Re: (TV) Views on 'Velvetts to Voidoids'?

[Phil Obbard <pobbard@yahoo.com>]

--- Russ Van Rooy <russvr@pop.nwnexus.com> wrote:
> Okay, now that I'm done with the chapters dealing directly with
> Television, what are listers views on this book ? I like it for the
> most part,but find that the details this book supplies are still
> only cursory. 

I'll offer the probably the only dissenting opinion and say that I
think this book is *terrific*. It served as an excellent shorthand
history and discography to a lot of great music for me. I've read and
re-read it many times over the years - so much so that the spine is
finally falling apart. Perhaps, if so much of it hadn't been "new" to
me when I read it, I wouldn't have enjoyed it so thoroughly, but when
I came across it 1993 or 1994 it was the ONLY book out there to cover
so many key bands so concisely. (There aren't many books trying to
recount the Modern Lovers brief and erratic history, or detailing all
of the permutations of Blondie's precursors, or chronicling just
about anything related to Television or Pere Ubu, for example).

The problem is, no-one on this list can ever separate the book from
Heylin as a person. I realize that some have very good reasons for
feeling this way, but I also know that F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest
Hemingway weren't likeable guys either. It doesn't mean their books
aren't worth reading.

One legit criticism relates to the way in which Heylin incorporates
period interview material with various band members as if he had
conducted the interviews himself. This is a fair criticism. On the
other hand, I'd argue that managed to preserve and compile a slew of
interesting interview material from a wide variety of sources that
you might otherwise spend years trying to track down in its original
(or even reprinted) incarnation (assuming you could find it at all).

The book has given me a lot of enjoyment. I didn't realize it was
being re-published, but I will pick it up right away. I'm not
surprised he's updated the discography; the old one is sort of funny
for all of the material he talks about "only being available on
bootleg" which has since been legitimately released (like
Television's OLD WALDORF disc).

Incidentally, I once asked Richard Hell what his opinion of the FROM
THE VELVETS TO THE VOIDOIDS was, and he described it as "very
accurate".

--Phil
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