BOOK OF THE MONTH : JUNE 2025 : ‘YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG’ by MICHAEL M

The sub-title of this book is ‘My Life As A Failed Rock Star (In The Best Band You’ve Never Heard) which I’m pretty sure is the case for maybe 99.99% of TVV regulars as  We Are The Physics, haven’t, until now, featured on the blog.

The thing is, if this book wasn’t any good, I wouldn’t be using today to offer up my thoughts and opinions, as I wouldn’t want to waste anyone’s time.  The thing is, this book isn’t just good, but is, at least in my very humble opinion, one of the best and most honest autobiographies I’ve had the pleasure of reading. It has a huge amount of laugh out loud moments, mixed in with tales of happenings and events that would make the casual reader question the sanity of anyone who wishes to embark on a career in the music industry, be that as a performer, manager, promoter, roadie, stage/lighting technician or whatever, as every single role seems to be a thankless task with next to no financial reward or job security on offer.

The book emerged late last year from the stable of Last Night From Glasgow, the not-for-profit label that has done so much to energise the music scene here in my home city.  The on-line description prior to publication gives you some idea of the thinking:-

“Occasionally we embark upon projects with absolutely no idea of the pitfalls and processes. We did so a couple of years ago when we decided to publish Craig McAllister’s biography of Trashcan Sinatras. The funny thing is that publishing books is considerably easier than pressing records, but unlike pressing records, publishing books throws up many possibilities that are best left open – in the short term at least.

Later this year, we will bring you a very limited run of Michael M’s auto biographical tour de force – You’re Doing It Wrong. The purpose of this limited run is to show the bigger publishers that there truly is a demand and market for this work, and thus provide a platform for Michael’s justified world domination.”

Michael then added a few paragraphs to set the scene:-

‘From 2005–2015, I was Michael M, the singer, bass player, and songwriter of an indie rock band from Glasgow, Scotland called We Are The Physics. Never heard of them? I wouldn’t have either, if I hadn’t been in them.

We were a band who launched ourselves on MySpace in the burgeoning days of social media and were hurtled into the musical mainstream limelight for fourteen brief minutes of fame, then disappeared. Not in any cliched rock ’n’ roll implosion, but because most people just stopped looking for us.

I’m not welcoming you to a chronological memoir of my existence as if any of it mattered, but a series of vignettes and anecdotal tales of failure, chronic mundanity, and ridiculous dismay that document the architecture of my band’s demise, unravelling me and my catalogue of personal defeats. A Twilight Zone for the last gasps of the music industry before streaming took over, amplifying just how wrong we did it, and why you’ve never heard of us.

Unlike most music autobiographies, this isn’t an ode to sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. It’s an ode to budget hotels, grim backstage boredom, the claw grabbing machines at service stations, and the unhinged and unspoken workers who made the machinations of touring without fame function.

This is a celebration of the middling, the mediocre, the jobbing bands who never got on Top of the Pops, the almost almost famous. Set against a background of the dour, perpetual rain of Glasgow and beyond, this poignant story moves from childhood dreams, to adolescent shame, through triumph and grief to tragic pathos, all with an acerbic (and Scottish) sense of self-deprecating humour.’

Twenty-three chapters….which aren’t in any sort of chronological order, plus an intro and an outro over 375 pages, all of which contain sentences and paragraphs that will make you go Hmmmm…..but in a really good way.

Michael M is a gifted storyteller and raconteur, be it him recalling his tough upbringing in the east end of Glasgow and later on in one of Scotland’s new towns (but not the one from which Roddy Frame and the Jesus and Mary Chain had emerged), or the many genuinely bonkers things that happened to him and his bandmates over their ten years together.

For all that We Are The Physics never enjoyed any commercial success, this tale recounts the triumphs of shows in Europe and Japan, of being the support to Hollywood superstar Jared Leto‘s band, Thirty Seconds To Mars and their role as jobbing musicians in a film directed by Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian.  Shows at T In The Park and Glasgow Barrowlands are fondly recalled, but again in ways that are incredibly self-deprecating, while the chapter on the recording of the debut album in a slum studio in the arse-end of Glasgow, all for the sake of trying to save some money that would sustain them while they are out on the road, is eye-opening, jaw-dropping and rib-tickling in equal measures.

It’s a book that, for the most part and like the band itself, doesn’t take things too seriously, as evidenced by the way they went about recording a unique and impromptu take on a cover of Fireworks, the Katy Perry song which went out live on a BBC radio show on Bonfire Night.

But amid the laughs, there are a couple of moving vignettes which only illustrate the brilliance of Michael M’s writing, one being about his father and the other, towards the end of the book, when his own life unravels in a sudden and unexpected way.

I’d like to think that many of the folk who are regular visitors to the blog are the type to care a great deal about music and musicians, and tend to be on the lookout for something beyond the superficial and mundane.  You’re Doing It All Wrong certainly ticks all the boxes in that regard. At the risk of repeating myself, it’s a music memoir unlike any other I’ve ever read, and that’s me taking into account many hundreds going back five decades.

Do yourselves a big favour and buy yourself a copy from here. It’s also available as a digital download.

mp3: We Are The Physics – This Is Vanity

 

JC

To celebrate my impending 62nd birthday, I’ve bought an additional two copies of the book to give away free in a competition.

All you have to do is tell me which famous Croatian tennis star, and the winner of Wimbledon in 2001, did We Are The Physics later immortalise in song.  (further hint – the video for the single can be viewed on YouTube).

Leave your answers in the comments section…..and that way, everyone can copy whoever gets in first correctly!!  Come 30 June, I’ll randomly draw out two winners and post the book out to the lucky recipients.

Sorry to say that, to avoid any excess P&P and/or customs charges, the competition is only open to UK readers.  Again sorry!