⭐️⭐️⭐️ 3/5 stars

👏🏻 I loved how well documented this book was on some bands & artists

👍🏻 Great if you’d like to know more about what being in a band was like in the 80’s 90’s in the UK.

👎🏻 this book wasn’t exactly what I expected. While I love music and share some favorites with the author, I didn’t expect that the book would be mainly focused around his personal experience as a musician

A real trip down memory lane, with reminders of the songs and bands that shaped my adolescence. Written with warmth, humour and heart, it was a difficult book to put down.

This book brought me back to my youth! It was great! I love taking a break from reading the usual fiction novels. This was well researched, well written and a super quick read. Anyone who grew up in the 90's would love this!!

I am a big music fan and had a music blog for years and worked with a few music/arts & culture publications, so I was very much drawn to this book. As well as being about the music that shaped the 90s period, this is also a story about the personal journey of James Cook, who grew up listening to music in his bedroom before moving to the heart of London circa Britpop explosion.

The book chronicles Cook's musical timeline, from his early interests to his own experimentation with music and forming a band, and I did enjoy the story. The focus here is heavily on British music, although the writer's many musical inspirations are referred to and provide context for his anecdotes. I am not a fan of Britpop, really, so some parts of this book were difficult to connect with. When someone is speaking about something you also love, you can really feel the passion emanating from the source and you can really get into it, but on the other side, when the topic doesn't hold as much interest for you, the writer's views can come across as slightly dramatic.

Despite a heavy use of cliché in the opening pages (and a little more throughout), this is an engaging book, especially if you share Cook's love of certain 90s music. Personally, my interest lagged a little in parts. My love of music is deeply ingrained in bands such as Nirvana and Led Zeppelin (to name a couple) and I found these relevant sections relatable and enjoyable. 2.5 stars, rounded up.

Thank you Unbound and Netgalley for an ARC of this book.

I really enjoyed this book and reminiscing about the music of the 90’s. It was great to spend a few days reading about some of my ‘memory songs’ and such great music.

Highly recommended for anyone who loved the music of the 90’s.

“Nothing stays with you like music you loved between the ages of fifteen and nineteen.”

So true.

I was not familiar with James Cook prior to requesting this from NetGalley, but I’m a fan now. He’s so passionate, and even though I don’t share the exact same passion, reading about the music that shaped him made me happy. I was impressed by his writing and knack for storytelling.

Cook says a Memory Song is a song where one can look back at the layers of memory, when and where the song was one's companion, on which dark nights of the soul.

That seems a little too dramatic for me, but I can get his point. Sadly, that is about all I can get from this book. I didn't really connect with the book because frankly the music he discusses I had nor have any interest in and the memories he shares are neither a entertaining or visceral experience for me.

A really good read, I loved the 90's music so this definitely hooked me in. Recommended and interesting read.

There's lots to enjoy here - an account of nearly making it as a musician amidst the rise of Suede, Pulp and (most frustratingly for Cook) Oasis in the 1990s. Alongside the bittersweet reminiscing of what might have been, there's a sharp picture of what it was like to grow up music-obsessed not quite near enough to London in the 1980s. There's also some very good critical writing about all kinds of music (Beatles and Led Zep especially) and much insightfulness about bad luck and failure. Overall, it's very engagingly written - pursue it through the opening few pages though which tend towards cliche in a way the rest of the book largely avoids.

This book reminded me of Dick Clark's "Music is the Soundtrack of our Lives."
As someone who grew up in the 1990s, so many of Cook's stories resonated me, even as I was across an ocean and completely musically untalented.

I loved so many of the stories, and so many of the artists and songs featured were personal favorites of mine.

Those who grew up as music lovers in the 1990s will really enjoy this book.