Anoint My Head - How I Failed to Make it as a Britpop Indie Rockstar (Part 1 of 4): Anoint My Head, #1

By Andy Macleod

'Captures the time and the aspirations of a young band brilliantly. A great eye-opener into the absurd thought process of what it might take to headline Glastonbury!' Steve Lamacq BBC 6 Music

 

"A healthy measure of Nick Hornby with a dash of Adrian Mole had he joined an indie band. Just the tonic for these serious and uncertain days. Bottoms up!' Josh Levay Pointy Birds 

 

'Bland and inoffensive with a seriously over-acting singer' NME

 

It's 1992, and Horace dreams of becoming a rockstar with his band the Pointy Birds. The only problem is that his day-job (mis)filing vinyl in a Soho record store is stealing all his time and energy, plus rival bands like Suede, Blur, Pulp and Radiohead are moving on to bigger and better things. But then someone called Ricky offers his services as a band manager, and at last the dream can start.

 

Anoint My Head is the tale of a band who maybe didn't quite have what it took to make it, but had a manager who did. It is also the story of a musical era and documents the rise of some of the biggest British Britpop bands of the nineties, plus a comedian who went on to write quite a successful sitcom about a paper merchant in Slough.

 

A coming-of-age story about pursuing your dreams and what happens when reality gets in the way. 

 

Perfect for fans of Caitlin Moran, Nick Hornby & Ricky Gervais.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pointy Books
• Release date: Oct 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781838271909

Andy Macleod

Andy Macleod is a music promoter, a cold-water swimming enthusiast/bore, a Spurs fan and a dad. When no one is looking he likes to write. Anoint My Head - How I failed to make it as a Brit pop indie-rockstar is his first book. It took him 6 years to write but was in gestation for 50. He lives in London with his wife, two kids and a cat. He would like a dog.

Book preview

Andy Macleod

Anoint My Head - PART 1

How I Failed to Make it as a Britpop Indie Rockstar

First published by Pointy Books 2020

Copyright © 2020 by Andy Macleod

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

First edition

ISBN: 978-1-8382719-0-9

This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

Find out more at reedsy.com

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For the birds…

Contents

FREE MP3 DOWNLOAD

Prologue

I. PLAY >>

1. ULU

2. Selectadisc

3. Town & Country Club

NEWSLETTER & FREE MP3

About the Author

FREE MP3 DOWNLOAD

THE POINTY BIRDS - ‘Benefit Office’

Before we start the words, a few words…

Pointy Birds songs are not available anywhere in the world. You won’t find them on Spotify, YouTube or Apple Music and they never made it on to vinyl or CD in the racks of Selectadisc or Tower Records. Their only existence is on a couple of fading cassette tapes, but now some of these rare creatures are daring to show their face. The first track to see the light of day is called ‘Benefit Office’. If you click on the link below then these three minutes of perfect indie-pop pleasure can be all yours. Plus we will add you to the email newsletter to keep you up to date with this book and other projects. Unsubscribe anytime.

Enjoy the tune! (But please excuse the out of tune harmonica.)

Sign up and send me ‘Benefit Office’

Prologue

Growing up in the UK during the seventies and eighties, bands were everywhere. The Beatles and The Stones had kicked things off the decade before, becoming the country’s proud export to the world. There must have been something in the water because the UK was bloody good at producing great bands - year after year after year. Band after band after band, producing hit after hit after hit. Not sure why. Population density? A British tendency for introspection? The combination of shitty weather and high quality electronics? Margaret Thatcher certainly helped provide something to kick against for inspiration. Maybe great art thrived in misery like the prettiest flower could bloom in manure. But whatever it was, bands were part of our heritage - we lived and breathed them, created sub-cultures around them. It was tribal - all-consuming. How could you not want to be part of the fun?

And this fun was encapsulated every Thursday night on BBC1 at 7:30pm on Top Of The Pops. To get there one had to live through the agony of Tomorrows World - boring grey men with thin lips and dry hair talking about dull inventions in the future ‘yadda yadda yadda’, who cared? I wanted to live in the present and Top Of