And earned far more than she ever did from the band doing it. She’s been working hard promoting the book and comes across very well. She was on David and Mark’s Word in Your Attic too.
I have the audiobook of her book from Audible. It was excellent. I’m going to watch this interview later. FYI the audiobook has a circa one hour interview with her at the end which I assume is exclusive to the audiobook.
Miki’s is an excellent life story, not just a diary of her time in the band. If anything, her life got less interesting when she joined Lush. And she writes well.
She was on R4’s Front Row on Tuesday night, as I was driving home. Only for about 10 minutes, it could have been much longer. She has an interesting story and I’ll be buying the book.
I used to see Lush quite often, but fell out of love when they hooked up on the Britpop bandwagon (record label pressure to have a hit, obvs.) I felt they never really fitted in.
I was too ill to go to the Lush reunion gigs, and there won’t be another. That’s a shame.
Because friends and family know of my love of music I have a considerable amount of books whose subject is musicians I have music by. The problem is whenever I finish a book and choose my next book to read I rarely pick one of the books concerning those musicians.
It is a bit scattershot. Some of the people interviewed are by no means retired and very few open up about what it’s like getting a proper job. What comes across most is a certain melancholy, and an acknowledgement that once you’ve had a hit record you can never really escape it.
NB / I used to work at IPC on the TV mags, and joked when I saw the girl with the scarlet hair, “Check out Miki from Lush over there”, and of course it turned out that it was her. Lush bassist Phil King also worked a few floors up on NME/Uncut.
My dad read it and lost patience with it being dominated by people from the 90s who he didn’t know or care about.
I’ve not read it, but I’ve read one or two quite acclaimed music books recently whose quality suggests that it’s not as competitive a market as it bloody well ought to be. It seems as if all you need to do to get good reviews in this field is choose the right subject and have a suitable “matey-boy” persona. Trees are dying in vain.
I recently read the Linguistic Wars, by Randy Allen Harris, about Noam Chomsky, his rivals and successors.
At one point, he mentions that a number of the people involved were also accomplished musicians, mainly classical.
One surprise was that Geoffrey Pullum, most recently Professor of General Linguistics at Edinburgh University, was one of the two founders, along with Pete Gage, of Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band.
The book makes the academic world sound just as driven by ego, ambition and bitterness as anything I’ve ever read about the pop world, so maybe it wasn’t such a big step.
Along those lines, there’s an excellent interview with Miki Berenyi of Lush on the Guardian website. She worked as a subeditor when the band ended.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/sep/23/lush-miki-berenyi-britpop-childhood-abuse-fame
And earned far more than she ever did from the band doing it. She’s been working hard promoting the book and comes across very well. She was on David and Mark’s Word in Your Attic too.
I have the audiobook of her book from Audible. It was excellent. I’m going to watch this interview later. FYI the audiobook has a circa one hour interview with her at the end which I assume is exclusive to the audiobook.
Miki’s is an excellent life story, not just a diary of her time in the band. If anything, her life got less interesting when she joined Lush. And she writes well.
She was on R4’s Front Row on Tuesday night, as I was driving home. Only for about 10 minutes, it could have been much longer. She has an interesting story and I’ll be buying the book.
I used to see Lush quite often, but fell out of love when they hooked up on the Britpop bandwagon (record label pressure to have a hit, obvs.) I felt they never really fitted in.
I was too ill to go to the Lush reunion gigs, and there won’t be another. That’s a shame.
99p spent. Thanks.
Bought. Thanks for that.
Excellent book
Reviewed here previously.
Again with the thanks 👍
Thank you very much – I had been tempted to ask for the book as a present this Christmas. No need now!
Excellent read.
The will hodgkinson book about disposable 70s pop looks worth a read, too
I was a touch underwhelmed. It read like a series of articles and in most cases it reflected a single interview. I’ve yet to get to the end.
Same as you. Worth 99p but I found it a bit dull.
I read the audiobook (?) and I enjoyed it. In audio form, I liked the series of articles style.
Because friends and family know of my love of music I have a considerable amount of books whose subject is musicians I have music by. The problem is whenever I finish a book and choose my next book to read I rarely pick one of the books concerning those musicians.
It is a bit scattershot. Some of the people interviewed are by no means retired and very few open up about what it’s like getting a proper job. What comes across most is a certain melancholy, and an acknowledgement that once you’ve had a hit record you can never really escape it.
NB / I used to work at IPC on the TV mags, and joked when I saw the girl with the scarlet hair, “Check out Miki from Lush over there”, and of course it turned out that it was her. Lush bassist Phil King also worked a few floors up on NME/Uncut.
My dad read it and lost patience with it being dominated by people from the 90s who he didn’t know or care about.
I’ve not read it, but I’ve read one or two quite acclaimed music books recently whose quality suggests that it’s not as competitive a market as it bloody well ought to be. It seems as if all you need to do to get good reviews in this field is choose the right subject and have a suitable “matey-boy” persona. Trees are dying in vain.
Guess what book I got given for Christmas. As with Bruce, I need to keep my trap shut.
Bleak House?
No that was the CD – a twofer with Mournful Techno.
I recently read the Linguistic Wars, by Randy Allen Harris, about Noam Chomsky, his rivals and successors.
At one point, he mentions that a number of the people involved were also accomplished musicians, mainly classical.
One surprise was that Geoffrey Pullum, most recently Professor of General Linguistics at Edinburgh University, was one of the two founders, along with Pete Gage, of Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band.
The book makes the academic world sound just as driven by ego, ambition and bitterness as anything I’ve ever read about the pop world, so maybe it wasn’t such a big step.
“Driven by ego, ambition and bitterness”
Let’s add it to the burgeoning AW T-shirt range!
Mine’s an XXL if anyone’s planning on buying one for me