Why a Booktrail?
1980s, 2000s: The story behindpunk rock
The Singer
What you need to know before your trail
The legend goes like this: Vincent Smith met bandmates Stevie Mullin and Lynton Powell at a Sex Pistols concert. Together they formed Blood Simple, and for a while they made a lot of noise, a bit of money and caused a sensation wherever they went. Then Vincent eloped with Sylvana, singer for the ethereal Mood Violet, and it all went wrong. Six months later Sylvana committed suicide, the band fell apart, and Vincent disappeared.
That was 1981 and twenty years on, journalist Eddie Bracknell hopes the story of Blood Simple will be the making of him. He?s got a book contract and the right contacts, it?s just that he can?t get the different stories he?s heard to fit together, never mind trying to work out what happened to Vincent. A compelling crime novel and a very modern fable, The Singer brings the intoxicating days of punk back onstage, with all its noisy creativity and explosive violence
Locations
Reset- England - Hull
- A: Hull Docks
- B: Hull Kingston Rover stadium
- England - London
- C: Ladbroke Grove
- D: Camden High St
- E: Shepherd's Bush Green
Travel Guide
Hull
The city like all others is in the grip of Jubilee fever”
“He could see everything from here – the mouth of the Humber crying grey out to the North Sea, the city stretched out beneath him like it was nothing but a toy town, and away to the North Sea, the city stretched out beneath him like it was nothing but a toy town, and away to the north, the outline of the distant moors.”
At the start of the novel , a character stands here, eating a Bounty bar and dreaming of the Sex Pistols
London
Most of the book takes place here
The book has its punk boots based firmly within the UK punk, and post-punk eras. The music almost blasts from the pages and you can more than tell a music journalist has had a hand in this. In this case, the author. She has apparently based many of her characters on real singers and figures of the industry and describes Camden and the bars of London as if you were there.
Most of the ones in the story are real, but walk around the streets of Camden in particular and they feel more than real!
Streetview Maps
A) Hull - Hull docks
D) London - Camden
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Singer
Destination: Hull, London Author/Guide: Cathi Unsworth Departure Time: 1970s/80s, 2000s
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