Though never a big favourite of ours, Lush, or the people in Lush, always seemed like ‘one of us’, the kind of people who played in bands, lived on the dole (or worked in record/book shops) and were the lifeblood of a certain kind of indie. Unfortunately, most of this kind of indie met its death at the hands of music biz approved Britpop which, relatively quickly and, not surprisingly, crashed and burned leaving a black hole of unrecouped advances, album landfill and a host of uncomfortable and unanswered questions. Some of which are answered definitively in Miki Berenyi’s autobiography, Fingers Crossed. She’s scathing about Britpop’s kings and its minions, many of whom were complicit in the scene collapsing due to coked up arrogance, little Englander small mindedness and the moronic belief that acting like a sexist nob-head was somehow edgy and amusing. As previously stated, indie was never about this. It was an aesthetic by which people came together, a family of friends whose values were often a better fit than the values of one’s own family. Fingers Crossed gives a sense why this was attractive to a certain kind of person, whose home life, as in Miki’s case, in no way lived up to the Tory Party’s much vaunted ‘family values’. It was the diversity of London’s music scene that gave Miki the confidence to ‘find herself’, form a band and live a life with other likeminded people, “I wanted the camaraderie of a gang.  A family. Imagine being with your mates, having a laugh, playing wonderful music to crowds of people…”. Indie music the ideal, Britpop the aberration, both of which Miki Berenyi’s Fingers Crossed covers with the kind of substance and style that its place amongst the greatest of music books is most definitely assured.

Fingers Crossed – Miki Berenyi - publ. Nine Eight Books - £10.99

Steven Long