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tummidge 's review for:
Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success
by Miki Berenyi
I was born at the right time to experience the height of Britpop as my musical awakening, for better or worse, and it's for that reason that the "shoegaze" band that preceded it have remained somewhat of a blind spot excepting My Bloody Valentine.
Berenyi's memoir was voted the no.1 music book for 2022 by Rough Trade, which planted it firmly on my radar as I have found myself dipping into the pleasant and familiar waters of the rock bio especially as it has slipped into moments I lived through.
This one starts out fascinatingly and never lets up from there. Berenyi details the meeting of her parents, which in 99% of biographies would be a rather slow and rote start to things based around dance halls and teas, but here we have Hungarian Ivan, decamped to Britain following the Second World War meeting Japanese, Yasuko, as he reports on the Olympic Games in Tokyo with lots more information to enliven things from there.
Berenyi deals with the things that have happened to her in a straightforward manner, not allowing the pages to be wreathed in trauma and coming out in front of it and stating how wrong it was or how it fucked her up in ways she couldn't fathom when she was younger. Her father promiscuity led her to being cared for by her Grandma, Nora, who clung tightly and inappropriately to her son's progeny illiciting rebellious reactions from the young Miki.
Into Lush and Berenyi is as frank as ever depicting the attitudes prevalent within the music industry and the irritation and frustration borne of being in a rock band. For all the doe-eyed dreams of rock immortality there is a never ending parade of hurdles to jump over.
I felt this book succinctly described the real difficulty of touring and trying to crack the U.S. as Berenyi details the fact that every City has their own TV and radio stations, colleges and record stores that require some form of appearance wearing and weighing the band down before they can get on with the business of playing. There are plenty of fun stories too, but they are laced with the misogyny of the male-dominated scene.
The not knowing made this almost like a novel at times where seemingly minor characters became more and main characters met fates I was less than prepared for. This rock bio has a bit of everything and shows off Berenyi as a no-nonsense, hard charging frontwoman in a time where there weren't many of them countered by the music industry height of treating bands as commodities for bringing in profit margins, who are sliced away as they become benign.
Definitely one of the best I've read in the genre as Berenyi understands for everything done to her, she has behaved similarly. The breakdown in the relationship between her and Emma is tough to read given how they shared this amazing thing together, but that amount of time in close quarters undoubtedly brings with it tensions and resentments, real or imagined.
Highly recommend this one for lovers of any kind of music for a female perspective on the 90s rock scene.
Berenyi's memoir was voted the no.1 music book for 2022 by Rough Trade, which planted it firmly on my radar as I have found myself dipping into the pleasant and familiar waters of the rock bio especially as it has slipped into moments I lived through.
This one starts out fascinatingly and never lets up from there. Berenyi details the meeting of her parents, which in 99% of biographies would be a rather slow and rote start to things based around dance halls and teas, but here we have Hungarian Ivan, decamped to Britain following the Second World War meeting Japanese, Yasuko, as he reports on the Olympic Games in Tokyo with lots more information to enliven things from there.
Berenyi deals with the things that have happened to her in a straightforward manner, not allowing the pages to be wreathed in trauma and coming out in front of it and stating how wrong it was or how it fucked her up in ways she couldn't fathom when she was younger. Her father promiscuity led her to being cared for by her Grandma, Nora, who clung tightly and inappropriately to her son's progeny illiciting rebellious reactions from the young Miki.
Into Lush and Berenyi is as frank as ever depicting the attitudes prevalent within the music industry and the irritation and frustration borne of being in a rock band. For all the doe-eyed dreams of rock immortality there is a never ending parade of hurdles to jump over.
I felt this book succinctly described the real difficulty of touring and trying to crack the U.S. as Berenyi details the fact that every City has their own TV and radio stations, colleges and record stores that require some form of appearance wearing and weighing the band down before they can get on with the business of playing. There are plenty of fun stories too, but they are laced with the misogyny of the male-dominated scene.
The not knowing made this almost like a novel at times where seemingly minor characters became more and main characters met fates I was less than prepared for. This rock bio has a bit of everything and shows off Berenyi as a no-nonsense, hard charging frontwoman in a time where there weren't many of them countered by the music industry height of treating bands as commodities for bringing in profit margins, who are sliced away as they become benign.
Definitely one of the best I've read in the genre as Berenyi understands for everything done to her, she has behaved similarly. The breakdown in the relationship between her and Emma is tough to read given how they shared this amazing thing together, but that amount of time in close quarters undoubtedly brings with it tensions and resentments, real or imagined.
Highly recommend this one for lovers of any kind of music for a female perspective on the 90s rock scene.