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Post Everything: Outsider Rock and Roll
Britain in the late 1990s. Post Britpop. The dawn of the rock and roll apocalypse. If it feels like there's nothing new under the sun, that's because there is nothing new under the sun. After the death of Kurt Cobain popular culture entered, and is still in, its final phase: post everything.
Post Everything is the sequel to the hugely acclaimed Bad Vibes: Britpop and My Part in its Downfall. It is a story of survival in the music industry ... and the only way to survive the tyrannical scourge of Britpop is to become an Outsider.
We open with Luke Haines - the 'avant-garde Arthur Scargill' - calling upon the nation's pop stars to down tools and go on strike. We get the story of Haines' post-Britpop art house trio Black Box Recorder (Chas and Dave with a chanteuse) then, barely pausing to put in a brief appearance on Top of the Pops, we meet a talking cat, two dead rappers (Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur), a mystical England football manager, and a shady transgender German Professor - exponent of a dangerous and radical 'Beatles denial' cult and author of The Theorem of the Moron (the most important book about rock that you've never heard of). Haines even finds time to write a musical for the National Theatre.
Blisteringly funny and searingly scathing, Post Everything may quite possibly be the first and only truly surreal comic rock memoir. It even contains a killer recipe for scrambled eggs.
Post Everything is the sequel to the hugely acclaimed Bad Vibes: Britpop and My Part in its Downfall. It is a story of survival in the music industry ... and the only way to survive the tyrannical scourge of Britpop is to become an Outsider.
We open with Luke Haines - the 'avant-garde Arthur Scargill' - calling upon the nation's pop stars to down tools and go on strike. We get the story of Haines' post-Britpop art house trio Black Box Recorder (Chas and Dave with a chanteuse) then, barely pausing to put in a brief appearance on Top of the Pops, we meet a talking cat, two dead rappers (Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur), a mystical England football manager, and a shady transgender German Professor - exponent of a dangerous and radical 'Beatles denial' cult and author of The Theorem of the Moron (the most important book about rock that you've never heard of). Haines even finds time to write a musical for the National Theatre.
Blisteringly funny and searingly scathing, Post Everything may quite possibly be the first and only truly surreal comic rock memoir. It even contains a killer recipe for scrambled eggs.
- GenresMusicBiographyNonfiction
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
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About the author
Luke Haines
8 books17 followersLuke Haines is an English musician, songwriter and author, who has recorded music under various names and with various bands, including The Auteurs, Baader Meinhof and Black Box Recorder.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
December 20, 2015
[4.5] Similar to Bad Vibes, Luke Haines first memoir, in that it's clever, vicious, and fucking hilarious. The first book, subtitled Britpop and My Part in Its Downfall was so full of stuff I loved, stuff I would have loved to have been there for, that it short circuited whatever it is that gives me shivers down my spine. Haines is a great read himself, certainly one of the sharpest current writers in British pop and guitar music*, though sometimes, sentimentally, I like these books all the more for relating experiences and opinions similar to those of people I've known personally. (Even when they're a bit wrong, like about the greatness of David Essex's two 70s music films – I think you had to see them for the first time as a kid, and perhaps not that many years after they were made, for them to work their magic.)
Post Everything is, as the title suggests, a few years later, about the late 90s and early to mid 2000s, a period which was a) pretty depressing in British pop and indie music and b) in my own life, often not much fun for me and therefore several others, a time I'd never want to go back to unless it involved being able to do things differently whilst retaining everything I'd learned from the first iteration and since.
Haines has also grown up a bit here and, whilst over the duration of this book he still excels at pissing off his record companies and ranting at just about everything, he isn't as much of an arsehole as during the Britpop era. I admired the bravery of his decision, explained in the preface to Bad Vibes, to write the first book in the persona of his, nastier, more aggressive, younger self. But OTOH, and Post Everything confirms it, he might not be incredibly sensitive and embarrassed about people's negative reactions to that in the first place. Yes, he's long been aware enough of himself and others to see he was beyond the pale and had to sort himself out a bit, (and he's well enough socialised to have been in two long relationships with women with equally strong personalities – now married to Sian Pattenden, there's a name who's a blast from the past for ex-Smash Hits readers of my generation). But Haines is still a masterclass in not giving a fuck about what other people think, and in the downsides of that much-lauded tendency when it's taken too far.
As expected from Haines, the book is unapologetically packed with specific British and musical cultural references and other random obscurities that will please those of us who get tired of bland UK publications written with an American export market in mind. (In a similar vein, I sometimes suspect that if my first language wasn't English, I wouldn't write English-only Goodreads reviews.) If you know his milieu and the UK indie & pop music scene of the last 2 or 3 decades, and like surreal comedy and bizarre diatribes, this would be a great read even if you're not specifically a fan of Luke Haines' music.
