Jim Bob – Where Songs Come From, The Lyrics and Origin of Stories of 150 solo and Carter USM songs.
Published by: Cherry Red Books
Release date: 31st October 20224
Better than the blurb: This book goes beyond its nostalgic value, shedding light on what ‘maketh’ the man.
Warning: Readers may find themselves bursting into song at inopportune random moments during the reading.
There’s more: Jim Bob, father, grandfather, and author, is a great writer, incorporating the styles of memoir, personal essay, journalism, poetry (the lyrics), and script within 385 pages if you count the Glossary and Credits. Genre-bending is a genuine form of creative non-fiction, arguably the most engaging, and JimBob is becoming a master. But that’s also down to his experience as a writer (this is his 9th book) and because his performance skills echo in his writing. This means that by the end of the first paragraph of each new section, you have laughed aloud, (a quick “Ha” because you don’t want to interrupt the reading).
There are 16 sections with titles, essentially these are categories, to which songs belong, from various albums. Examples are My Life (1), My Life (2) comes much later, ditto 1 and 2 versions of The Head. Other titles include The Heart, Other People’s Lives, Devon and Cornwall. I want to go on because each one will make sense to a Jamie Wednesday/Carter USM/Jim’s Super Stereoworld/Jim Bob fan. I want to tell you everything brilliant in here, the confessions, (“Thank you to Les Carter for walking into the same Streatham rehearsal studio as me at the end of the 70s. It quite literally changed my life” p. 375); the connections (pgs. 312-313); revelations (p. 192); punchlines (p.162); and the things we kind of knew anyway, “James is usually quiet and shy. He works conscientiously but is sometimes silly and giggly.” (School Report, 1970). There are many page references I could have included instead. Did you know there’s a social media Bot that blurts out random lines of Carter lyrics?
The book is a thing of beauty, a full-colour heavyweight hardback. Stroking and sniffing of said book are permitted as long as it’s your copy. It’s not just photos of cassette tapes, diagrams, set lists, terrible cartoons, and unseen photos, it’s photos beautifully placed in context, adding depth of meaning to the written content. For example, the pic of him and her (Mrs Jim Bob) as bright young things, the family polaroids on the right of the lyrics to ‘Our Heroes’ and, heart, the ones titled Charlie Brown and Lucy (the cat).
His almost essayist tone when he considers the concept album, beyond “men with long hair and beards in wizard hats” is a great read and leads to the topic of Jim Bob’s concept albums, which would be all of them. A lot of Jim Bob songs lead with him in the role of observer, whatever the medium: “What does it feel like to be you?” – which is how a novelist thinks. His understanding of character, time, and place is that of a playwright. (He wrote a soundtrack for an imaginary musical and critiques it here rather cruelly. I loved that CD. “This is what progression looks like,” I thought then.)
I’ll get back to you when I’ve finished rolling around like a pet in autumn leaves in the section titled, A Big Book of Rhymes (“I’ve managed to write over 350 songs… without knowing about rhyme schemes or whether my rhymes were true or slant, internal or monosyllabic.” p. 99) His method of writing, according to someone called Chris, uses modulation, which is “rooted in show tunes and music hall, as opposed to blues or rock”. The origins of popular music in the UK are the music hall, the ballroom on the pier, and the pub piano. Those sing-along choruses, rhymes and oddball couplets always felt authentic to me, maybe for these reasons. (“Life is a cabaret and Carter are the music,” I once wrote in the Melody Maker).
Perhaps this is Jim Bob’s “Ta-Dah” moment. A job well done, Sir.
An Imaginary Book Club at Bookseller Crow on the Hill
Scene 1
Character 1: I never knew Jim Bob wore jelly shoes (in the 80s) and went to the Lyceum Ballroom funk, disco and soul night.
Character 2: I can say the alphabet phonetically, but not backwards like him.
Character 1: I went there! but not in jelly shoes.
Character 3: Where?
Character 1: The funk, soul and disco night at the Lyceum!
Rustling of pages.
Character 3: “I was a punk and a new wave fan, I was singing in a band who were loosely connected to the mod revival, which hadn’t happened yet, and every Friday I went to London’s biggest funk and soul disco where they played Jeff Beck records.”
Quoting: That’s pages 168 to 167 everyone.
Rustling of pages.
Character 2: What are chronological anomalies?
Character 3: What we’ve just talked about it, mate.
~
Words by Ngaire Ruth. You can follow her on Instagram. Check out her personal website. Read her collection of memoirs as short stories, personal essays and archive music journalism, and a sample extract of her book in progress: Taking Control: Manifesto of a Girl Journalist in the 90s on Substack
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