probably my second favourite album.

The book works through the early days of his music business career, starting in a band called The Servants, through his time in the Auteurs and then his solo project Baader Meinhof. He recounts his run-ins with record label management and bands he considers inferior that he must share the bill with - and Haines considers pretty much every band to be inferior to his. The book is filled with withering put-downs and scathing comments about this contemporaries - Blur and the Boo Radleys receiving the worst of his disdain, Suede probably coming off best. Whether he is really this bitter and resentful or if it is just a persona he has adopted is up for debate, but either way the result is a witty look at the music business in the 1990s. show less

Mr Haines is on it again. I actually bought it at his concert in the Southbank center in London. Post Everything is a lovely unfounded non-academic study of contemporary society. I especially recommend the foreword to everyone. If you think banksey is slightly overrated and Tate modern is rather something to be ashamed about, here you'll find someone who tells you why and you'll never have to be quiet again on a diner party after someone asks you: "but why?"

Luke Haines's Britpop memoir Bad Vibes wasn't exactly what I expected. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it; Haines is a witty, intelligent storyteller with a stubbornly individual streak, and he well deserves his Grumpy Old Man of Britpop crown, even though I never actually considered the Auteurs a Britpop band myself... then again, neither did they.

Britpop became the albatross around Luke Haines's neck. The Auteurs released their first album in 1993, in time for the music press to show more cheerfully lump them in with Suede and Pulp as the next big thing that was going to pop over the Atlantic and kick the arse of grunge. This was long before Oasis, way before Blur decided to drop the trippy shoegazing of their debut album and go all chirpy cockernee guvnor, years before Menswear and Echobelly and Marion and Cast.

Read the full review at my blog. show less