Honestly, I find a lot of the tastes here easy to relate to: the idiosyncratic unevenness of loving some old things whilst having an energy that wants to sweep others away and see what will happen. Mauling something whilst still kind of wanting to be a part of it. [Oh god that's how I talk about GR, isn't it?] His criticism of the theatre – whilst working on a musical – is spot on, reeling off embarrassingly familiar subgenres like the references to the Clash by middle-aged playwrights. The plays about young people going to raves. In 2004. The plays about teenage gangs. The 'worried liberal' plays about the state of modern Britain. (Why would any fucker cough up 50 sovs to watch this of an evening when you can stand in your local Costcutter and get it for free?) So yes, the plays, and the sense that everybody feels a bit betrayed by Tony [Blair], yet their utterly mindless worship of the holy church of theatre and their dogmatic belief in it will somehow cleanse them.
He likes a lot of cool stuff but has no probs praising a bit of Status Quo cos he likes it. (I've an inherent suspicion of people who don't seem to like even one thing that's popularly considered 'bad taste'.)
And Haines' elegies for the music industry as we knew it are wonderful. But he's too hard-headed and fatalistic to wallow entirely. He's one of those who can't seem to help getting up from the fray eventually and however tattered and torn, trying again, as if by reflex.
On the iconography of the past. (Following high praise of the Doors, which I'm going to have to agree to disagree with, in a 'they're okay', 3.5 star, kinda way.) There’s a special place for blustering bad drunken poetry, leather trousers, and priapic shamans. That place is called rock ’n’ roll… In order for rock ’n’ roll to be fully accepted, mythology must remain intact.
Then quite a while later, cos he's not really the type to go on without a bitter joke for too long:
For 50 years the music biz shaped the backbone of popular culture – and provided a weirdly corrupt playpen for some lucky (and unlucky) boys and girls. Fabulous artists, fabulous chancers, n’er do wells and n’er do nothings. Genius, idiot, visionary, moron, saint, and devil – all classes, Johnny B. Goode and Johnny Too Bad, the wild, the willing, the innocent, murderers, and victims. For 50 years all comers were welcome to try their hand. But the music industry of old has gone now so don’t try to restore it. The Golden Age of Rock ’n’ Roll (1955–2005) will in time be looked upon as a blip in history. I was lucky enough to grab a last slice of the cake during the era of that blip. Future generations will make their own luck.
I could not then say Raise a glass to the death of the music industry. Let it bleed, let it die, good riddance. I can't help think how a talented twenty-year-old now has it so much less easy than one in 1985, and get all hand-wringy ... but if you've been done over by enough dodgy labels and managers I can see why you would say that.
I liked Haines' two memoirs a lot – but can only ever give them 4.5 stars. 4 seems wrong too, using GR whole-star system, they're more to me than most 4-star books.
I do enjoy a good rant, especially if there's some laughs and probably-deliberate exaggeration (as many of my GR likes would show) but when there's 250-odd pages, not just 2500 words, I miss there being more of something that could be called heart, or joy, or simple enthusiasm.
* Also Momus, Jarvis, Half Man Half Biscuit, Morrissey ... I must have missed out one or two. For various reasons I've not listened to much music for 2.5 yrs so even my knowledge of the old stuff I love is a tad rusty. [And I know a few people on here rate hip hop lyrics very highly.]
Post Everything is, as the title suggests, a few years later, about the late 90s and early to mid 2000s, a period which was a) pretty depressing in British pop and indie music and b) in my own life, often not much fun for me and therefore several others, a time I'd never want to go back to unless it involved being able to do things differently whilst retaining everything I'd learned from the first iteration and since.
Haines has also grown up a bit here and, whilst over the duration of this book he still excels at pissing off his record companies and ranting at just about everything, he isn't as much of an arsehole as during the Britpop era. I admired the bravery of his decision, explained in the preface to Bad Vibes, to write the first book in the persona of his, nastier, more aggressive, younger self. But OTOH, and Post Everything confirms it, he might not be incredibly sensitive and embarrassed about people's negative reactions to that in the first place. Yes, he's long been aware enough of himself and others to see he was beyond the pale and had to sort himself out a bit, (and he's well enough socialised to have been in two long relationships with women with equally strong personalities – now married to Sian Pattenden, there's a name who's a blast from the past for ex-Smash Hits readers of my generation). But Haines is still a masterclass in not giving a fuck about what other people think, and in the downsides of that much-lauded tendency when it's taken too far.
