The Rejects: An Alternative History of Popular Music

Jamie Collinson focuses in this book on the people who were instrumental in the formation and/or sound of big name bands but who were sacked at some point along the journey. It starts promisingly with a chapter on Pete Best, The Beatles' original drummer, but although interspersed with a number of interesting chapters the book feels as if Collinson is grasping for content at times.

It's an uneven read; where Collinson has a particular personal interest in the group (e.g. Nirvana) he invests pages upon pages to the band, often straying significantly off at tangents away from the point of the book, yet for other bands he writes only a page, where he clearly knows precious little beyond the fact that person A was fired from band B. show more Collinson worked for a couple of indie labels, and some of his best chapters are where he is able to bring personal insight into the stories, but for many other bands his accounts read of someone who has simply researched a couple of different band member perspectives from memoirs and then stitched the key parts back together.

It's unfortunate, as the good parts of this book were enjoyable, but I just don't think Collinson had good enough material to keep to the focus of his subject matter.

3 stars - interesting for fans of indie and rock music in particular, but a bit of a flawed approach from Collinson. show less