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Here Comes the Nice
Here Comes the Nice is novel as time-machine, taking the reader back to the raw early gigs of the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Small Faces, and behind the scenes to a secret that will make the sixties of the first-wave Mods live forever - somewhere. Elegiac and thrilling, Here Comes the Nice is a paean to the power of the obsessive imagination.
294 pages, Paperback
First published November 16, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 14, 2012
A Surreal Time Travel to the Mesmerizing 1960s
Jeremy Reed is a British poet, writer, translator and iconoclast who began publishing poems in magazines and small publications in the 1970s. His influences include Rimbaud, Artaud, Jean Genet, J.G. Ballard, David Bowie and Iain Sinclair. Though he is not as familiar in the US as he is n Europe, this latest novel HERE COMES THE NICE may just bring enough attention to his talents that more aficionados of that fascinating aspect of British culture that started the 1970s Mod culture in clothing, music, and human behavior will support his work. He is a fascinating writer with a writing style so dense with cultural overlay and unique manipulation of language that at first the style overwhelms content - until the wise reader plunges into the story line: once the characters are delineated the richly colorful milieu in which they function becomes intoxicating. Opening this book provides a secret door to a time machine taking the reader back to the raw early gigs of the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Small Faces, and behind the scenes to a secret that will make the sixties live forever - somewhere.
The story is complex and has been distilled as follows: 'The Face came from out of nowhere - a self-regarding stylist like a rogue gene triggering the cultural acceleration of the sixties. The Stones had the notoriety, but the Face had the style. Cruising the Dilly or up on blues in Ham Yard, the Face was it. The Stones may keep rolling, but true Faces never die. Almost fifty years later, in an apocalyptic London whose urban maze is menaced by emotionally damaged veterans of a morally bankrupt war, Paul is researching the enigmatic designer John Stephen, Mod icon and inimitable king of Carnaby Street. When Paul experiences a time-slip, the two time-lines - present and sixties - begin to twist around each other like a DNA double helix. What is Paul's true relationship to the Face? Can the Face still be alive and unchanged in present day London? If the Face is real, does Paul's deepest identity lie in the present life he knows, or the lost past he dreams of?'
Jeremy Reed makes this quasi-science fiction/surreal time travel/recreation of an Era past accessible because of his innate knowledge of the 1960s--the clothes, the language, the sex, and the music. 'He doesn't shy from the queer side of mod culture and accurately portrays the legendary young bands as kids, both amateurish and brilliant. Either a critique of retro chic or its most extreme expression, this page-turner is a volume knob-turner as well.' Plan to spend quality time with this book as the period unfolds slowly but surely and it is at times easy to get lost in the sheer indulgence of the atmosphere. Jeremy Reed is a unique talent: perhaps with this recreation of the period all of America embraced once birthed in England there will develop a hunger for Reed's poetry.
Grady Harp
Jeremy Reed is a British poet, writer, translator and iconoclast who began publishing poems in magazines and small publications in the 1970s. His influences include Rimbaud, Artaud, Jean Genet, J.G. Ballard, David Bowie and Iain Sinclair. Though he is not as familiar in the US as he is n Europe, this latest novel HERE COMES THE NICE may just bring enough attention to his talents that more aficionados of that fascinating aspect of British culture that started the 1970s Mod culture in clothing, music, and human behavior will support his work. He is a fascinating writer with a writing style so dense with cultural overlay and unique manipulation of language that at first the style overwhelms content - until the wise reader plunges into the story line: once the characters are delineated the richly colorful milieu in which they function becomes intoxicating. Opening this book provides a secret door to a time machine taking the reader back to the raw early gigs of the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Small Faces, and behind the scenes to a secret that will make the sixties live forever - somewhere.
The story is complex and has been distilled as follows: 'The Face came from out of nowhere - a self-regarding stylist like a rogue gene triggering the cultural acceleration of the sixties. The Stones had the notoriety, but the Face had the style. Cruising the Dilly or up on blues in Ham Yard, the Face was it. The Stones may keep rolling, but true Faces never die. Almost fifty years later, in an apocalyptic London whose urban maze is menaced by emotionally damaged veterans of a morally bankrupt war, Paul is researching the enigmatic designer John Stephen, Mod icon and inimitable king of Carnaby Street. When Paul experiences a time-slip, the two time-lines - present and sixties - begin to twist around each other like a DNA double helix. What is Paul's true relationship to the Face? Can the Face still be alive and unchanged in present day London? If the Face is real, does Paul's deepest identity lie in the present life he knows, or the lost past he dreams of?'
