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Founded by Alan McGee in 1983, Creation Records achieved notoriety as the home of Primal Scream, the Jesus and Mary Chain and other anti-Establishment acts. During the Britpop boom of the mid-90s, the astonishing success of Oasis brought Creation to fame on the world stage. In 1999, however, McGee announced his shock departure as his label's influence over a generation of British music came to a confusing and disappointing end.
Containing hundreds of interviews with Creation musicians, employees, supporters and detractors, David Cavanagh's controversial investigation has been acclaimed as a landmark in rock journalism.
David Cavanagh kept up a thrilling narrative peopled with some truly amazing characters.
starting with rough trade and postcard, it contains incredibly readable descriptions of the origins of most of the important british indie labels (of its time period - it rightly within context ignores such worthies as wurlitzer jukebox), even if only touching upon some of them, woven into a compelling, page-turning history. honestly, one tires of reading egregious errors, cobbeled-together pastiches of previously written pieces and self-important "i was there" dribble. cavanagh instead relies on solid research, reporting and, as the backbone of the story, the biography of one of the most frustrating and entertaining characters in indie music, alan mcgee.
in passing, we learn about geoff travis, alan horne, and even a little bit about those other two giants of frustratingly bizarre self-promotion, anthony h. wilson and bill drummond. in detail, you get histories of the creation bands, as their stories and particularly those of the young (and not so young) artists within frame mcgee's mad wanderings in a worthy context. we follow bobby gillespie from age 15 to the present, the reid brothers through their fame and subsequent infamy, kevin shields and guy chadwick and the gallaghers and all the rest of the creation madhouse. amazing.
its creation-focus necessarily means it won't go into detail on subjects such as the manchester and liverpool and bristol scenes - presumably cavanagh will treat those in due time? - but with writing like this, who cares! it's marvelous.
in short, a book so good it almost makes me want to give up writing - and certainly makes me want to encourage certain other music writers to put down their pens. cavanagh triumphs!