Vance Packard and American Social Criticism Book

A professional Yorkshire man writes a memoir and it proves good. For myself reading this book I grew up in the next county south of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and the Lincolnshire I knew seemed always to be in the shadow of it's bigger northern neighbour. I understood part of what this book was about-it was about the wonder and frustration of finding brilliant music on old records and then realising that the records were pale shadows, minor miraculous leftovers, compared with what it would have been like to see the same performers playing the same songs live. This book is about the lack of live music and live music venues, and the plentiful number of recordings from artists near and far away, both in time and in geography. I liked descriptions of his 1978 pilgrimage to see Bob Dylan at Blackbush. It was a pilgrimage. Whatever the music was like, seeing the man live in the flesh was more important and even more than that, as his close family observed in a back handed way, life transforming. But then comes the rest of the book and there is something wearing about reading about where ever the author is in the world the compass and the memory always points to Yorkshire. There is also a 'boys toys' thing going on with the accumulation of vast amounts of vinyl records, and the grieving over the occasional necessary sale of some of them. Disc Jockeys collect vast numbers of records as part what they play live at discos and on radio programmes, but have literally tons of records and playing them by and for yourself-it does not read the same. It is obsessive, to be plain about it, and yes some obsessions do entertain others and repay the effort in maintaining them, but here it flags a little, just as the professional Yorkshireman display does.

The end of the book is a sharp and sobering descent and a positive moral reminder that for music to be played live the instruments have to be there and the singer must sometimes die to the song, if the song is to live, both metaphorically and more than metaphorically.