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Post by Lord Emsworth on Nov 14, 2023 16:59:57 GMT
Having loved Adelle Stripe's Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile, I was instantly attracted to.... Ten Thousand Apologies: Fat White Family and the Miracle of Failure (2022) So far it's very interesting despite not being much of a fan of Fat White Family.... From the mountains of Algeria to the squats of South London via sectarian Northern Ireland, Ten Thousand Apologies is the sordid and thrilling story of the country's most notorious cult band, Fat White Family. Loved and loathed in equal measure since their formation in 2011, the relentlessly provocative, stunningly dysfunctional "drug band with a rock problem" have dedicated themselves to constant chaos and total creative freedom at all costs.
Like a tragicomic penny dreadful dreamed up by a mutant hybrid of Jean Genet, the Dadaists and Mark E. Smith, the Fat Whites' story is a frequently jaw-dropping epic of creative insurrection, narcotic excess, mental illness, wanderlust, self-sabotage, fractured masculinity, and the ruthless pursuit of absolute art.
Co-written with lucidity and humour by singer Lias Saoudi and acclaimed author Adelle Stripe, Ten Thousand Apologies is that rare thing: a music book that barely features any music, a biography as literary as any novel, and a confessional that does not seek forgiveness. This is the definitive account of Fat White Family's disgraceful and radiant jihad - a depraved, romantic and furious gesture of refusal to a sanitised era.
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Post by Lord Emsworth on Nov 14, 2023 17:00:12 GMT
Anyone read it?
Or fancy it?
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Post by Lord Emsworth on Nov 15, 2023 9:48:00 GMT
^ And it’s tremendous
All hail Adelle 👏🏻✊🏻🫶🏻
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Post by Lord Emsworth on Nov 15, 2023 9:49:29 GMT
It’s sent me back to The Fat White Family who certainly had their moments but are also very hit and miss, with more miss than hit so far as I can make
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Post by Lord Emsworth on Nov 18, 2023 15:52:37 GMT
Like a good documentary, a good music book will get you interested in an artist who you previously had no interest in. So it proves with Adelle Stripe’s book about Fat White Family.
Having loved Adelle Stripe's Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile, I was instantly attracted to Ten Thousand Apologies: Fat White Family and the Miracle of Failure (2022).
It's great. Jaw dropping. It involves a spectacular amount of drug taking and a wanton disregard for anything approaching professionalism. I felt scuzzy just listening to it. The two central characters in Fat White Family are Lias Saoudi and Saul Adamczewski. Both had fairly dysfunctional backgrounds which may have contributed to their choice of lifestyle. The drugs taking is, as I’ve already hinted at, off the scale… heroin, cocaine, acid, meth, ketamine etc. I cannot imagine what life is like being so thoroughly wasted for the majority of the time. It may not make for the best music but it certainly makes for a compelling story and repeatedly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
If that sounds like your kind of thing, and whether or not you know or like Fat White Family, then dive right in.
It's brilliantly written and will take you from the London music scene in the 2010s to northern Ireland, rural Algeria, and across the USA and Europe. Full of highs (lots of highs) and lows (some very very low lows) of life in early adulthood in an Art School band with a serious drug problem. Funny, insightful and honest.
5/5
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