J.K. Rowling is an exceptional writer and has an awesome name, so reviewing records was inevitable.
Tumblr Ruth and Martin’s Album Club last week convinced the Potter auteur to lend her wits to a review of the Violent Femmes’ self-titled 1983 debut album. Beforehand, Rowling listed her favorite album as Revolver by the Beatles. (Regrettably, she’s also a Hozier apologist.)
Prior to the freelance gig, Rowling had never heard the decorated LP. She said that an old boyfriend’s pretentious attitude toward new music turned her off from the release.
The whole piece is breezy and fun, but here are some key lines:
- “I played guitar myself, mostly alone in my bedroom.”
- “The only other act I remember well from the Elephant Fayre is Benjamin Zephaniah. He did a poem about having the shit kicked out of him by a policeman. Twenty odd years later, I was on a team with him at a kids’ book quiz at the Edinburgh Book Festival.”
- “After I’ve listened to the whole album once, I look down at the place where I was supposed to be making notes and all I’ve written is: ‘his upper register sounds like a bee in a plastic cup.’”
- “Listening to an album that reeks of 1983, in a room that bears a passing resemblance to that attic of long ago, was a mistake.”
- “Before I knew it, I was listening to it over and over again. Only then did I let myself look at their Wikipedia page.”
Can we get Rowling a leather jacket and a South By badge already or what?
H/T A.V. Club