Britain in the late 1990s. Post Britpop. The dawn of the rock and roll apocalypse. If it feels like there's nothing new under the sun, that's because there is nothing new under the sun. After the death of Kurt Cobain popular culture entered, and is still in, its final phase: post everything.
Post Everything is the sequel to the hugely acclaimed BadVibes: Britpop and My Part in its Downfall. It is a story of survival in the music industry ... and the only way to survive the tyrannical scourge of Britpop is to become an Outsider.
We open with Luke Haines - the 'avant-garde Arthur Scargill' - calling upon the nation's pop stars to down tools and go on strike. We get the story of Haines' post-Britpop art house trio Black Box Recorder (Chas and Dave with a chanteuse) then, barely pausing to put in a brief appearance on Top of the Pops, we meet a talking cat, two dead rappers (Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur), a mystical England football manager, and a shady transgender German Professor - exponent of a dangerous and radical 'Beatles denial' cult and author of TheTheorem of the Moron (the most important book about rock that you've never heard of). Haines even finds time to write a musical for the National Theatre.
Blisteringly funny and searingly scathing, Post Everything may quite possibly be the first and only truly surreal comic rock memoir. It even contains a killer recipe for scrambled eggs.
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Post Everything is written with such authority that it suggests that Haines has finally found his calling: indeed, it's almost as if he's deliberately sabotaged his career until now to give himself something to write about...The book's best sections are concerned with genuine failure...He brilliantly describes two years of futile effort, and the true pain of collaborative endeavours...But Haines's pain provides our pleasure. - Independent
Haines was always too clever to be a pop star...As a writer, though, he's a national treasure-in-waiting, cutting through the pomp with drily hilarious anecdotes. Post Everything sums up the silliness of the indie scene perfectly. - Mail on Sunday
Haines manages to maintain a degree of objectivity and offers us a perspective on the music industry as it turns to dust. It helps that he is funny. Like an articulate but permanently pissed uncle, he's a master of the clever cuss and an enthusiastic employer of the tangential footnote...This is an enjoyably smirksome read. - Time Out
'Must never end up like Bobby Gillespie' It's not a bad strategy for life, and happily one the ferociously talented Luke Haines continues to adhere to in his follow-up to Bad Vibes. Resuming from where that excoriatingly brilliant book left off...Grimly amusing. - Word
Thrilling...Against the backdrop of a collapsing music business, the rise of Simon Cowell, reality TV, war, and the great New labour disappointment, this is that very British of things - a celebration of heroic failure...Now that Luke Haines' musical memoirs are complete...let's see where he casts his gimlet eye and chooses to let his pen run next. - NME, Book of the Week
Delightfully scathing, frequently hilarious dissection of his splendidly non-commercial musical career...This is essential reading for old and jaded music fans. - Irish News
Luke Haines learned guitar in the red light district of Portsmouth and subsequently formally studied music at the London College of Music. His band The Auteurs missed out on the 1992 Mercury Music Prize by one vote. His first memoir, Bad Vibes, was published in 2009.
