Ramzy Alwakeel

How We Used Saint Etienne to Live by Ramzy Alwakeel is the type of profile that, while different from most musical profiles, offers more toward an understanding than simply a chronological overview. In other words, this will help a reader to place both the band and the reader's own past into perspective.

While I was familiar with them during the 90s from spending a short time in the UK and from friends from there, they were not a big part of my world since they didn't get a lot of US coverage. There were, however, a number of clubs where we could hear their music, plus I tended to buy some imports. So this review is from the perspective of someone who knew of them but didn't have them as part of my typical sonic environment.

I was particularly interested in how they approached what they were making, what they considered themselves as doing. Certainly there is plenty of hindsight revision, that is to be expected with any interviews that touch on several decades worth of activity. That said, I never got the impression they were trying to overly sugarcoat anything, they were telling their history as they now remember it. Since memory is such a theme is the book, that just makes it all the more interesting.

For those who did indeed have their music as part of their regular soundtrack at the time there will be the usual places to agree or disagree about assessments by the author or what events of the time were most important. For someone less familiar with their history in any detail, this makes for a very good introduction or, in my case, reminder of what I did know and then make that skimpy bit of information both larger and more meaningful.

I would recommend this to anyone interested either in them specifically of cultural history of the 90s and after. Age plays some part, but the author was a child when they formed, most of their fans were probably (just guessing here) from late teens through their twenties, then there are people like me who was in my thirties for most of the decade and turned forty near the end. So there will be, for many, a bit of a nostalgia feel, whether of the music or the history.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (meer)