Faster Than A Cannonball: 1995 and All That

(Hardback)

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Description

Decades tend to crest halfway through, and 1995 was the year of the Nineties: peak Britpop (Oasis v Blur), peak YBA (Tracey Emin's tent), peak New Lad (when Nick Hornby published High Fidelity, when James Brown's Loaded detonated the publishing industry, and when pubs were finally allowed to stay open on a Sunday). It was the year of The Bends, the year Danny Boyle started filming Trainspotting, the year Richey Edwards went missing, the year Alex Garland wrote The Beach, the year Blair changed Clause IV after a controversial vote at the Labour Conference.

Not only was the mid-Nineties perhaps the last time that rock stars, music journalists and pop consumers held onto a belief in rock's mystical power, it was a period of huge cultural upheaval - in art, literature, publishing and drugs. And it was a period of almost unparalleled hedonism, a time when many people thought they deserved to live the rock and roll lifestyle, when a generation of narcotic omnivores thought they could all be rock stars just by buying a magazine and a copy of (What's the Story) Morning Glory

Faster Than a Cannonball is a cultural swipe of the decade from loungecore to the rise of New Labour, teasing all the relevant artistic strands through interviews with all the major protagonists and exhaustive re-evaluations of the important records of the year - The Bends by Radiohead, Grand Prix by Teenage Fanclub, Maxinquaye by Tricky, Different Class by Pulp, The Great Escape by Blur, It's Great When You're Straight... Yeah! by Black Grape, Exit Planet Dust by the Chemical Brothers, I Should Coco by Supergrass, Elastica by Elastica, Pure Phase by Spiritualized, ...I Care Because You Do by Aphex Twin and of course (What's the Story) Morning Glory by Oasis, the most iconic album of the decade.

Reviews

Dylan Jones' delicious, hilarious new book has given me more insight into the British psyche than Henry James. And the writing is fire -- Courtney Love
Amazing achievement -- Tracey Emin
The best book on the nineties I have ever read. Dylan Jones is the best observer of the times we have. An absolutely brilliant book -- Alan McGee
Great book -- Chris Salewicz
Considering the hold that Britpop had on the nation's psyche in the nineties, it's amazing how short-loved the movement was. This book shines a light on just how toxic nineties lad culture could be for girls with guitars -- Sarah Ditum * THE SUNDAY TIMES *
A kind of stealth memoir. We see the decade's utopian promise smothered by money and cocaine rather than Nixon and Vietnam. One can read the decade as a period of brash, breathless momentum, especially in technology and the arts -- Dorian Lynskey * LITERARY REVIEW *
Fascinating * GRAZIA *
Dylan Jones's Faster Than a Cannonball captures the exuberance and spirit of the Nineties [and] sheds light on the wider cultural and economic environment -- Henry Williams * SPIKED *
Fantastic -- Matthew d'Ancona * TORTOISE *

Author Bio

New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author Dylan Jones has written or edited over twenty-five books. In the Eighties, he was one of the first editors of i-D, before becoming a Contributing Editor of The Face and Editor of Arena. He spent the next decade working in newspapers - principally the Observer and the Sunday Times - before embarking on a multi-award-winning tenure at GQ. A former columnist for the Guardian and the Independent, he is a Trustee of the Hay Festival, and a peripatetic television producer. In 2012 he was awarded an OBE for services to publishing.