fbpx
  • Subscribe & Support
  • Sign up for Free Newsletter
  • Print Edition
    • Get Home Delivery
    • Read ePaper Online
    • Newsstand Locations
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Contact
    • Advertise
    • Customer Support
    • Submit A News Tip
    • Where’s My Paper?
  • Manage HV1 Account
  • Free HV1 Trial
  • Holiday Gift Subscription
Hudson Valley One
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Log In
No Result
View All Result
Hudson Valley One
No Result
View All Result

Books: Boy About Town

by Paul Smart
October 7, 2013
in Community
0

boy about town VRTTony Fletcher’s cool new memoir, Boy About Town — from which he reads at Golden Notebook 6 p.m. Saturday, October 5 — covers the renowned rock biographer, blogger, and Onteora school board vice president’s formative years as a fanzine pioneer who managed to be in all the right places as a teen living on the edge of London as first Punk and then New Wave hit the world’s music scene.

Honest and entertaining, it’s specific enough to pinpoint the role specific albums and sports teams — in his case, several great London-area soccer teams and the likes of The Who, The Jam, and hosts of now less-remembered names — can have on an impressionable single parent child. Yet it’s also broadly painted in strokes that range from a narrative arc that stretches from early crush-loves on teen heart throbs, and one’s mother, to what happens when a young man finally loses his virginity.

“I wasn’t a mod. I wasn’t a punk either. I wasn’t a rude boy. And I certainly wasn’t a kin,” he writes, of his 16th year, when his Jamming fanzine was becoming an underground hit and he was winning interviews with the Who’s Pete Townshend and Paul Weller of the Jam, but worrying about his fear of girls and getting bullied by his peers. “All this labeling of cults, as far as I was concerned, was a joke. But I was just as addicted to the idea of looking good as anyone else my age who was going to gigs, and I needed to make my own fashion statement.”

Fletcher is the author of seven non-fiction books and one novel. His biography of Who drummer Keith Moon, Moon: The Life and Death of a Rock Legend, and his work on R.E.M., Perfect Circle, are considered classics in the field of rock journalism. Last year’s A Light That Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga of The Smiths, proved a surprise best-seller. All Hopped And Ready To Go, a history of the New York music scene tracing it from jazz into disco and rap, is growing into a turn-to tome. And on top of all that he still does journalism for various publications…and plays in his oldies band, The Catskill 45s.

It’s easy to understand how this book was printed first in the U.K., where it quickly became the rage of London…where many remember the music scene of the late 1970s as a high point as rich as the mid-1960s. They feel the power of contemporary history come to life in Fletcher’s precocious account of what accompanied the rise of Margaret Thatcher and huge shifts in the demographics of Merry Old England.

But this book is also as fun for anyone as it was to first hear imports of Bowie and T-Rex, the Sex Pistols, Clash and The Jam back in the day. It reads the way that great cult film 24 Hour Party People plays in the memory, and warrants constant re-viewing. It’s got the spark of youth…including the bittersweet elements involved in watching one’s favorite bands rise beyond being just yours, or stars die off like first loves.

“They had no idea. Thousands of us looked up to Keith Moon, felt kinship with him for the way he had lived his life, free of conventions, of expectations,” Fletcher writes of the aftermath of the Who drummer’s untimely death. “For the example he has set to those of us who derided the nine-to-five life, who shivered at the prospect vof ending up in a suburban semi-detached with 2.4 children and a dog, who decried that businessmen in Britain all wore pinstripe suits, that secondary-age schoolchildren were forced to wear uniforms, that the teachers has long stopped caring, that bullies ran rampant, that the streets were full of violence, that the buses never ran on time, that the country shut down at 11 p.m. — with the national anthem as a reminder of our pervasive monarchy — and that the sky was perpetually overcast and the air permanently damp, that the older generation clung to an Empire that no longer existed and had been built on violent conquest to begin with…”

Keith Moon had risen above all this, Fletcher continues, and lived like “a comet streaking through the night sky.”

As does the young man Tony Fletcher was, captured in this memoir.

And as his grown self now continues, with an added sense of smarts and savvy, seen in the concise way he weaves this tale, warts and all, to allow us all a means to look back and remember. And rejoice. And even reconsider.++

Tony Fletcher reads from his memoir Boy About Town at 6 p.m. Saturday, October 5 at the Golden Notebook, 29 Tinker Street in Woodstock. For further information call 679-8000 or visit www.goldennotebook.com.

Tags: punkTony Fletcher
Join the family! Grab a free month of HV1 from the folks who have brought you substantive local news since 1972. We made it 50 years thanks to support from readers like you. Help us keep real journalism alive.
- Geddy Sveikauskas, Publisher
Previous Post

The undefeated

Next Post

New Shawangunk campground breaks ground

Paul Smart

Related Posts

Inaugural Snow Moon Festival brightens February darkness in Saugerties
Community

Inaugural Snow Moon Festival brightens February darkness in Saugerties

February 6, 2023
YMCA bike repair training class returns to Kingston
Community

YMCA bike repair training class returns to Kingston

February 6, 2023
The equinox and the Harvest Moon
Community

Saugerties Snow Moon parade postponed until Sunday due to weather

February 4, 2023
Visit Kingston’s 12,240-square-foot squat, centrally located with wood-burning fireplace
Community

Visit Kingston’s 12,240-square-foot squat, centrally located with wood-burning fireplace

February 3, 2023
Saugerties to host inaugural Snow Moon Festival February 3 to 5
Community

Saugerties to host inaugural Snow Moon Festival February 3 to 5

February 2, 2023
Not-So-Sweet Fundraiser returns to Saugerties Animal Shelter
Community

Not-So-Sweet Fundraiser returns to Saugerties Animal Shelter

February 1, 2023
Next Post

New Shawangunk campground breaks ground

Trending News

  • Saugerties to host inaugural Snow Moon Festival February 3 to 5 2k views
  • Visit Kingston’s 12,240-square-foot squat, centrally located with wood-burning fireplace 1.8k views
  • Neighbors protest Ulster County Veterans’ Cemetery flagpole spotlights 765 views
  • Enormous collection of historic Woodstock art opens this Saturday in New Paltz 713 views
  • Dog rescued from Wallkill River’s icy grip 659 views
  • Controversy ensues as KCSD walks back Black History Month opt out language 585 views

Weather

Kingston
◉
25°
Sunny
7:01 am5:18 pm EST
Feels like: 25°F
Wind: 3mph WSW
Humidity: 61%
Pressure: 30.37"Hg
UV index: 1
WedThuFri
48/27°F
39/37°F
55/30°F
Weather forecast Kingston, New York ▸

Subscribe

Independent. Local. Substantive. Subscribe now.

  • Subscribe & Support
  • Sign up for Free Newsletter
  • Print Edition
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Contact
  • Manage HV1 Account
  • Free HV1 Trial
  • Holiday Gift Subscription

© 2022 Ulster Publishing

No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Subscribe & Support
  • Contact Us
    • Customer Support
    • Advertise
    • Submit A News Tip
  • Print Edition
    • Read ePaper Online
    • Newsstand Locations
    • Where’s My Paper
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Manage HV1 Account
  • Log In
  • Free HV1 Trial

© 2022 Ulster Publishing