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Nick Drake's Pink Moon (33 1/3) | 
 enlarge | Author: Amanda Petrusich
Publisher: Continuum
Category: Book
List Price: $10.95
Buy New: $5.89
You Save: $5.06 (46%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 334815
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 120
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 6.3 x 4.7 x 0.4
ISBN: 0826427901
Dewey Decimal Number: 782.42166092
EAN: 9780826427908
ASIN: 0826427901
Publication Date: November 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The backside of Nick Drake's headstone, wedged deep into the earth of an English parish church graveyard, reads: "Now we rise and we are everywhere." The words were penned by Drake in 1974; 30 years later, they are jarringly prophetic. Like nearly all prematurely buried cult figures, Nick Drake is reinvented each time he is rediscovered. In 2000, the sheepish, astral musings of "Pink Moon" became synonymous with backing a Volkswagen Cabrio convertible away from a raucous house party, as VW boldly sold American drivers on the notion of eschewing red plastic cups and bro-hugs for moonbeams and tree trunks (and a cute German car - sort of). The Cabrio ad inadvertently sparked an unlikely boost in record sales, propelling the album towards platinum status nearly 28 years after its release. But with each well-intentioned revival of interest, Nick Drake slips further and further out of reach, martyred and codified, superceded and consumed by his own tragic context. Since his controversial death in 1974, Nick Drake has become: the 26-year-old prophet, the diffident enigma, the tortured precursor to Kurt Cobain, the fallen hero, the folksinger-as-folksymbol, the self-sacrificing patron saint of lonely, disaffected teenagers - the One who died for our sins. Like dog-eared, over-highlighted copies of On The Road, Pink Moon gets passed around, shuffled from friend to friend like a secret, and whispered into pillows. There is something about the humility of Pink Moon - its unassuming twenty-eight minute playtime, the modest timbre of Drake's whispers, the unrecognizable open tunings, the way you always find yourself inching closer to your stereo speakers, trying to climb inside this record, to feed off its weird warmth - that endures. This book will explore how a tiny acoustic record has puttered and purred its way into a new millennium. Amanda Petrusich interviews producer Joe Boyd, string arranger Robert Kirby, and even the marketing team behind the VW commercial.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 Great album, Awful book December 2, 2008
33 1/3 series is very inconsistent. Some books provide excellent insight into the musicians mind and the situations of their lives at the time (Highway 61 Revisted and Trout Mask Replica come to mind. Others fall into over analytical hipster garbage (This and Aeroplane Over the Sea come to mind).
The writer seems more in love with Nick Drake that with the music itself. She goes on and on a expicit detail about how his slender fingers were looking for an album to listen to the night he died, about how he was a hopeless romantic, etc. Instead, through her writing, you grow to hate Nick Drake. You feel like he's nothing more than a mopey guy who couldn't lay off drugs and get his act together.
And as everyone has mentioned so far, the last third of the book is all about the Volkswagon commercial with "Pink Moon" playing over it. I'm sorry, but when do television commercials have some sort of importance in our society? Especially when popular music is used. At least when Led Zepplin or Bob Dylan do commercials, you know they are doing it for money, and not artistic merit.
Overall, awful, awful book.
 Great read with new angle on Drake June 26, 2008
The Nick Drake story has been told already. If you want a straight bio go buy the Patrick Humphries book. Really the most interesting thing about Drake that hasn't been covered is the VW stuff and it's definitely the highlight of the book. The commercial turned an entire generation of music fans onto Drake (including myself) and I really appreciated the author's recognition and analysis of the whole commercial phenomenon. The quotes in between chapters don't add much, but the book was a refreshing change from most Drake coverage in the past few years.
Nauseatingly bad writing June 19, 2008
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
As several of the other reviews point out, this book is mostly an essay about VW's marketing campaign. While I'd agree that it's an interesting aspect of the story of "Pink Moon", does it really need to be almost 1/3 of the book? The rest of the book consists of impotent "remember the first time you heard Nick Drake" interviews with members of bands that were obviously easy to access. I mean, Duncan Shiek? Who has ever cared what he thought about music?
Throughout, Petrusich's writing is stilted in only the way that someone who thinks that they're a better writer than they actually are can be. For example, at one point she refers to the music on "Pink Moon" as "nauseatingly spare". Not only is that atrociously inaccurate, it's just bad writing, in my opinion. Nauseatingly bad writing.
I shouldnt be suprised, I knew from reading the back cover that she was a Pitchfork "writer", and as a whole they are a bunch of priviledged, over-educated fashion victims of negligible intellect. Being a fan of Nick Drake and counting myself among those whose life was changed upon hearing, "Pink Moon", I was hoping the book would provide some account of his recording process, which, in all fairness, it did (though I probably could have saved some money and mental anguish and just read about it on wikipedia or something).
In short, terrible writing by a narcissistic hipster.
Dull "Moon" May 4, 2008
While I'll give credit to Ms. Petrusich for the first two thirds of the book for providing insight into Drake's personality, his addictions and his inability to sell records even though his music frequently went way beyond brilliant. She discusses all of his other albums briefly, which I liked about this book. What I didn't like so much were the celebri-nots' musings on "Pink "Moon" in between chapters and the last third of the book describing every last detail of the VW ad. Just a friendly warning.
Interesting, unusual focus on Drake February 17, 2008
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
This was an enjoyable and suprisingly informative entry in the 33 1/3 series. I agree with the other reviewer on here that the in-between-chapter quotes from musicians and songwriters were a bit superfluous, and over half of them I had never heard of. Those bits of the book seemed like padding to me. The author seems to have opted to devote a good chunk of the book to the story behind the Volkswagon advert from a few years ago, and that's the part of the book that really impressed me. I don't think the author was going to dig up too much new information about Nick or the recording of this great album, so she focused instead on the album's resurrection due to the ad. This came across as very compelling - I have never read such an in-depth account of how TV advertising works, and how people choose the music to go in them. The author talks to the people at the ad agency, and the directors who made the commercial (the people behind Little Miss Sunshine a few years later!) and you get the sense that these people all really care about Nick's music, too. So, in summary, an unusual book but well worth reading in my opinion.
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