Last night Luke Haines took to the stage at the Camden Roundhouse not to perform a surprise duet with Grace Jones, who was playing in the main auditorium upstairs, but to read excerpts from, and talk about, his new book Bad Vibes: Britpop And My Part In Its Downfall.
Quietus scribe Andrew Mueller hosted proceedings, ruefully remarking that it was a pleasant change to be at a book launch where people had actually turned up. Commenting on the Camden locale of the event, Mueller said that in the 1990s, "outwardly sane people believed this wwas the throbbing heart of the cultural universe – which clearly shows that the past is indeed a foreign country, and one that we should probably bomb".
This set the tone for Haines to read a couple of extracts from Bad Vibes before an interview with Mueller and a Q&A session. Haines admitted that he’d actually quite enjoyed the period covered in Bad Vibes, saying "although it may not seem it from the book, that time was a hoot, though perhaps I havea strange idea of a hoot." He added that it was written "through the warped mind of a 25-year-old" and that "what I said about a lot of those bands was not what I think about them now – I don’t think about them now."
Luke Haines then upped acoustic guitar to play versions of ‘Showgirl’, ‘Lenny Valentino’, ‘Leeds United’, a new track and ‘Unsolved Child Murder’.