As expected from Haines, the book is unapologetically packed with specific British and musical cultural references and other random obscurities that will please those of us who get tired of bland UK publications written with an American export market in mind. (In a similar vein, I sometimes suspect that if my first language wasn't English, I wouldn't write English-only Goodreads reviews.) If you know his milieu and the UK indie & pop music scene of the last 2 or 3 decades, and like surreal comedy and bizarre diatribes, this would be a great read even if you're not specifically a fan of Luke Haines' music.
Honestly, I find a lot of the tastes here easy to relate to: the idiosyncratic unevenness of loving some old things whilst having an energy that wants to sweep others away and see what will happen. Mauling something whilst still kind of wanting to be a part of it. [Oh god that's how I talk about GR, isn't it?] His criticism of the theatre – whilst working on a musical – is spot on, reeling off embarrassingly familiar subgenres like the references to the Clash by middle-aged playwrights. The plays about young people going to raves. In 2004. The plays about teenage gangs. The 'worried liberal' plays about the state of modern Britain. (Why would any fucker cough up 50 sovs to watch this of an evening when you can stand in your local Costcutter and get it for free?) So yes, the plays, and the sense that everybody feels a bit betrayed by Tony [Blair], yet their utterly mindless worship of the holy church of theatre and their dogmatic belief in it will somehow cleanse them.
He likes a lot of cool stuff but has no probs praising a bit of Status Quo cos he likes it. (I've an inherent suspicion of people who don't seem to like even one thing that's popularly considered 'bad taste'.)
And Haines' elegies for the music industry as we knew it are wonderful. But he's too hard-headed and fatalistic to wallow entirely. He's one of those who can't seem to help getting up from the fray eventually and however tattered and torn, trying again, as if by reflex.
On the iconography of the past. (Following high praise of the Doors, which I'm going to have to agree to disagree with, in a 'they're okay', 3.5 star, kinda way.) There’s a special place for blustering bad drunken poetry, leather trousers, and priapic shamans. That place is called rock ’n’ roll… In order for rock ’n’ roll to be fully accepted, mythology must remain intact.
Then quite a while later, cos he's not really the type to go on without a bitter joke for too long:
For 50 years the music biz shaped the backbone of popular culture – and provided a weirdly corrupt playpen for some lucky (and unlucky) boys and girls. Fabulous artists, fabulous chancers, n’er do wells and n’er do nothings. Genius, idiot, visionary, moron, saint, and devil – all classes, Johnny B. Goode and Johnny Too Bad, the wild, the willing, the innocent, murderers, and victims. For 50 years all comers were welcome to try their hand. But the music industry of old has gone now so don’t try to restore it. The Golden Age of Rock ’n’ Roll (1955–2005) will in time be looked upon as a blip in history. I was lucky enough to grab a last slice of the cake during the era of that blip. Future generations will make their own luck.
I could not then say Raise a glass to the death of the music industry. Let it bleed, let it die, good riddance. I can't help think how a talented twenty-year-old now has it so much less easy than one in 1985, and get all hand-wringy ... but if you've been done over by enough dodgy labels and managers I can see why you would say that.
I liked Haines' two memoirs a lot – but can only ever give them 4.5 stars. 4 seems wrong too, using GR whole-star system, they're more to me than most 4-star books.
I do enjoy a good rant, especially if there's some laughs and probably-deliberate exaggeration (as many of my GR likes would show) but when there's 250-odd pages, not just 2500 words, I miss there being more of something that could be called heart, or joy, or simple enthusiasm.
* Also Momus, Jarvis, Half Man Half Biscuit, Morrissey ... I must have missed out one or two. For various reasons I've not listened to much music for 2.5 yrs so even my knowledge of the old stuff I love is a tad rusty. [And I know a few people on here rate hip hop lyrics very highly.]
April 21, 2013
I had to love this book since whenever I see my name in print I have an orgasm - and I'm mentioned several times in this tome. But fear not I also gave Luke's first book Bad Vibes a five star rating and I'm not mentioned once in that! Bad Vibes is great and this is even better because it mentions me and tells it like it is about what a terrible album London Calling by The Clash is among others... I don't see eye to eye with Luke about all his musical tastes or indeed the best way to make scrambled eggs, but these are minor quibbles and overall Post Everything is a side-splittingly funny insight into the world of rock and roll. Were the pages of my copy of this book not so sticky I might make some more detailed points - but hey what more do you really need to know?
January 7, 2012
The second and the best of the Luke Haines books. And the first one is very enjoyable, but this one seems tighter, because I think the subject matter is much better. The first one is about being in the music world during Brit-Pop, and this one is about....him in his own world.
