I’m Not With the Band: A Writer’s Life Lost in Music by Sylvia Patterson – review

The music journalist’s account of her life and encounters with the stars is both angry and hilarious

Before the myth-making, chin-stroking male became the prototype for the Music Writer (hello, Lester Bangs, Nick Kent and Greil Marcus), guess what? There were women.

Back in March, Kate Mossman’s brilliant Radio 4 documentary, The Women Who Wrote Rock, took us back to Rave’s Dawn James and the NME’s Nancy Lewis, who described the stars of their day in everyday detail, without reverence or deference. After them came Julie Burchill, Lucy O’Brien, Miranda Sawyer, Alex Kadis, Amy Raphael, Lynsey Hanley, Barbara Ellen, the world-straddling Caitlin Moran, Kitty Empire, Laura Barton, Laura Snapes… I could go on. Female music journalists aren’t particularly rare. Look around. We’re here.

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