Or better yet, should one not spend an evening in a serious saun (wood-fired, in the wilderness, in winter, a hole chopped in the iced-over lake for the necessary head-clearing immersion, man, nothing better than that…)? With the required re-hydration consisting of copious servings of quality barley sandwiches. That would be the lean machine’s ideal place to get to know someone.
Raud surprises with this memoir. He writes exceedingly well, knows how to turn a phrase just as well as ripping off a riff.
Mihkel Raud would not have appeared on either of these lists up until the gracile guy picked up his book Ühes väikses Eesti linnas (“in a small Estonian town”, published in 2022). Raud, for the popular music non-cognoscenti, is quite the character. Bitten by the guitar bug at a very young age, born into an interesting family (parents Eno Raud and Aino Pervik, both authors of wonderful imaginative children’s books) Raud is perhaps the Estonian Simon Cowell. In that he is similar to the British arrogant buffoon in the self-centered entitled category. With a significant difference. Raud actually is a very good musician who also knows rock history through and through.
