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2024-08-23 📌 My review: The Bluster Boy by Davey MacManus
Published by Rotten Poetry and available direct but also available in the usual places such as Amazon and Waterstones. Launch event recording (14mins in).
The back cover blurb to this is a rare thing, an entirely accurate summary. Davey's life has seen cowboys, confessions, bodies, self medication, wobbles, skateboarding, boxing, addictions, dealing with the record industry, some big names, a continuous process of rebuilding, life in the NHS trenches as well as further afield, family love, wider love for community, survivor's guilt, stints working in Africa and finding joy even amongst grim conditions. The book is a mixture of catharsis, absolution, memorial and celebration. It's hopeful, not an ending, and you come away with the strong conviction there's more in him.
We're all getting older and wanting to reevaluate and commit to the record things that are important to us (I've got a score of partly drafted articles about topics like 80s/90s computing, and a large part of that's processing big life events). So apologies if this review also reads like a personal blog and will also end up as one, it's because the music has a lot of personal meaning.
I've been a long time fan, first exposure being at an Ash gig before the internet was really established enough to find out much, although I think Chris Friend had a site even then. Went to uni in Aberystwyth which was another link with these bands and others such as Murry The Hump and the Hot Puppies. I suppose I might not be the "true fan" archetype, because I latch strongly onto initial impressions of bands and might wander when styles change – most of that's me and the couple of decades plus since becoming an adult have meant following less music and circling back to known things and things I didn't explore at the time. I do absolutely love the style of the Crimea era as much as the early label and pre-label Crocketts material, though. Tracks on what was referred to as the Klutzville EP (find it on YouTube) and later released as the Lottery Winners on Acid EP in the US, and the self-released version of Tragedy Rocks with songs such as Out of Africa and also wonderful non-album tracks, not all of which got formally released, are important to who I am in ways very few other bands are. There's often an edge of melancholy to Crox/Crimea songs, and Davey's other material, and that's not to say it's of negative effect, it's just part of the tapestry. I wasn't in the best place to appreciate last release Square Moon when it was initially released, and may not be for forthcoming new album Even the Trees Know Karate, but that in no way lessens my appreciation for his music and messages, or respect for putting himself out there and keeping going.
Whilst we're talking notable events (also obviously covered in the book), second Crimea album Secrets of the Witching Hour was an early and important free download release, maybe not the absolute first (would recommend Harvey Danger's 2005 "Little By Little" for example) but hugely influential and as noted here recognised as such by some of the most respected music journals of the era. By now the music industry has irreversibly changed, releases are mainly advertising for live shows and merchandise sales, but at the time it was very much an exception for full length material.
I'm also not the truest fan in the sense that the musicality is what gets me, and maybe it's ASD linked but my brain doesn't usually really connect to poetry without threading it to rhythm or spoken word, so the most interesting parts of TBB to me are the anecdotes bookending the poems (and there are plenty of them) and contemporary photos. There's something here – probably many things – for everyone who's crossed paths with the bands involved or the author. I don't think I ever knew much about the reasons behind the end of the first band besides the record label wanting more commercial 'alternative' music and singles, for example. And the period after the Crocketts and Crimea is just as interesting. Often difficult for the people involved, but I don't see this as a negative read at all and would highly recommend.
As an addendum, I'm intrigued by the fact publisher Rotten Poetry currently has a listing for Stuff Your Cherry Pie, a 90s album under the name Mr Crockett. It's on YouTube officially but it did get a CD or CD-R reissue back in the day (the listing picture is a photo of the inlay) and it's one gap in my collection.
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