The Singer - Softcover

Cathi Unsworth began her music journalistic career at age 19 when she started writing for Melody Maker. Her own writing is inspired by the late Derek Raymond, whom she met when she interviewed him for Melody Maker.

Former Melody Maker journalist Unsworth crafts an engaging mystery while paying homage to the era of punk music. Journalist Eddie Bracknell, desperate to make things right with his intellectual girlfriend, finally gets it together and lands a book contract. He’s set to document the dramatic 1981 rise and fall of the band Blood Truth. The band’s core was formed when two working-class lads from Hull found powerful musical chemistry with a classically trained jazz musician. They recruited their charismatic singer, Vince Smith, during a raucous Sex Pistols concert. With a kind of violent spontaneity as their mantra, the band went on tour, released their first album, and became an instant sensation. Then Vince disappeared, and the band imploded. As Eddie tracks down former band members, fans, and hangers-on, he begins to zero in on the mystery of Vince’s disappearance and the complexity of the enigmatic singer’s personality. Unsworth captures the creativity and high energy of the punk scene in the early 1980s, while vivid set pieces also depict the drugs, the greed, and the violence. --Joanne Wilkinson