Jeremy Reed makes this quasi-science fiction/surreal time travel/recreation of an Era past accessible because of his innate knowledge of the 1960s--the clothes, the language, the sex, and the music. 'He doesn't shy from the queer side of mod culture and accurately portrays the legendary young bands as kids, both amateurish and brilliant. Either a critique of retro chic or its most extreme expression, this page-turner is a volume knob-turner as well.' Plan to spend quality time with this book as the period unfolds slowly but surely and it is at times easy to get lost in the sheer indulgence of the atmosphere. Jeremy Reed is a unique talent: perhaps with this recreation of the period all of America embraced once birthed in England there will develop a hunger for Reed's poetry.
Grady Harp
January 5, 2021
A ‘dying fall’ is one thing, a Coda another. This is the perfect Coda. One where you can even hope with some conviction that Looks never blur into each other. Books, neither. Despite a retro-dread that they did, still do and will do. But, for me, the end fire and/or crystal ice in the drugs are provided by the real stiff-to-and-from-soft book in your hands: supplied to the Face, Paul, Alex, Semra, Suzie, John Stephen, Terry, all the Groups from the Ham Yard Scene, then towards BowieBolanRoxymusic and beyond… feeding off the words provided by the Book’s Look at them and, through Magic Fiction rather than Magic Reality, allowing them to exist for real rather than via the fictional drugs they think they put in their veins (dirty bombs and/or clean shafts of orange sunshine). … I recommend this truly stunning book unhesitatingly and I recommend it unconditionally, even if you’ve never heard of Mods in Sixties Britain. Or especially if. (Meanwhile, hoping with some studied aloofness to counter any suspicion of exaggerated enthusiasm.)
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long to post here.
Above is its conclusion.
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long to post here.
Above is its conclusion.
January 7, 2021
A interesting look at 60s mod culture and rock music thrown in with time travel and a bleak future.
December 9, 2016
I loved this bizarre psychogeographic timewarp mashup of obsessive mid-sixties Soho Mod fashion/music history and near-future dystopian London.
It opens with a chaotic Rolling Stones club gig in 1964. Early gigs by the Stones, The Who, The Pretty Things and The Small Faces are described in frenetic detail throughout the book by poet-novelist Jeremy Reed.
Protagonist Paul, living in a near-future London overrun by ex-military terrorists, is researching a book about fashion designer John Stephen, the King of Carnaby Street. Between sexualized encounters with Alex, Suzie and Semra, he finds himself being incongruously stalked around Soho by the Face, the alpha Mod who seems to have stepped right out of 1964 in his mohair tonic suit and shiny scooter.
We follow Paul and the Face into a compelling timewarp of steamy pilled-up Soho club gigs, Carnaby St. before it became a tourist trap, Piccadilly rent culture, and a weird Mod plot to halt aging and death and capture a 1960's youth culture moment forever.
It's easy to see how the crackling imaginative Reed was J.G. Ballard's favorite contemporary writer. Here Comes the Nice is worthy of cult status for its ability to conjure 1964 where fleeting youth was achingly lonely in a Soho circus of sex, drugs, rock'n'roll, fashion and ideology; a thought-provoking elegy for a pivotal creative moment.
It opens with a chaotic Rolling Stones club gig in 1964. Early gigs by the Stones, The Who, The Pretty Things and The Small Faces are described in frenetic detail throughout the book by poet-novelist Jeremy Reed.
Protagonist Paul, living in a near-future London overrun by ex-military terrorists, is researching a book about fashion designer John Stephen, the King of Carnaby Street. Between sexualized encounters with Alex, Suzie and Semra, he finds himself being incongruously stalked around Soho by the Face, the alpha Mod who seems to have stepped right out of 1964 in his mohair tonic suit and shiny scooter.
We follow Paul and the Face into a compelling timewarp of steamy pilled-up Soho club gigs, Carnaby St. before it became a tourist trap, Piccadilly rent culture, and a weird Mod plot to halt aging and death and capture a 1960's youth culture moment forever.
It's easy to see how the crackling imaginative Reed was J.G. Ballard's favorite contemporary writer. Here Comes the Nice is worthy of cult status for its ability to conjure 1964 where fleeting youth was achingly lonely in a Soho circus of sex, drugs, rock'n'roll, fashion and ideology; a thought-provoking elegy for a pivotal creative moment.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews