A pocket guide to Shadow Music: A reaction

[RayL]

If I had a critism of both the Shadows and Ventures books it is only that the index of tunes is counter-intuitive - the name of the tune comes after the reference number.

In an index where one looks for a tune by looking at an alphabetical list (as one does in these books), then the reference number should follow the name of the tune.

ie it should be APACHE [12]
and not
[12] APACHE

Ray L

[Moderne]

There seems to be something about The Shadows that inspires people to be slightly 'over the top' in the expression of their opinions sometimes...the bizarrely over-long Wikipedia entry is a case in point. In many ways 'the pocket guide to shadow music' is a highly informative entertaining read. But there are some entries where I feel the authors are 'inebriated by the exuberance of their verbosity' to quote my dad! A good example being The Modern Way: "Composer Bogdanovs...furnishes an equally robust, at times florid keyboard accompaniment. The style, elaborate to the point of self-indulgence, rather blunts the force of the song's message, already creaking under the weight of its obscurity/obscuranticism."

Just my opinion!!

Clive