More Sad Stuff

Picked up a copy of Rob Young's book about England's visionary music Electric Eden in Books Actually the other day. I bought a copy for John Simpson a few years back, when we were in the UK at a time coinciding with his birthday, and I dipped into it on a subsequent visit, feeling quite envious that he had a copy and I didn't. Never expected to come across something so quintessentially English in this part of the world.

The early chapters dealing with English composers from the early twentieth century are particularly good, but I suppose at the heart of the book are the chapters covering the sort of folk/pop of the late sixties and early seventies. I'm reading these at the moment and learning a lot about musicians and their relationships with each other I've always been aware of but from afar, as it were. It's surprising how much of this speaks more of loss than of achievement. The segments on Sandy Denny and Nick Drake particularly leave something of a sour taste in the mouth. I must play some of their stuff when we get back to remind myself of what beauty they managed to give the world despite their frailties and the brevity of their careers.