I highly recommend this book if you are a Black Box Recorder fan, because it pretty much covers those years and his commentary, like the first book, is also much more wittier. Although his image is of a grouch, I think he is actually a very good critic. Which means I don't agree with him all the time, but he knows how to say what's on his mind and he does it with great spirit.
Also the one problem I have with him, music wise, is his smarty pants teacher-like attitude towards culture. But alas, in this book he gives credit to those who were there first. And he has a really nice and interesting reading list at the back of the book, including one of my faves Stewart Home. And I am hoping that Mr. Haines will return to empty page and fill it with some grief and good humor.
I highly recommend this book if you are a Black Box Recorder fan, because it pretty much covers those years and his commentary, like the first book, is also much more wittier. Although his image is of a grouch, I think he is actually a very good critic. Which means I don't agree with him all the time, but he knows how to say what's on his mind and he does it with great spirit.
Also the one problem I have with him, music wise, is his smarty pants teacher-like attitude towards culture. But alas, in this book he gives credit to those who were there first. And he has a really nice and interesting reading list at the back of the book, including one of my faves Stewart Home. And I am hoping that Mr. Haines will return to empty page and fill it with some grief and good humor.
August 4, 2011
Mr Haines is on it again. I actually bought it at his concert in the Southbank center in London. Post Everything is a lovely unfounded non-academic study of contemporary society. I especially recommend the foreword to everyone. If you think banksey is slightly overrated and Tate modern is rather something to be ashamed about, here you'll find someone who tells you why and you'll never have to be quiet again on a diner party after someone asks you: "but why?"
July 11, 2015
This was a book I found all but impossible to disentangle from my own memories of the time it relates to. I'm reading Luke Haines' two memoirs out of sequence because the local library happened to have the second one in stock when a post on Goodreads reminded me that they existed (I'd heard him talking about the first volume years ago on Steve Lamacq's Round Table and mentally filed it away on my ever-growing 'to read' list). I don't know that this mattered. I know that the Auteurs were the under-achievers of mid 90s British indie-rock and that Luke Haines had a great talent for self-sabotage (strange though, to think now that New Wave made all the 'best of' lists at the end of 1993, but a year later, Now I'm a Cowboy, which to my ears is both a more accessible and a more interesting record, was nowhere to be seen. Had he really made so many enemies so quickly?)
Anyway, the book begins with a sort of stream of consciousness ramble (post-everything) about the end of the period when pop music was actually a major part of British culture (or at least, I think that's the point he's trying to make) over a period of time which pretty much coincided with when I stopped reading the weekly music press, listening to the Evening Session on Radio 1, or arguing with strangers on the internet about the merits or otherwise of whatever was flavour of the week at www.nme.com Looking back, I thought I'd just outgrown it, but reading Haines, I wonder if it was alternative music itself that had backed itself into a corner and run out of ideas. I'm sure there were people doing genuinely interesting things somewhere, but it wasn't coming to my attention. I struggled to see why the music press was getting excited about Razorlight or the bloody Libertines. Maybe if I'd been ten years younger, they would have been *my* bands, or maybe I wouldn't have been interested in music at all.
The book proper kicks off with the formation of Black Box Recorder - described in the chapter heading as 'Chas & Dave with a Chanteuse' - the chapter headings are a part of the book's appeal - 'The Rock and Roll Arthur Scargill' or, a particular favourite of mine, describing his encounter with self-important vegetarian Chrissie Hynde, 'Sausage Nuremburg'. I was sort of familiar with Black Box Recorder as their second album (and by Haines' account, their best) was amongst a pile of CDs my partner in crime at a by then doomed internet start-up had left with me when he ran away to the other side of the world to get away from it all (we were sort of trying to do Facebook, six years too early, and 'online community software' was never quite as snappy a term as 'social networking'). The account of how successive record companies kept giving them 'development money' to go record and mix songs that they then wouldn't release and perhaps goes some way to explaining why the music industry ended up on its knees a few years later.
Interspersed with this are a series of comic dwams in which Haines finds himself in conversation with a talking cat, and with the dead rappers Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, about his solo project which he describes as a kind of white English hip-hop concept album ' The Oliver Twist Manifesto'. I confess I had to look this up on wikipedia as I'd half wondered if it was any more real than Dirk Zweick's music industry bible, Theorem of the Moron. Thanks to Spotify, I can confirm that it does exist, and that it doesn't sound remotely like anything Tupac Shakur ever recorded...
I enjoyed the account of the three accidental pop stars' appearance on Top of The Pops when 'The Facts of Life' made the top 20 in 2001 - indeed the re-printed top 20 chart from that list was something of a Proustian Madeleine moment for me. I'd forgotten how awful Craig David's 'Fill Me In' was, or that for a time it was impossible to get away from Sisqo's 'Thong Song')As Haines points out in the book, by then TotP meant far less than it once did, killed off not so much by the internet - as broadband was still not exactly widely available then - but by the move from Thursday night to Friday, which killed off its 'did you see?' watercooler/playground discussion appeal...
