I don’t remember The Bollweevils. An assiduous reader of the music press, for all that both the New Musical Express and Smash Hits were by then in decline, my attention was probably elsewhere as the extravagant promise of the 1980s dwindled away into the distinctly more pedestrian 1990s, likely swayed by The Sundays or waylaid by Betty Boo.

R.B. Russell, on the other hand, does remember them, not least because – albeit briefly – he was one of their number. In this, I think, lies something of the charm of his understatedly rapturous Fifty Forgotten Records. By cementing his choices in memoir, he untethers them from the dreary liturgy of the ‘rock’ canon, recognising that the pop which plays on repeat in the string sections of our heart is invariably that which plays out the soundtrack of our lives.

It helps a little that, born in the same year, our life courses overlap. Indeed, as he was leaving East Sussex, I was seeking a temporary sanctuary there. Just the same, the generalities by which Russell came to be lost in music are such that it’s hard to imagine any prospective reader either failing to find common ground or discovering the blue touch paper of their own recollections unlit. Moreover, since Russell is untroubled by the weary signifiers of ‘cool’, stale since the twilight of the Beatniks, the reader, rather than being kept at one remove, is drawn in closer by the counterbalancing warmth of his unguarded enthusiasms.

As Russell himself acknowledges, in a glancing aside to Morrissey’s Autobiography, it is typically the early years that are the most fascinating in a pop life, and he traces these through the rites of passage typical of his generation, the staples of convivial pub small talk, including one’s first single, one’s first concert, and – along the way – Top of the Pops.

The prime-time Thursday staple, now dusted down to make perfunctory appearances at Christmas and New Year, was once a classroom bellwether; drawing demarcation lines between those, for instance, who viewed Billy MacKenzie‘s swoon-some self-confidence as he smirked his way through The Associates‘ Party Fears Two as the apotheosis of the art form, and those who (incorrectly) dismissed his performance as foppish caterwauling. By such distinctions were identities honed, friendships forged and tribal allegiances pledged.

Russell, quite naturally, without seeing the need to fully embrace the dress code, set his cap at goth-dom. Arguably the most literary of genres, it was a comfortable fit for an aspiring writer with an abiding fascination for Welsh esotericist, Arthur Machen. It was, after all, an era when, particularly in the New Musical Express, earnest young men and women would wear their art on their sleeves, readier to talk about Ballard than ballads.

There’s a like discursiveness in his prose, which aptly takes in a cemetery’s worth of fallen record shops and deceased small venues, so that the specifics of Russell’s memorabilia are, perhaps, less important than the alternatives they suggest to the reader. For me, for instance, for all that I was diverted to discover pragVEC‘s wonderfully faux French Existential through a rapid search of YouTube, it was the non-equivalent sound of Tarzan 5 they somehow suggested that really hit home.

To describe the book as a conversation piece is intended as no slight, although it would perhaps be more accurate to liken Fifty Forgotten Records to a particular kind of cocktail party raconteur, one whose way with words inspires their guests to their own flights of recollection. As the nights retreat, there can surely be few more delightful ways to wile away one’s evening than in Russell’s welcoming company.

By Desmond Bullen

Main image: copyright Tartarus Press 

 

Fifty Forgotten Records by R.B. Russell is published by Tartarus. For more information, click here.