tapestry of delights : revisited

by Vernon Joynson

Tapestry of Delights Revisted

Genres: Music

Paperback

First published June 30, 2006

Reviews

[Chris Browning · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the original one volume version of this on one memorable, happy evening towards the end of my slightly unhappy time at university. I took it out of Leicester library and spent a good six or seven hours - probably far longer than I’d spent on essays for a degree I never really wanted to do - painstakingly taking notes of bands and musicians that sounded interesting. For a good ten years I was frequently annoyed when my own research into weird records was suddenly trumped by reissues turning them into canon: I felt it betrayed my joy at slowly and meticulously taking notes and putting effort into hunting for records that suddenly anyone could find

Obviously I was a huge idiot, because the joy of this book is that Joynson loves this era and loves many of these records and wants to share as many as he can with you. It’s a weird book because there are some quite famous records he’s omitted but then some absolutely obscure to the point of only about three links online for some of the other records. He’s thoughtful and insightful towards the records and has what I imagine for him would be an annoying tendency to make terrible records sound absolutely brilliant by his criticisms. I’ve been slowly working through these - because you can only do it slowly as they’re HUGE volumes - ever since I got them and every time I’ve read it there’s something new and mad and brilliant in there. And as a librarian I can also say how happy I am that it’s also really nicely done on the discographic front. A real achievement