After the dissolution of Black Box Recorder, Haines finds himself working to put together a musical about property magnate and latter-day Rachman, Nicholas Van Hoogstraaten. It's another episode that had me wondering for a moment if it was a joke - a parody of the sort of thing that might be expected to excite the kind of people who determine the programming at the National Theatre - and on perhaps on some level it was - but if so, it was one that Haines' was able to keep a straight face about for long enough to get development money out of the NT.
On one level, this is the story of failure - specifically the failure to sell many records (I wonder if Sarah Nixey really did believe Haines when he told her he would make her a pop star). But really, its the exact opposite of that - the story of a determined eccentric, a real one-off, refusing to kowtow to the commercial pressures of the day, ploughing his own furrow, and making the records he wants to make. And making a living out of it along the way*.
*At least I assume he does. Perhaps he was independently wealthy all along and is burning through a vast inherited fortune - there is, as another reviewer pointed out 'none of that David Copperfield crap' in this book...
Anyway, the book begins with a sort of stream of consciousness ramble (post-everything) about the end of the period when pop music was actually a major part of British culture (or at least, I think that's the point he's trying to make) over a period of time which pretty much coincided with when I stopped reading the weekly music press, listening to the Evening Session on Radio 1, or arguing with strangers on the internet about the merits or otherwise of whatever was flavour of the week at www.nme.com Looking back, I thought I'd just outgrown it, but reading Haines, I wonder if it was alternative music itself that had backed itself into a corner and run out of ideas. I'm sure there were people doing genuinely interesting things somewhere, but it wasn't coming to my attention. I struggled to see why the music press was getting excited about Razorlight or the bloody Libertines. Maybe if I'd been ten years younger, they would have been *my* bands, or maybe I wouldn't have been interested in music at all.
The book proper kicks off with the formation of Black Box Recorder - described in the chapter heading as 'Chas & Dave with a Chanteuse' - the chapter headings are a part of the book's appeal - 'The Rock and Roll Arthur Scargill' or, a particular favourite of mine, describing his encounter with self-important vegetarian Chrissie Hynde, 'Sausage Nuremburg'. I was sort of familiar with Black Box Recorder as their second album (and by Haines' account, their best) was amongst a pile of CDs my partner in crime at a by then doomed internet start-up had left with me when he ran away to the other side of the world to get away from it all (we were sort of trying to do Facebook, six years too early, and 'online community software' was never quite as snappy a term as 'social networking'). The account of how successive record companies kept giving them 'development money' to go record and mix songs that they then wouldn't release and perhaps goes some way to explaining why the music industry ended up on its knees a few years later.
Interspersed with this are a series of comic dwams in which Haines finds himself in conversation with a talking cat, and with the dead rappers Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, about his solo project which he describes as a kind of white English hip-hop concept album ' The Oliver Twist Manifesto'. I confess I had to look this up on wikipedia as I'd half wondered if it was any more real than Dirk Zweick's music industry bible, Theorem of the Moron. Thanks to Spotify, I can confirm that it does exist, and that it doesn't sound remotely like anything Tupac Shakur ever recorded...
I enjoyed the account of the three accidental pop stars' appearance on Top of The Pops when 'The Facts of Life' made the top 20 in 2001 - indeed the re-printed top 20 chart from that list was something of a Proustian Madeleine moment for me. I'd forgotten how awful Craig David's 'Fill Me In' was, or that for a time it was impossible to get away from Sisqo's 'Thong Song')As Haines points out in the book, by then TotP meant far less than it once did, killed off not so much by the internet - as broadband was still not exactly widely available then - but by the move from Thursday night to Friday, which killed off its 'did you see?' watercooler/playground discussion appeal...
After the dissolution of Black Box Recorder, Haines finds himself working to put together a musical about property magnate and latter-day Rachman, Nicholas Van Hoogstraaten. It's another episode that had me wondering for a moment if it was a joke - a parody of the sort of thing that might be expected to excite the kind of people who determine the programming at the National Theatre - and on perhaps on some level it was - but if so, it was one that Haines' was able to keep a straight face about for long enough to get development money out of the NT.
On one level, this is the story of failure - specifically the failure to sell many records (I wonder if Sarah Nixey really did believe Haines when he told her he would make her a pop star). But really, its the exact opposite of that - the story of a determined eccentric, a real one-off, refusing to kowtow to the commercial pressures of the day, ploughing his own furrow, and making the records he wants to make. And making a living out of it along the way*.
