Cultural Life: Johnny Marr, musician

Interview by Kate Wilson

Friday 04 December 2009

Music

I'm listening to the new Lissy Trullie LP – she's a New York writer with a great band and good songs. She's just had her first release on Wichita independent record label. I like Comet Gain – they opened when we played at KOKO.

Books

I'm not big on fiction, but I really liked "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Solzhenitsyn. It's about a prisoner in a Russian work-camp. I read a lot of almost metaphysical stuff – books that are mystical without being too hippy. I find books to be a doorway into something else. I recently enjoyed "Cosmic Consciousness" by Richard Bucke, which is about the evolution of the human mind.

Visual Arts

I managed to see Ed Ruscha at the Hayward Gallery. I really like his late 1950s work – the stuff he started off doing. I'm not keen on his 1970s work but he got it back in the 1980s.

Films

I've just watched "Moon", directed by Duncan Jones. I saw it in an old, beaten-up cinema in Portland, Oregon, which was a really good experience – you can't get the same sort of atmosphere in multiplex cinemas.

The Cribs' new album, 'Ignore The Ignorant', is out now, and they play a series of UK dates from 2 December

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