"Goggo! Goggo!" (31 Songs - Nick Hornby)

Member Name: theediscerning

Product:	31 Songs - Nick Hornby
Date:	28/07/04 (210 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Bright and breezy

Disadvantages: Bit verse, chorus, verse

On picking up 31 Songs, by Nick Hornby, the suspicion that this is just an ego-fest, similar to many dooyoo member?s selections of favourite songs/CDs/bands, apart from size of audience of course, is very strong. What would make this volume of short essays about his favourite pop tunes that much different from any other writer?s?

The answer, having ploughed through the book in just a couple of hours ~ it doesn?t look large print but there?s not a lot on each page, and many pictures ~ is not a lot. Of course the actual selection is very different, but on the whole the writing is no more pictorial, persuasive or pun-filled than any better dooyoo writer.

For one instance, it can be as cheaply opinionated as any writer here ~ ?Anyone who likes music owns those four...? reads a bit about Bob Dylan. Tosh, obviously.

To take that bit about the music being different and running with it, it really must be said that of this selection, theediscerning was, and still is, mostly ignorant. Yes there?s a vague memory of Nick?s most-played ever track, Bruce Springsteen?s ?Thunder Road?, and he reaches the likes of Royksopp at the end, but in between there is an awful lot that theed had never heard of. Butch Hancock, anyone? Mark Mulcahy ~ didn?t he direct Highlander or something?

And on the whole, theed is still quite ignorant of how all these songs sound ~ even though there is a tie-in compilation, featuring those songs Sony felt like licensing for the purpose. That remains unheard, just as do the great majority of these tracks ~ when it?s a popular artiste mentioned, like Dylan, or the Beatles, it?s the more obscure (to theed anyway) tracks that get a write-up.

The listing is rather different to those on dooyoo, which should come as no surprise, even if the quality of the penmanship is alike. The opening chapter, regarding a very special evening with a very special (apparently) Teenage Fanclub track, is at great pains to point o
ut that the music is not selected because it means any specific thing to Nick, nor does it just mirror one time in the Hornby household. Instead, most of the tracks are much older, and surpass frivolous things such as temporal changes in his life?s taste. Ignoring ?if I play this, it reminds me of X?, it?s the tracks that have stayed with him and still get played that are of concern.

There are exceptions, of course, and the third chapter concerns one of them ~ Nelly Furtado, and ?I?m Like a Bird?. This chapter cannot exactly hope to persuade us this stuff and nonsense is a classic (?I don?t even want to make a case for this song, as opposed to any other... sure, it will seem thin and stale soon enough?) but in this instance the chapter is more about Nick?s approach to music. He both damns people who dismiss throwaway pop pap as low culture ~ later he can point to his own books? successes and his hopes that such omnipresent culture isn?t always meaning low culture ~ and tells of how his life is buoyed by the discovery of tunes he can love to excess for a few months, tape for the car, friends etc, and then disengage with when something else comes along.

Sometimes, as suggested above, there are larger phases of life involved in throwing away one?s musical predilections ~ as a teenager he would much prefer some angry, shouty and heavy rock than anything else, thank you very much. Now he can take this ~ with Led Zeppelin?s Heartbreaker as chapter four ~ or leave it for the very different ~ hence a later chapter describing his much more recent discovery of the divorce-rock of Jackson Browne.

Therefore the 31 songs, mentioned in 26 chapters ~ some are concerning two, for instance Ani DiFranco and Aimee Mann ~ are described in a number of ways. Some show more affinity with Ciao writing ~ describing the song, or the initial encounter with it, or the process by which this particular consumer came to love it. Other chapters, such as the Mark M
ulcahy one, take this a stage further ~ here we never have a word on what the song?s built of ~ it could be a harpsichord and Stylophone duet for all we?re told, but we get a little polemic about the virtues of independent record stores, who can shield you from the hype, even to the point of saying this certain record is not worth you buying, and allow you to feel great about some kindred spirit?s discovery. You don?t get such personal recommendations with assurance from HMV, and in the paperback you don?t get a codicil to mention that HMV have closed down ~ the friends who put Hornby off tat and on to more discerning music stopped trading despite the plug in the hardback.

