Book Review: Book Review: Glory Days: from Gumboots to Platforms
Glory Days: from Gumboots to Platforms
By Ian Chapman aka Dr Glam; Harper Collins Publishers rrp $40
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The seventies might not have seemed so funny for those who were consciously there, but in the hands of Ian Chapman it turns out they were hilarious – not to mention glorious in their sartorial splendour. Orange, he urges us to admit, was made to go with brown…
A musician and Dunedin-based academic, Chapman is also a very funny writer who knows his core subject, the glory of glam rock, so thoroughly that he is still a practitioner, donning glittering garb and platform boots to perform onstage in the guise of Dr Glam. He was a 10-year old Hamilton school boy when the ’70s arrived and displays a near photographic recollection for the decade from a non-rugby-playing young male’s perspective. Hallelujah. The importance of Alastair Riddell’s performance with Space Waltz on Studio One/New Faces is resonantly spelt out here, it is as much the nation’s coming of age story as it is the author’s.
Without sport getting in the way he is able to cover the kind of esoteric ground all the rest of us who were around then inhabited. Chesdale cheese triangles get their own page, Raleigh 20s and Choppers their own chapter, and the chemical composition of polyester is detailed – but mainly this is about the music. Chapman has a passion for the music of the decade, a real passion for the glam movement that’s hilariously reflected in his loathing of things hippy.
The pity is that in turning his treatise on his own preferred music genre of the decade into a substantial book, Chapman has had to expand its subject matter beyond his own childhood/academic comfort zone. In doing so he has included 1000-word observations on the decade from a too-mixed bag of music stars, friends and fellow academics. Some are very good, others not, and it’s a shame that the platform-teetering hilarity Dr Glam sets out with could not be maintained throughout.
Still, you should definitely buy a copy of Glory Days for anyone you love who might like to ‘get lost on the seventies with those who were there’, as it says on the cover. And have a good read of it yourself first.
A musician and Dunedin-based academic, Chapman is also a very funny writer who knows his core subject, the glory of glam rock, so thoroughly that he is still a practitioner, donning glittering garb and platform boots to perform onstage in the guise of Dr Glam. He was a 10-year old Hamilton school boy when the ’70s arrived and displays a near photographic recollection for the decade from a non-rugby-playing young male’s perspective. Hallelujah. The importance of Alastair Riddell’s performance with Space Waltz on Studio One/New Faces is resonantly spelt out here, it is as much the nation’s coming of age story as it is the author’s.
Without sport getting in the way he is able to cover the kind of esoteric ground all the rest of us who were around then inhabited. Chesdale cheese triangles get their own page, Raleigh 20s and Choppers their own chapter, and the chemical composition of polyester is detailed – but mainly this is about the music. Chapman has a passion for the music of the decade, a real passion for the glam movement that’s hilariously reflected in his loathing of things hippy.
The pity is that in turning his treatise on his own preferred music genre of the decade into a substantial book, Chapman has had to expand its subject matter beyond his own childhood/academic comfort zone. In doing so he has included 1000-word observations on the decade from a too-mixed bag of music stars, friends and fellow academics. Some are very good, others not, and it’s a shame that the platform-teetering hilarity Dr Glam sets out with could not be maintained throughout.
Still, you should definitely buy a copy of Glory Days for anyone you love who might like to ‘get lost on the seventies with those who were there’, as it says on the cover. And have a good read of it yourself first.
