A bravura rock memoir vibrating with fierce and fearless memories—a must-have item for Chris and Cosey and Throbbing Gristle...
The female half of the alternative music group Chris and Cosey reveals the “harsh and definitely not rose-tinted view of my past.”
Drawing on her library of diaries, musician and performance artist Tutti’s autobiography is an apt reflection of her daring, lifelong restlessness and creative ambition. Born in 1951 in Kingston upon Hull, known during post–World War II Europe as the “most violent city in England,” Tutti was raised in a strict household, and her mother’s singing voice and father’s penchant for electronics “fed and formed my notions of music and sound.” As her mischievous nature emerged, so did the 1960s counterculture in music, art, TV, and other areas. The author went on to co-found the COUM Transmissions art collective and broadened their productions to incorporate prop and dance elements that expanded into controversial commissioned installations on sex and prostitution, including an esteemed exhibition for the British Council. Tutti’s experiences in the stripping and pornography industries inspire pages of brazen, provocative anecdotes that fans will devour. All of these experiments in expression led the author to a passionate coupling with fellow artist Chris Carter and the development of the bands Throbbing Gristle in the 1970s and then Chris and Cosey in the artistic bacchanal of the 1980s. All of these historic events are lavishly and painstakingly detailed, much like the intriguingly written diaries they are culled from. Tutti clearly takes great delight in sharing the roller-coaster emotions experienced within each era and how particular watershed moments shaped her as an artist and an independent woman. Most impressive is the author’s reflection on the decisions that defined her and her personal and professional relationship with Carter that, to this day, has managed to survive culture shifts, age, health scares, and the evolutions of both the music industry and their fan base. Without a hint of regret, Tutti bares all in the name of art and personal integrity.
A bravura rock memoir vibrating with fierce and fearless memories—a must-have item for Chris and Cosey and Throbbing Gristle fans.Pub Date: May 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-571-32851-2
Page Count: 500
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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