Ragged Glories: City Lights, Country Funk, American Music

Ragged Glories: City Lights, Country Funk, American Music
Customer Review: Wizards and True Stars
An excellent anthology of lengthy essays and/or interviews by the most authoritative British writer on American music. Whilst these pieces have all been available in various publications or on the author’s excellent subscription website devoted to intelligent rock criticism, many have cried out for availability in book form, and it is a real treat to have them contained in one easily accessible, sectionalised, competitively priced volume.

Whist many lesser writers change their opinions over time, Hoskyns remains thoroughly consistent, never afraid chastise his heroes when they produce a sub par offering or fail to live up to initial expectations (or indeed “hero slippage” as the great Lester Bangs once wrote).

The only (possible) shortcoming is that despite featuring 27 artists/styles divided into 7 “areas”, this book only scrapes the surface of the writer’s published oeuvre. To read about his numerous other loves and obsessions or the times that he had to turn private detective to track down the most elusive of subjects, you’ve still got to locate grubby copies of the likes of MOJO, subscribe to his website – or wait for the second volume of Ragged Glories.

And unlike many journalists who’ve “dabbled” in rock, Hoskyns still regards listening to records as, in the words of one of his erstwhile raves Marshall Crenshaw (sadly not represented here), his “favourite waste of time”.

Or to paraphrase those infamous comments by the legendary Liverpool football manager, Bill Shankly, Barney Hoskyns looks upon American music as “not a matter of life or death, but more important that that”.

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