Sunday 5 December 2021

Cider With Roadies.


 I have read another Kindle book this week: Cider With Roadies by Stuart Maconie.  It's got to be one of the cleverest book titles I've ever seen and a wonderful play on words with Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee.   

Stuart Maconie writes about the Gloucestershire classic and his (and    mine) Lancashire uprising with petrol rainbows in the back street puddles.  He could have been a lyricist for The Smith's.

The book was wrote/written in 2005 but I only discovered it recently through Kindle book recommendations.  I have read two other books of his: Pies and Prejudice and  The People's Songs.

I enjoy his humour and I share his infatuation with music and he's met some of my Rock heroes like All About Eve, Elvis Costello, Kate Bush and Morrissey and how Lemmy supplied Keith Emerson with SS daggers to stab his keyboards when performing with ELP.  I saw this spectacle in action at Manchester Apollo once. I have never felt sorry for a Moog keyboard before.  RIP Keith and Greg.  ELP were probably England's finest Prog band. Up there with the greatest like my favourite band Kansas. 

Stuart even mentions my favourite Wigan joke which goes something like the following:

These Wigan lads see a sign outside a pub: A Pie A Pint And A Woman  For A Pound!

One of the lads says to the Bouncer:

"Whose pies are they?"

I found it laddish humour with a infatuation with music.  Something I share and imagine going from playing in pub bands to becoming assistant editor at the NME?   

I found the book very enjoyable with some laugh out moments like Mark E Smith of The Fall (I knew his cousin)  asking a journalist if  they would like "summat to eat?" Going into the kitchen banging pans down and opening and shutting kitchen cubpoards and twenty minutes late presenting a crisp sandwich on  a plate.

There are many facts some true and some that Stuart made up like the guy from the Monkees with the woolly hat.  His  mother actually invented Tippex (true) and Jimmy Page use to have jam sessions with the Loch Ness Monster in Alistair Crowleys  old house ( I made that up) and Bob Holness from Blockbusters played the sax solo on Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty.  Stuart made that up!


He also waxes lyrical about Stretford's Philip  Larkin and Elvis Presley: Morrissey.   Also that music journalists are failed or frustrated musicians and it's the Rock bands who pay for everything not the record companies.  It's all took out of their royalties in the end.

It was a good read and I will read some more of his books in the future.  I think my next book I'm going to download is Engish Journey by JB Priestley.  Anyone read it?




8 comments:

  1. Keith Emerson was a brilliant keyboard man. I saw him at Burton Constable Hall in East Yorkshire when he was with The Nice. I was right at the front and his music made you forget yourself. Lost in music as they say. Sorry that I haven't read "English Journey" by the "lusty" Yorkshireman J.B.Priestley.

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  2. Keith Emerson was amazing when I saw him with Emerson Lake and Palmer YP. Now sadly only Carl Palmer is still alive. "English Journey" is said to be in a similar vein to George Orwell's Road To Wigan Pier. I am looking forward to reading his trips to Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire. Great man, prolific writer and founder of CND.

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  3. I read English Journey a long time ago. Might look at it again.
    Hugh Scully who used to present the Antiques Roadshow was the uncle of Dana Scully of the X-files.

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  4. Gosh all those bands - almost long forgotten. ELP took me moment for I was thinking of ELO - but you mean Emerson, Lake and Palmer - is that right - I honestly didn't Google, just dredging my teenage memories?

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  5. Great Northern Books have reprinted JB Priestley books. Didn't know about the Antiques Roadshow/X Files connection.

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  6. Yes, Emerson Lake and Palmer The bike shed. They sound like a Solicitors branch in Gloucestershire. One of the best Prog Rock bands I have ever been lucky enough to see along with the likes of Rush, Blue Oyster Cult, Marillion, Jethro Tull, Thin Lizzy and of course my favourite Kansas.

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  7. I have recently finished Brave New World very thought provoking

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  8. Hi Sol. I haven't read it. I believe it's about the future.

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