Throughout the book you get the whole gamut of experiences of music, from the pre-High Fidelity concerns of what to play while losing your cherry ~ compromised by there not being an album with all the tracks with a satisfying sequence, to the possibility of Ian Dury and the Blockhead?s ?Reasons to be Cheerful Part 3? being a new national anthem ~ with, perhaps a poet laureate on hand to alter couplets as and when the mood of the nation changes (the Changing of the Reasons, if you will).

Other articles are a little more distanced from the music still. The Royksopp chapter, while started with an ?I discovered ambient...? admission, goes to discuss in its speaking-to-itself journalese how the youth of today can possibly engage with any music as in speaking to just her or himself, when it?s played everywhere at any circumstance ~ Royksopp being played from posh hotels to BBC adverts.

The middle of the book bears mention of The Bible, and this is a more memorable section, more of a story if anything with its moral, of how Nick discovered and loved their music by meeting the artists involved. Also, courtesy of writing, he gets an inordinate number of CDs in the post, which sound as if they?re just dumped (Oi, Nick, can theed have them to flog on amazon??). He describes rat
her well his process of deciding how much attention to pay to them, and ends by admitting he may well have missed several classic songs because he hadn?t met the artist, and had played only up to the first chord change of track one.

This chapter, from the point of view of a friend of The Bible, is an exception, rather ~ the vast majority of the book could have been written by any man of a certain age, musical taste and intelligence. However in a couple of the sections the real Hornby comes through, in more interesting segments of autobiography. We can work out from some of what we read just how much he listens to music, and thus work out his domestic arrangement must include forgiveness and/or thick walls. We also read a little fragment here and there about his autistic son, and it?s thought this is the first op on dooyoo that this wordless young music fan has ever donated a title to.

So now you know what the book is like, hopefully, you can judge what the writing is like ~ if you have friends on this site and read about their lifetime?s best music, this is very much in the same vein. The only thing that might get in the way is the nagging doubt that 31 Songs deserves being a hit book with a huge competition campaign around it (be seen reading this in public and you might earn some moolah for records ~ it needn?t be a long train ride, either, with a book of this length). But, if you can stomach the thought that someone has got away with an awful lot of cash for very little, and should be darned well grateful for the privilege, you might well like this book.

As it stands, it?s probably best read from cover to cover ~ it may look like a compilation, but you?d be wise not to skip tracks with the remote control here, nor go on random play and just dip in willy-nilly. However it?s not going to be one of your best-loved CDs either, as really once you?ve played it you can change the disc and move on to something else.

Some of the c
hapters are of course better than others ~ the Ian Dury discussion is one of the more persuasive, although that might be because it?s about a known subject ~ but the end feeling is one of mild satisfaction, and no more.

As a bonus, after the 31 Songs we get ?...And 14 Albums?, a short spread of Nick Hornby?s New Yorker music journalism. Here we get more of the descriptive music writing, as opposed to the discursive. Mann again, Steve Earle and Nick Cave get long album reviews, and to conclude Nick engages in a good experiment ~ he experiences the entire US album chart top ten, and barely survives. In fact this is a sort of epiphany that might be the biggest point to the book ~ but it?s so little flagged it might not be intentional. 31 Songs ends ?It?s a pop song... it?s capable of just about anything.? ...And 14 albums sees Nick survive Blink182, P Diddy, D12 etc, and ends with him returning to his personal top ten ~ ?But I won?t kid myself that it?s pop music ~ not any more?.

Such moments show the book can be mature and interesting, and even though the taste shown in these pages is at times just awful, there are too many mentions of Mojo magazine (a great giveaway if one was ever needed) and there are too many instances of ?if you don?t like this you can?t like music? rubbish, all the same the book is a pleasant read, yet rather forgettable, easy to gloss over. 31 Songs, then, in two respects, comes down on the side of pop.

It?s recommended if you want to read it for being a Nick Hornby fan, or want to see the real author of those High Fidelity lists make his own, but it really isn?t recommended you spend much money on it, certainly not Penguin?s £6.99 asking price. The ISBN, 0-141-01340-0, will lead you to much cheaper copies online. Theediscerning gives it three stars.

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