*At least I assume he does. Perhaps he was independently wealthy all along and is burning through a vast inherited fortune - there is, as another reviewer pointed out 'none of that David Copperfield crap' in this book...
October 14, 2019
Shame he dies in the end.
June 21, 2015
"Post Everything: Outsider Rock and Roll" by Luke Haines.... Anther enjoyable romp through the murky mind and memories of Mr Luke Haines. If you're reading this then you're probably already aware of Mr Haines' oeuvre. Suffice to say he's one of those under-appreciated English mavericks who manage to carve out a career on the fringes of popular music. He is - in short - a national treasure. His books, like his music, offer black humour, wit, and a welcome respite from the mainstream, and - yes - entertainment. This is showbusiness after all, and there's no business...
Post Everything follows on from "Bad Vibes: Britpop and my part in its downfall", his previous memoir, and between them they offer an alternative history of Britpop and beyond. Probably all you'll ever need to read on that overhyped musical period (although "Kill Your Friends" by John Niven is a hilarious read and one I heartily recommend). So. In. A. Nutshell. Buy this. Read it. And give Mr Haines some more money. We need him more than he needs us.
Post Everything follows on from "Bad Vibes: Britpop and my part in its downfall", his previous memoir, and between them they offer an alternative history of Britpop and beyond. Probably all you'll ever need to read on that overhyped musical period (although "Kill Your Friends" by John Niven is a hilarious read and one I heartily recommend). So. In. A. Nutshell. Buy this. Read it. And give Mr Haines some more money. We need him more than he needs us.
May 13, 2013
I like Haines because in my mind he is the last in the line of muscians / artists / writers who were painfully aware of 20th century art in all mediums (film/music/visual art/lit) and didn't give a F**k about conforming to commercial pressures, until when he wanted to (facts of life) and had a brief fling with chart success. This book charts that period, and although not as wonderful as the first book, Haine's voice is snarky, sharp, and precise as always.
Luke Haine's music is not for everyone, and his writing might appear too cynical to some, but in a way I'm glad that he remains an outsider, free to keep working on whatever project takes his fancy. Never a dull moment with Luke.
Luke Haine's music is not for everyone, and his writing might appear too cynical to some, but in a way I'm glad that he remains an outsider, free to keep working on whatever project takes his fancy. Never a dull moment with Luke.
July 11, 2011
Another fantastic memoir from Haines - a must for anyone with any interest in British music.
August 8, 2024
I love Luke Haines' work: his music *and* his writing. I never expected Post Everything to be even funnier than its predecessor, Bad Vibes. But it was. For the record: Bad Vibes covers the Britpop years (and Haines' years with The Auteurs). Post Everything covers his career with Black Box Recorder, and his solo projects, after 1996.
Haines is mean and merciless, no-one is spared and he has no mercy with himself either. Together, Bad Vibes and Post Everything are quite possibly the funniest (and in many ways: best) first hand account of a career in the periphery of the music industry (both at its peak in the mid-1990s and during the grand implosion around 2000). Very smart; totally hilarious.
Haines is mean and merciless, no-one is spared and he has no mercy with himself either. Together, Bad Vibes and Post Everything are quite possibly the funniest (and in many ways: best) first hand account of a career in the periphery of the music industry (both at its peak in the mid-1990s and during the grand implosion around 2000). Very smart; totally hilarious.
March 18, 2023
Every bit as gloriously contrarian and cutting as Bad Vibes and Haines’s music: a tale of one hit, a ton of failure, how the best thing to be in the music business is a chancer and how, hey kids, the drugs do work. But don’t do showbiz, kids.
He’s absolutely right about The Clash too.
He’s absolutely right about The Clash too.
September 6, 2025
Just as bitchily entertaining as the first volume. Excellent on the death of the music industry and life as an increasingly unsuccessful musician. A great read. But the world-weary cynicism schtick starts to wear a bit thin after a while.
August 2, 2017
Really wonderful! Not quite as cutting as Bad Vibes but still amazing.
August 19, 2019
Fantastic book on the second half of Luke Haines career. If you've never heard of him, please google his name, he's a genius.
