Faster Than A Cannonball cover art

Faster Than A Cannonball

1995 and All That

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Faster Than A Cannonball

By: Dylan Jones
Narrated by: Jessica Preddy, Kris Dyer, Leighton Pugh, Russell Bentley
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About this listen

 Decades tend to crest halfway through, and 1995 was the year of the Nineties: peak Britpop (Oasis v Blur), peak YBA (Tracey Emin's tent), peak New Lad (when Nick Hornby published High Fidelity, when James Brown's Loaded detonated the publishing industry, and when pubs were finally allowed to stay open on a Sunday). It was the year of The Bends, the year Danny Boyle started filming Trainspotting, the year Richey Edwards went missing, the year Alex Garland wrote The Beach, the year Blair changed Clause IV after a controversial vote at the Labour Conference. It was a period of huge cultural upheaval - in art, literature, publishing and drugs, and a period of almost unparalleled hedonism.

Faster Than a Cannonball is a cultural swipe of the decade from loungecore to the rise of New Labour, teasing all the relevant artistic strands through interviews with all the major protagonists and exhaustive re-evaluations of the important records of the year, by artists including Radiohead, Teenage Fanclub, Tricky, Pulp, Blur, the Chemical Brothers, Supergrass, Elastica, Spiritualized, Aphex Twin and, of course, Oasis. Europe Great Britain History & Criticism Music

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Critic reviews

Dylan Jones' delicious, hilarious new book has given me more insight into the British psyche than Henry James. And the writing is fire (Courtney Love)
Amazing achievement (Tracey Emin)
The best book on the nineties I have ever read. Dylan Jones is the best observer of the times we have. An absolutely brilliant book (Alan McGee)
Great book (Chris Salewicz)
Considering the hold that Britpop had on the nation's psyche in the nineties, it's amazing how short-loved the movement was. This book shines a light on just how toxic nineties lad culture could be for girls with guitars (Sarah Ditum)
A kind of stealth memoir. We see the decade's utopian promise smothered by money and cocaine rather than Nixon and Vietnam. One can read the decade as a period of brash, breathless momentum, especially in technology and the arts (Dorian Lynskey)
Fascinating
Dylan Jones's Faster Than a Cannonball captures the exuberance and spirit of the Nineties [and] sheds light on the wider cultural and economic environment (Henry Williams)
Fantastic (Matthew d'Ancona)
All stars
Most relevant
Some nice anecdotes and the links are well written but this is probably better to read than listen to. The accents (which sometimes change a couple of times in a sentence) are hilarious. Alan McGee seems to be from Glasgow, Dundee, Belfast and New Delhi.

Too long, laughable accents.

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I didn’t like this at first, when I realised it was a series of cobbled quotes. But it does grow on you with some interesting and some amusing anecdotes.

Accents are a bit all over the place but actually this os a story better listened to than read.

So worth a listen overall.

Changed my mind

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I'm really sorry, I wanted to like this as I love the nineties but I just cannot handle the fact that the entire book is made up of quotes rather than narrative. It's like only eating candy floss and and never eating meat and potatoes - it is deeply unsatisfying after about twenty minutes. Sorry.

Reams of quotes do not a satisfying book make

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I gave up on listening to this because of the cringey voice actors reading the quotations. Like terrible impressionists in a comedy sketch.

The story itself does interest, reflecting on a great year. The anecdotes are amusing but sadly, not enough to listen to the end.

A story to read rather than listen

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