Positive Books For Negative Times: Girl To City

In a effort to start getting this blog back on track, I thought I'd mention that I finally finished Amy Rigby's excellent autobiography, Girl To City, a few weeks back. I haven't had the necessary time or mental energy for reading over the past few months, so this took me ages to get through, but I had a good session with it while on holiday and finished it at last.

It was also the case that I was enjoying Amy's writing so much that I didn't want the book to end. Telling her story from being a young girl discovering records, through her New York student years, to becoming a parent and finally getting a solo record deal, the book is unflinchingly honest, self-deprecating and very funny. There's a string of doomed relationships, bands that sparkle briefly then fizzle out quickly, and a sense that the only reason it took Amy so long to achieve her dream was a lack of confidence in her own abilities... something I could relate to a lot.

She also paints a vivid picture of New York in the late 70s and early 80s, a time when the city when seemed on the verge of falling apart and sinking into the mire. It's a time and place I find endlessly fascinating, and this book really places you there, among the dilapidated squats and grubby underground nightclubs that seem a world away from how we picture the Big Apple today.

You do find out about the true story of the plaster cow too...

Pushed plaster cows down city streets

Wore thrift store skirts with little pleats

Smoked pot and sat around all day

Bought a guitar but didn't try to play

Summertime in '83

I didn't need a j-o-b

Cause unemployment kept me free

To study country harmony

And find somebody with a car

Drink cheap beer in the Polish bar

Take photos in the photo booth

The summer of my wasted youth