Sack of Shit: The Story of Oliver Dervish (Aadvark Books) Ed. Susanna Harding This is a biography of the late Oliver Dervish, the infamous music journalist who made his name in the sixties as a writer on the New Musical Express. The story of his career is largely told via extracts from his reviews and interviews, along with anecdotes from friends, family and enemies. There are also several full-colour pages devoted to Dervish’s later experiments with image-journalism, plus numerous graphs charting the increasing negativity of his opinions. Dervish burst onto the scene in 1967 gaining instant notoriety as a trenchant critic of the bands associated with the hippy scene. His big break came when he reviewed The Rolling Stones in a local newspaper, famously calling them a ‘bunch of drugged-up dilettantes with hair like bamboo soldiers’. The NME soon snapped up this ambitious young writer and within a year he was given his own column. Week after week, Dervish systematically criticised the very bands the NME elsewhere sought to champion. The Animals were dubbed ‘frilly note retards’, Bob Dylan was dismissed as a ‘maroon-flavoured word-ponce’ and The Yardbirds were glibly compared to ‘the tired sound of a coal bunker that’s been opened once too often’. Famously caricatured in a rare Robert Crumb cartoon, Dervish’s off-page antics also contributed to his reputation as a troublemaker. Many of the anecdotes recorded here speak of Dervish’s behaviour at the numerous gigs and parties he attended around London. According to one witness he would ‘often secure a small audience in a section of corridor, and, content than none could politely escape, pour forth on the shortfalls of the latest Lulu album.’ While Dervish’s impassioned prose initially won him many fans, a growing number of readers objected to his relentless censure. That his downbeat style jarred with the jubilant optimism of the times led to his dismissal in 1969 on the grounds that he ‘spoilt the trip’. Yet those few years in the limelight were enough to ensure Dervish’s reputation as a cult figure for subsequent generations. In 1977, ten years after his opening salvo against the Rolling Stones, Dervish found favour with the new-wave – and was again employed by the NME, his column reinstated. Dervish’s bilious attitude seemed to chime with the spirit of punk, making him a kind of unwitting spokesman for the movement. Whilst The Ramones were initially dismayed at his ‘cackhanded oatmeal for the tone-spastic’ remarks, other bands started to take a sort of proud pleasure in being lambasted by this anti-journo. Sham 69 even pasted excerpts from Dervish’s pre-release review on the sleeve of their debut single. ‘Shitty gratings from the end of a yelping rod’, read the cutting. Dervish became increasing scathing as the 80s wore on, until he was again dropped by the NME after filing an interview with new-romantics, Visage, comprised entirely of expletives. Eight years later Dervish resurfaced for the launch of his self-financed and short-lived magazine, Sack of Shit. Sadly, the publication folded after issue two, due to a bold editorial decision to leave all but six pages blank. It sold precisely three copies. Undeterred, Oliver Dervish continued to write typically caustic music reviews for his website until his unexpected and sudden death during an Atomic Kitten gig in 2004. This book is a fitting testimony to the man and his powerful prose.