(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
[punk] Sturla Brustad's debut novel, Anarchy in Åmot, confirms three things. It shows the explosive impact of music revolutions in Norway, here punk in the late 1970s. It is also another example that reality still has a solid lead on fiction in rock literature, and the book is also reminiscent of how waves at the grassroots level can in reality be both market-driven and blood-commercial – although the audience likes to believe the exact opposite. From Bill Haley via Sex Pistols and hip hop to grunge icon Kurt Cobain.
Failed band novel
Anarchy in Åmot will be a punk answer to Lars Saabye Christensen's Beatles, but even though Brustad is good at portraying how teenagers can often just stumble right into important things like love, friendship and unfriendliness, and he sparkles when it comes to the hometown depictions and the colorful language – consistently kept in thick Åmot dialect. Nevertheless, the novel ends up as another unsuccessful attempt to write The Great Norwegian Rock Novel.
It is paradoxical that a novel with the short and concise punk as a backdrop ends up as an overgrown mastodon of over 550 pages, sickly preoccupied with details and insignificance. The punk group Anarchy in Åmot goes in record time from the rehearsal room to their first Oslo concert and professional record recording, while Brustad uses an awful lot of letters to tell the story. In the studio, we get sequences that could have passed in a documentary about the recording of a masterpiece, but which only becomes parodic when it comes to a basement band: "The Chord Row (ACGF) originally had all the grips in major, and then the thing sounded like no a Gro Anita Schønn could sing. After some experimentation, we changed tel Am-CG-Fmaj7, and then things fell into place. " In another scene, there is conflict when members play a song G, A and H – at the same time (author's emphasis). This is not punk, but literary progrock.
Perhaps it is the lack of the great successes and downs in Norwegian rock, but with few exceptions, Norwegian rock books end up as boring depictions of sweaty rehearsal rooms, a box of skirts in the back room, small biscuits and such good success. Anders Bortnes A good band, Erlend Erichsen's National Satanist, Frithjof Jacobsen's 101 and now Anarchy in Åmot all buzz around in a gray mass of puberty, mediocrity, babbling, self-pity and sluggish social realism. Sverre Knudsens Sukkersug was a far better endeavor, but stumbled a bit because the author chose to draw inspiration from the recording and aftermath of his own career in The Aller Worst !, while skipping the buck. Morten Jørgensen Mustard Legion (1987) is still leading.
Commercial locomotive
If you are interested in rock and books, you should not waste time on Norwegian novels, but go for real items: Biographies like Hammer of the Gods (about Led Zeppelin), The Dirt (about Mötley Crüe) or Heavier Than Heaven (about Kurt Cobain ).
The latter provides insight into the commercial driving forces behind Nirvana's breakthrough. Teenagers who in their time fell head over heels for rock'n'roll in the 1950s, punk in the 1970s, hip hop in the 1980s or grunge in the 1990s often think that they had straws into an exclusive and secret rock underground, when they were in fact influenced by highly commercial ulterior motives. This is also the case with the guys in Anarchy in Åmot, but these contrasts between commerce and the underground are only affected by hare labs. As Perry puts it: "What is happening is a rebellion (…) Every generation has its own – the rockers, the hippies… This is ours."
The guys think Sex Pistols are "dilla attached to vinyl," while James Miller's Flowers in the Dustbin gives a glow into the machinery behind Sex Pistols. The band's opportunistic manager Malcolm McLaren put together the band to create the most around their fashion store Sex (vocalist Johnny Rotten was a regular customer), and partner Vivienne Westwood specially designed an "anarchy" shirt on the occasion of the group's single "Anarchy in the UK" The big breakthrough came as following a shock shock in the British press after the band was banned from directing the BBC program Today, provoked by a drunken broadcaster.
The rock died in 1955
The world's first white rock star was Bill Haley, who rose to the rock trend after trying his hand at country, western swing, rhythm'n'blues and yodeling. In 1952 he released his first rock song, "Rock the Joint", but when he became a world star with "Rock Around the Clock" in 1955, rock was already being eaten up by professional songwriters and smart marketers who considered the style a trend bluff. one could make quick money on.
In the book Country Nick Tosches writes that rock first died already in 1955 and that "Rock Around the Clock" was the first example of false rock. Fortunately, rock was saved by Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis, while rock history has continued in an endless cycle of innovation, commercialization and downfall since.
When The Beatles broke through in 1963, Elvis was a silly movie star with songs like "Bossa Nova Baby", while Bill Haley released clips like "Midnight in Washington". Malcolm McLaren had dollar signs in his eyes when the guys at Anarchy in Åmot bought their guitars, while the breakers of Rock Steady Crew lamented the hollowness of the hip-hop film Beat Street in 1984 – while a new generation of åmotinger probably signed up for a break course.
As another generation of jubilants raised the hairy hard rock of the 1980 on the boat in favor of Nirvana's grunge early in the 1990, Kurt Cobain struggled with his own demons.
In interviews, he always emerged as a straightforward and independent punk rocker from the underground, but behind the facade he cursed indie-
the congregation he himself sprang from in the student city of Olympia, joking about his managers about how Nirvana should drop as much as possible on MTV and did not hesitate a second to sign a contract with the big company Geffen.
Rock history is an inexhaustible source of good reading material, and the reality is so exciting that we can do just fine without long-range rock novels like Anarchy in Åmot.
