How Does It Feel?: A Life of Musical Misadventures by Mark KermodeMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I tried self-deprecating humour... but I wasn't very good at it. Mark Kermode, on the other hand, is a master.
If you listen to the award-winning podcast, Kermode and Mayo's Film Review, you will know how he speaks; with enthusiasm, wit and a deep knowledge of his subject. If you want a preview of how this book reads, listen to the podcast. He writes the way he speaks.
His passion for music shines through the pages of this book and while I do not understand his obsession with The Comsat Angels, I recognise the same obsession in my own life with the band Rush. Where we differ is in what he does with that obsesion. I must admit to some jealousy when I read where his obsessions have taken him; the people he has met and the things he has experienced. Perhaps it helps when you go to school with people like David Baddiel and Jason Isaacs (a quick Google suggest nobody famous went to my secondary school) but it is almost certainly true that interesting things happen to interesting people... and a lot of interesting things are described in this book.
I have a signed copy because I went to hear him speak on one of the dates where he was promoting this book. At the Q&A, someone asked him why he watched movies and thought, "I could write about that!", but listened to music and thought, "I could do that!". It was an interesting question but he was unable to fully explain the difference. For me, I enjoy watching films but music hits me at much deeper level. Mark feels the power of both and can talk eloquently about both. This book, however focuses on music and I love the way he describes it, especially the music you hear as a teenager:
"…I felt like I was in an episode of Doctor Who; as if I had somehow created a warp in the time-space continuum and was being sucked back into the past at a speed of thirty-three-and-a-third revolutions per minute.If that doesn't make you want to read this book, I don't know what will.
If you want proof that time travel is possible, just listen to a record you first heard as a teenager. If that's not a time machine, I don't know what is."
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