David Cousins - The Strawbs

Good news, autobiography out this year

Nice.

^ Just about to start Robert Plant's A Life, must look out for Marianne Faithfull's book, I am sure that will be rivetting stuff

I've gone through most of it and if you're a diehard Strawbs fan that knows almost everything about them (like me), the book is very disappointing. It's a true autobiography in that Cousins writes of his boring childhood and also of the radio station jobs (he was a radio station programmer from 1982-2002) that he had after the late seventies break up of the Strawbs. There's nothing new or revealing here except that Cousins does come off as a truly warm individual and is probably the reason for the Wakeman's family affection for him. If you don't know the details of how Cousins 'discovered' Sandy Denny and Rick Wakeman, then this book is for you. If you're familiar with these stories than skip this book and just listen to some later day Strawbs albums like the two 40th anniversary albums titled Strawberry Fayre Vols.1 and 2 , as I don't see them making any new albums  in the future.


Edited by SteveG - November 12 2014 at 10:37

SteveG wrote: ... It's a true autobiography in that Cousins writes of his boring childhood and also of the radio station jobs (he was a radio station programmer from 1982-2002) that he had after the late seventies break up of the Strawbs. ...

There is a very nice sidebar to this. It's most interesting that he did not "discuss" the music played and such, but at the very least it shows the development of radio in England, of which he certainly was a part, however minor that might be.

Some good details though ... FM radio in England appears to have been about 5 to 6 years behind America. I'm double checking this even more ... as this is very important and telling of how a group was capable of being heard and got a chance. In the early days of FM in America, until it started going hardcore/corporate commercial around 1977 or so (give or take a month or two), the amount of freedom in most of these stations was pretty much up to the disk jockey ... and by 1980, this was over in most of the same stations over here.

I'm a firm believer that without the FM radio, specially in America, that a lot of this music would likely not have made it at all. I imagine that the stuff that was more "pop music" oriented might be checked, but the rest would likely not. Radio folks, without trying to be mean, are generally not very well versed in "music listening", that we could determine, since they never played that many different things, and in all those years in Southern California, I only met one guy that actually listened to the music, and PLAYED IT.

Dean wrote: ... Independent National Radio (ClassicFM, Absolute Radio and TalkSport) Independent Local Radio (regional commercial stations) ...

Edited by moshkito - February 06 2016 at 13:47