I’ve been a regular reader of Ugly Things since 1994, issue 14 when The Birds were the cover stars, so it feels a bit strange and kinda wonderful to find myself in #60 spread across 4 pages. Dave Laing reviewed Pin-Ups 1972 and interviewed me.
Momentous . . . an academic treatise that reads with the manic energy of an early Lester Bangs . . . Opposing views of authenticity, the underground’s clash with the mainstream and art’s clash with artifice and commerce, these are things that went into shaping the music, and Stanfield explores them with an addictive enthusiasm. . . Pin-Ups 1972 will leave you breathless from the number of different ways it comes at the music and reeling from the sheer number of points it makes. Together with Stanfield’s A Band With Built-In Hate, it presents what I consider to be a new way of writing – amphetamine academia – about what is some of the most exciting music ever made. I can’t recommend it enough.
Dave Laing