March 6, 2022
Superb
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 5, 2012
I am still very much working my way through birthday-present-reading at the moment what with one thing and another. Thanks to Jo for this one, which is a terrific prezzie. I'd give this a 7 if we could mark out of 10 - full marks have to be held back for the cream of the crop, whilst I had to take a mark off Luke Haines here for not being as good as Bill Drummond at this sort of thing and for two or three unreadable sections purporting to be from the viewpoint of his cat (or some such nonsense). A couple of enjoyable quotes from the book to share, including this – about a senior figure in the music publishing game - eminently adaptable for academic publishing:
“The ex-NME editor is now a big cream bun in the world of magazine publishing, keeping a big twatty eye over a handful of music publications. This is rather like lording it over a bucket of shit. Sure, you can strut around telling the bucket of shit what to do, you can have a tantrum and kick the bucket of shit over. You can even have an affair with your bucket of shit. When it comes to the bucket of shit, you are the boss. But therein lies the problem: it’s only a bucket of shit, and you have constructed an empire around it – your time on Earth has been wasted and you may as well end it right now.”
"In our age of no imagination, no moderately successful group will split up for longer than six months, and Primal Scream themselves will never split up, they will always be on hand to put a reassuring arm around the bloated corpse of a legend, ushering them through a lucrative yet humiliating dance of death" [on MC5]
"When a man wants to have an alehouse meltdown, the worst thing you can do is stand in his way"
“The ex-NME editor is now a big cream bun in the world of magazine publishing, keeping a big twatty eye over a handful of music publications. This is rather like lording it over a bucket of shit. Sure, you can strut around telling the bucket of shit what to do, you can have a tantrum and kick the bucket of shit over. You can even have an affair with your bucket of shit. When it comes to the bucket of shit, you are the boss. But therein lies the problem: it’s only a bucket of shit, and you have constructed an empire around it – your time on Earth has been wasted and you may as well end it right now.”
"In our age of no imagination, no moderately successful group will split up for longer than six months, and Primal Scream themselves will never split up, they will always be on hand to put a reassuring arm around the bloated corpse of a legend, ushering them through a lucrative yet humiliating dance of death" [on MC5]
"When a man wants to have an alehouse meltdown, the worst thing you can do is stand in his way"
July 13, 2017
Boffo. Good one. One hopes Hainsey will carry on and bring his memoirs up to date. He's probably already caught up in a hopeless four book deal with some tin-pot backwoods publishing collective, beginning to loathe and despise the shallow pseudo-intellectual bullshit of the publishing world and looking to sack it off and become a fight promoter or something. We should be hearing about him getting into an incomprehensible brawl at the Hay festival any day. Maybe with Salman Rushdie. Looking forward to that.
November 21, 2012
A nice surprise to realise this book, which I received as a gift, was written by someone from one of my favourite bands Black Box Recorder. Very interesting to read about them and the stories behind some of their music. Didn't enjoy some of the other bits quite as much, but still pleased that this book found me. Well worth a read if you're interested in the post Britpop era.
December 24, 2013
Þetta er önnur bók Lukes um árin í "bransanum" og nú rekur hann árin með Black Box Recorder (og smá með The Auteurs og bara hvað hann hefur verið að spá.) Hann er kannski full mikið að reyna að vera ó-ég-er-alltaf-fullur-og-flippaður fyndinn og skrifar stundum einhvern absúrdisma inn í söguna (talandi kött og eitthvað), sem mér finnst ekkert svo skemmtilegt. Fín bók samt sem rann áfram.
May 15, 2013
Perhaps not quite as entertaining as Bad Vibes - fewer well-known contemporaries to stick the knife into - but a really enjoyable read nonetheless. Always been a Luke fan, hope we see his soon in one guise or another.
September 13, 2022
Up there with Bad Vibes. Enough said.
December 19, 2011
How can you not love a book filled with such imaginative swearing and misanthropy? And such gleeful use of the word cunt?
Marvellous.
Marvellous.
April 5, 2012
Very funny. Witty, well written, easy to read.
July 20, 2012
fascinating and genuinely funny. I whole heartedly recommend this book- even if you don't know who Luke Haines is, you will still enjoy it!
September 30, 2012
Jolly good, though could have done with a bit more detail about how the albums got written & recorded (Bad Vibes was better on that, if I remember rightly).
July 1, 2020
On a par with Bad Vibes, I think. Entertaining, revealing, and funny. Haines should be better known, but by his own reckoning that would spoil him.
January 21, 2013
If you have read Bad Vibes then this is a natural follow on and catch up, Luke Haines being Luke Haines ... it's why we read them.
May 5, 2013
Disappointing. Rambling surreal passages about Tupac, Biggie and a demonic cat destroy anything this book has going for it. Most of it is filler.
April 21, 2017
You know, there's a lot of room in my life for books in which the creator of one of the best Britpop-umbrella bands details the life-and-death of his next project, writes a music featuring a Lord Lucan cameo, filches cash from a label even as they are dumping him, is told how to make decent scrambled eggs (low heat, folks, low heat) by a perhaps-imagined drug-addict cat, and receives album advice from dead rappers.
