The Commitments by Roddy Doyle 10 out of 10 and an Absolute Joy Ride

 The Commitments by Roddy Doyle

10 out of 10 and an Absolute Joy Ride

This is one of the fantastic, hilarious and short marvels that you can finish in just a few hours, wishing at the same time that there would be more, included for perfect reasons on The Guardian’s 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction - in fact, if there are a few works one Must Read, this is among them, for one would be missing so much if he or she were to avoid it, the Absolute Bliss in the form of a magnificent dialogue, buoyant characters, fabulous, contemporary obsessions with music, musicians, influences as a group of young people try to launch and keep going a music group in the city of Dublin…

Jimmy Rabbitte seems to be the hero of the narrative as an intelligent, amusing, dashing, creative young man who meets in the first few pages with Derek Scully and Outspan, who is actually called Liam Foster, two friends from the neighborhood of north Dublin, to talk about the band that they had, called And, And, And – about to be retitled with an exclamation mark added after the second And – and it is evident from the start that Jimmy knows more than anybody, at least in their crowd, about music, for he had known about names like Frankie Goes to Hollywood – which is out as they are speaking – and he has the knowledge, acumen to speak about Depeche Mode – the favorite band of the undersigned  - the fact that many of the ‘wankers’ went to art school and they only sport funny hairstyles but do not impress Rabbitte.

The others retort that The Beatles went to art school, seemingly so did Roxy Music, but if one wants an authority on trends, quality, tendencies, Jimmy is the Man, as he explains how ‘rock & roll is about riding’ and the fact that ‘the blackies in America used to say riding for sex apparently, and if Frankie Goes to Hollywood is out now, ‘sex and politics’ are in, and not as in the romantic, innocent verses that talk about holding hands and walking on beaches or forests, but in a more evident, blunt, perhaps confrontational way, for the delicacies of Ireland, a country with a Catholic majority, which until very recently had draconic abortion laws – they may still have, but the case of a woman that died because she was not given the humane choices in a land that insisted on having the fetus, the baby no matter what, even if it would be in terrible danger and the mother is certain to die…

Jimmy Rabbitte takes over the troubled And, And! And, telling the two members of the soon to be defunct group that a, they must eject the other man, the singer and then they would change the name and make serious additions to the band, The Commitments, with individuals that respond to the add placed by J. Rabbitte in the paper – though most of those that come to see him are cast away, some based only on their looks, a nod to the classic Blink, The Power of thinking Without Thinking, by one of the most influential thinkers of our age, Malcolm Gladwell – and that answer questions posed by the interviewer, who wants to know what their influences are – they mention U2, Led Zeppelin and when they say Jethro Tull, the impresario – manager shuts the door in their face…as for the J. in the ad, when queried by his mother, he says that ‘nobody ever heard of a millionaire called Jimmy’, hence the J.

Surprisingly, if not more, shockingly, a man who is much older than the hero is at the door, with a scooter, a rather bald head, although he mentions he is younger than some celebrated musicians and then claims to have been on the stage with…well, almost anybody who is somebody, from The Beatles to Jimmy Hendrix and with a lot of extraordinary names in between them – he just missed The Stones, but not many other Music Gods – and this new personage, Joey ‘the Lips’ Fagan, would prove not just crucial, but he is the second most important in the hierarchy, if we are to draw one and he would help the manager and the band get together, learn many tricks and secretes of the ‘industry’, up to the moment when he might be instrumental in a serious crisis, which we could argue that he had produced.

James Clifford is one of the new members, though he is refused on first hearing, because of his past behavior, but when the musicians hear that he has recently been naughty in church, where he sang something about a mouse – was it? – and therefore has been excluded, to the delight of his soon to be new colleagues in The Commitments, where he will play the piano and be a team player for the most part, though he has to face two competing duties, the rehearsals and ‘concerts’ and his study in medicine, which he might have to dedicate to full time, if things come to a nadir and the breakdown in relationships among the band would become inevitable…

The Commitments would play soul, music for the average people, from the ‘hardest working band in the world’, which has some wonderful backing vocalists, a group of three girls that strangely enough get entangled in succession with…Joey the Lips, though he is so much older in the eyes of the other men, who are all infatuated with Imelda, with the exception of Joey, that would respond to her advances nonetheless, causing so much tension that the group might be unable to cope with all the animosity and hatred, though the other, perhaps most important factor in the possible collapse of The Commitments would be the arrogant, Trump-like vocalist Declan ‘Deco’ Cuffe, a self-absorbed individual who mocks the others, does not play by the rules established by the band, when asked, does not give a proper presentation on the stage but makes a mockery of the other singers instead…

The Commitments was such an adjectival – a formidable term from The True History of the Kelly Gang, by the Medicine Man Peter Carey – spectacular, divine magnum opus that this reader has started immediately after finishing it Paddy Doyle Ha Ha Ha, a Booker Prize winner by the same glorious Roddy Doyle, that alas, he had started but found unappealing some time ago…mea culpa…