Volcanic Tongue by David Keenan review: 'about as far from clickbait on Taylor Swift as you can get'

This collection of reviews, interviews and appreciations of the underappreciated by music journalist and author David Keenan belongs to an erudite tradition set out by his heroes, writes Fiona Shepherd

For ten years in the early 21st century, author David Keenan co-owned a Glasgow record shop called Volcanic Tongue, specialising in “weirdo music”. Before that, he played in a couple of non-weirdo indie bands, 18 Wheeler and Telstar Ponies, but indulged his more esoteric tastes by writing for The Wire, the music magazine which dives into the sonic recesses other publications might quail to explore.

It is from its pages that Keenan has curated this collection of his reviews, interviews, articles and appreciations of the underappreciated, from deep dives into the back catalogues of fingerstyle guitarist John Fahey and alt.rock trailblazers Sonic Youth to playing jukebox jury with My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields.

David Keenan in Katherine Park, Airdrie

Volcanic Tongue opens with a comical account of his first gig-going expedition all the way from North Lanarkshire to see The Pastels in Glasgow. This charming micro-memoir establishes Keenan as an uber-fan, a man who once blew all his savings on booking a tour of obscure Japanese psychedelia artists in the mid-Nineties.

From here, he is transported to New York to dice with free jazz saxophonist David S Ware and then to rural Englandshire to commune with former Throbbing Gristle members Chris & Cosey and then around Europe by train with New Zealand noise trio The Dead C.

Along the way, he joins the existing chorus of acclaim for John Martyn (“a conduit for song”) and Captain Beefheart, but he is mostly concerned with artists who are legends in their own small cosmos. German experimental musicians of a certain age – Peter Brötzmann, Conrad Schnitler, the guys from Faust – are seemingly a speciality, though he also tangles with total cats such as expat improv guitarist Derek Bailey, Sun Ra Arkestra leader Marshall Allen and Red Krayola mainman Mayo Thompson, living in Edinburgh at the time of the interview.

His extended essays on “difficult” music are an easy read and he captures some refreshingly frank chat. Shirley Collins apparently hated Pete Seeger and wishes she had learned to jitterbug. Down-to-earth enigma Jandek, who turns out to be pretty voluble for a guy who never does interviews, claims to have led the heckling of Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival. These freewheeling field dispatches have informed Keenan’s fiction writing, particularly his cult novel This Is Memorial Device, about an imaginary band from his native Airdrie.

Keenan grew up in an age where you would read about music before you heard it, and belongs to an erudite tradition set out by his heroes, legendary music critic Lester Bangs and beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Despite all his evangelism and the availability of an accompanying Volcanic Tongue album for further listening, the writing in this compendium - about as far from clickbait on Taylor Swift as you can get - is fully satisfying in itself.

Volcanic Tongue: A Time-Travelling Evangelist’s Guide to Late 20th-Century Underground Music, by David Keenan, White Rabbit, £30