(Even though he'd hate the fucking Britpop bit.)
This is that book.
Ostensibly, the book is a follow-up to Bad Vibes: Britpop and My Part in Its Downfall, Haines's first acerbic tome. The misanthropy is still there, though by the book's end it is tempered somewhat. Still, there's lots of choice bits; as much as I'd hoped, anyway.
This one charts the rise-and-fall (if that) of the stunningly underappreciated Black Box Recorder, in the same way Bad Vibes did for The Auteurs. Here, though, there's much more an awareness of the game as it is played; the construction of pop records as wrangled by two old hands (John Moore and Haines himself) and Sarah Nixey's ingenue. Throughout, the stupidity of record labels is apparent and uncontested: the first BBR record is made solely on demo money from a brace of labels, until the necessity of a hit - and its attendant ephemera, such as a turn on Top of the Pops (worth watching for the creeper-vibe the trio give off) - comes along. Throughout, the author's displeasure is clear.
But this isn't alternate-history. It's a funnily-told tale - with grimness behind the laughs - of the curious situation Haines finds himself in. He's famous, but not major-league famous. He can, somehow, still release albums and workshop stage-shows even though labels shed him like dead skin, the stupid fuckers. It's the sound of a sigh from someone who realises that in your thirties, there's things you could - or should - be doing other than treading the boards like a tit.
One thing: this book uses the word cunt a lot, in the best Baconian sense. (Francis of Soho, not the other one.) Everyone is one: Haines, the head of Nude records, you. It's a delightfully grounding expletive, used often in a book that - much more than the first tome - sees its architect coming to terms with age. Yes, marriage and a kid have a lot to do with that, but it's quite entrancing to hear a guy who's been on the inside of the record biz (if not the interior of its financial successes) signal the changes, and give good reasons why we shouldn't go back. After all:
(Even though he'd hate the fucking Britpop bit.)
This is that book.
Ostensibly, the book is a follow-up to Bad Vibes: Britpop and My Part in Its Downfall, Haines's first acerbic tome. The misanthropy is still there, though by the book's end it is tempered somewhat. Still, there's lots of choice bits; as much as I'd hoped, anyway.
This one charts the rise-and-fall (if that) of the stunningly underappreciated Black Box Recorder, in the same way Bad Vibes did for The Auteurs. Here, though, there's much more an awareness of the game as it is played; the construction of pop records as wrangled by two old hands (John Moore and Haines himself) and Sarah Nixey's ingenue. Throughout, the stupidity of record labels is apparent and uncontested: the first BBR record is made solely on demo money from a brace of labels, until the necessity of a hit - and its attendant ephemera, such as a turn on Top of the Pops (worth watching for the creeper-vibe the trio give off) - comes along. Throughout, the author's displeasure is clear.
Hit singles are a tricky-dick business: if they really were a piece of piss even you would write one. To write a hit you have to swallow your pride and engage, really engage, with the populace.There's serial killers, David Essex, Gary Glitter and an explanation of why London Calling and Kick Out The Jams are dead-enders. I'm not sure there's many with the balls to describe the sainted Clash as 'musical bricklaying' but here it is; have at it and be glad. Haines is a man probably justified in his pissiness - the Auteurs albums feature tunes so fucked and brilliant that it's a peek into Bizarroworld to imagine what'd happen if they'd won the initial Mercury Music Prize instead of that other terylene-shirt-and-fringes mob.
But this isn't alternate-history. It's a funnily-told tale - with grimness behind the laughs - of the curious situation Haines finds himself in. He's famous, but not major-league famous. He can, somehow, still release albums and workshop stage-shows even though labels shed him like dead skin, the stupid fuckers. It's the sound of a sigh from someone who realises that in your thirties, there's things you could - or should - be doing other than treading the boards like a tit.
One thing: this book uses the word cunt a lot, in the best Baconian sense. (Francis of Soho, not the other one.) Everyone is one: Haines, the head of Nude records, you. It's a delightfully grounding expletive, used often in a book that - much more than the first tome - sees its architect coming to terms with age. Yes, marriage and a kid have a lot to do with that, but it's quite entrancing to hear a guy who's been on the inside of the record biz (if not the interior of its financial successes) signal the changes, and give good reasons why we shouldn't go back. After all:
Selling rock ’n’ roll is like trying to sell a house built from asbestos. It’s no use and it will fucking kill you in the end.I hope there's a third volume in the works, because this one is as crackling, years later, as the first. Your mileage will undoubtedly vary if you don't give a fuck about pop music, Britpop or English serial murderers, but if you're someone who's into those three - and enjoys dissection of people famous for being in Eastenders - then this is a book you should find.
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