I've just finished reading The Breaking Wave by Ian Marchant. Ian was, apart from being a very excellent fellow, patron of the Wooden Canal Boat Society. The book was his final novel, published just a few weeks before he died from cancer. He had been determined to get it finished.
I'm not a great reader of fiction, though I suppose this is more Faction as it's based around actual events and actual characters in Ian's life. A couple of the characters echo aspects of himself. It's central theme is the re-creation of a band that broke up acrimoniously in the 80s. It finds the different characters from that band, now all living very different lives, and includes a romantic element. It would actually make a really good film. In the last few pages there are links to actual recordings of the band that inspired it.
I was puzzled about musical genres though. Music is something that I don't know much about. I like it, almost any of it that stems from a genuine creative impulse rather than just the desire for wealth and fame. I don't have strong views, though I suppose I feel more comfortable with some genres than with others. My dad put me off classical music and, particularly opera, by constantly telling me that it was superior to the rock and pop that I liked as a kid. A childish sort of my music is better than your music game, akin to the Beatles v Dave Clark Five arguments that flourished in junior school. I was of the Beatles camp (and history proved me right). Nowadays I'm even beginning to warm to opera.
As I lived most of my teenage years in the sixties I have a particular affection for the music of the time. I ceased to follow musical fashions when glam rock came along. In the mid 70s the whole hippie vibe that had made the previous decade so wonderful was overturned by a a new youth subculture that seemed to love harshness, discord and spitting a lot, ie punk! I hated it and all the NO FUTURE negativity that seemed to go with it.
I knew Ian as a writer and entertainer. The only music that I observed him performing were comic pisstakes, along with his friend Chas Ambler under the name Your Dad. I knew that Ian used to be in bands, but for some reason I thought they were punk bands. I'm not sure now what gave me that Idea. Perhaps early ones were, but The Breaking Wave, certainly wasn't. Possibly it was something that Ian said that gave me that Idea. I knew our musical tastes differed. His tastes were very clear cut while I could listen to almost anything (though I can't stand modern manufactured pop). Perhaps it was our age difference. He was 5 years younger than me, a big difference in younger times. Ian would have been about 17 when punk reared its ugly snarling blaspheming head.
Anyway, I've referred to Ian having a punk past a couple of times recently, and now it occurs to me that that might be wrong. Perhaps someone who knew him as a young man would like to comment.
The book is good and should be the basis of a film. Something like Four Weddings and a Funeral springs to mind. It combines exploration of characters with a band movie theme, romance, an underlying tragedy but it would be a sort of feelgood film. Any film directors reading this?
Read the book (but don't buy it from Amazon as Jeff Bezos already has enough money) Sorry the photos aren't very good.
