Sweet Dreams, The Story Of The New Romantics

Hi guys, hope you’re all doing well. So, very recently, I have finished reading a book called ”Sweet Dreams, The Story Of The New Romantics” as you can tell by the title. This book was written by Dylan Jones. I thought that it was a very good book, it was just amazing in every way, very well put together. It was about the story of the New Romantics scene in the seventies and the music. One thing I also loved was that a lot of the musicians, singers, band members and icons from the time would open up about their own experiences of growing up in the seventies and their influences, it was just really good, I enjoyed reading it so much.

You hear various stories from the likes of Boy George and his experiences of being in the group, Culture Club, you hear from Malcolm Mclaren, you hear from Souxi Soux, you hear from David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Gary Numan and many other artists who were quite popular in that scene. It was very insightful, it took time to explain certain things, it didn’t rush it took time, so I liked that, it really went into detail. There were some really funny stories in here as well, I loved the story about Malcolm got a little job as a wine taster and then he got himself sacked because he hated the job, I thought that was just brilliant. Loads of famous icons and artists all talked about their experiences of being in the industry, their experiences growing up and their childhoods, all of which were all in the seventies.

I just really loved it, I think it was absolutely brilliant. You hear about the groups and bands like Spandau ballet, Duran Duran and others. It would often talk about when people’s music tastes change and punk would fade and it would suddenly venture off into Disco, then new romantics, then New Wave, they would all have these different phases and they would all experiment. My sister brought me this book for my birthday last year and I just loved it, I’m just a book worm, I’m a film worm, I love films, I love TV shows, I love art, I love books and music, I love this sort of stuff.

They talk about the clubs that were a huge part of this specific music scene. The economy was just about on its last legs, what Margret Thatcher up to her usual antics again, so I think that all this music stuff was just escapism. It’s just absolutely fascinating, I find it absolutely fascinating. My dad and I would often sit and watch documentaries about this sort of thing so I already know an awful lot about this already, hence, my dad used to be a DJ in La Betroute during the New Romantic Scene and used to do scratching on the decks and remembers Mick Jones from The Clash going up to him and just raving about it, it’s just absolutely nuts, my dad’s got loads of stories from that period of his life, just serenades us with these stories, just love it, in those days, no one knew what on earth was going on and just took it all in. It’s somewhat cool to hear from their personal experiences and their perspectives of seeing all this stuff for themselves.

I don’t want to ramble on about it for too long, because by the time I’m done, all of you would have found a job, found someone, gotten married, had kids and died so I’ll just keep it short, haha, I want you lot to read this book yourself so that’s all I wanted to say about this book. If there are any of you who have any interest in this sort of thing, I totally recommend, it was such a fantastic read and it opened my eyes to this whole thing and realised how crucial they all were to this scene, they really paved the way for many artists.

Thank you so much for reading my post, I hope you found this helpful, I hope you all have a lovely day, love you guys.

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