Perched at the top of this year's gift pile is Ben Watson's 'Adorno for Revolutionaries' (Unkant)- if the test of a music writer is whether or not their words make you want to listen to the music they listen to, listen to the music they swear by, then there's no-one else in Watson's league. Much of his writing I find gloriously abrasive and impenetrable but over the years I've added more cds to my collection as a direct result of a fleeting mention by Watson in an essay on Adorno or Prynne than is, in all honesty, entirely healthy. Not since my years of tape-recording and annotating John Peel shows have I let one man have such a say in the music I consume. Less now, far less now, than a few years back, but even so. The influence is still there. His review of Coltrane's 'Live In Seattle'- 'the best recorded music that the twentieth century has to offer, no fooling'- I actually clipped out of a copy of The Wire during a clear-out that saw half a dozen year's worth of copies consigned to the bin.
The Adorno book isn't going to be a little light bedtime reading, but that isn't what I'm after. I'm tripping over piles and piles of little light bedtime reading when I'm at work. Passive can be awfully nice, but sometimes the awfully nice has to be rebelled against.
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