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Cover of How To Disappear: A Portrait Of Radiohead by Colin Greenwood.

Colin Greenwood

How To Disappear: A Portrait Of Radiohead

John Murray Press

    A collection of never-before-seen photographs of RADIOHEAD by their bassist Colin Greenwood, with a ten-thousand-word essay by him about the band that has been his life since they formed at school.

    ‘For years now, I’ve been taking fugitive snaps of my band, Radiohead. I’ve tried to catch out my friends with my small black Yashica T4 Super. They are so lost in their own moment of performance that they don’t see me with the camera.’ Colin Greenwood

    How to Disappear is bassist Colin Greenwood’s stunning portrait of Radiohead in his own photographs. Two decades in the making, he takes us on a journey into the heart of the 21st-century’s most influential band, a maverick collective who have vastly broadened our musical landscape while they dominate and distort it. On stage, backstage, in the rehearsal room, behind the scenes, on tour, at work and at play, Colin’s photographs, and the stories and memories they evoke for him in his accompanying text, form an intimate portrait of the musical and cultural iconoclasts as they travel through ‘our middle years: all the joy and doubt and confidence and uncertainty we would oscillate between’.

    Colin Greenwood is from Oxford and has played bass in Radiohead since their formation in 1985. He's also recorded and toured with Tamino, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis and has written for publications including the Guardian and the Spectator.

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    Cover of Nobody's Empire - Signed Edition by Stuart Murdoch.

    Stuart Murdoch

    Nobody's Empire - Signed Edition

    Faber & Faber

      The life-affirming debut novel by the Belle and Sebastian frontman.

      It’s the early 1990s in Glasgow, and Stephen - music loving romantic - has emerged from a lengthy hospital stay diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, a littleunderstood disease that has robbed him of any prospects of work, a social life or independent living. Meeting fellow strugglers, who the world seems to care less and less for, they form their own support group and try to get by as cheaply and as painlessly as possible.

      Finding that he has the ability to write songs, albeit in a slow and fledgling way, Stephen wakes to the possibility of a spiritual life beyond the everyday. Leaving Glasgow in search of a cure in the mythic warmth of California, Stephen and his friend Richard float between hostels, sofas, and park benches. Could the trip really offer them both a new-world reinvention?

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      Cover of This Woman's Work : Essays On Music by Kim Gordon & Sinead Gleeson.

      Kim Gordon & Sinead Gleeson

      This Woman's Work : Essays On Music

      White Rabbit

        This Woman's Work: Essays on Music is edited by Kim Gordon and Sinead Gleeson and features contributors Anne Enright, Fatima Bhutto, Jenn Pelly, Rachel Kushner, Juliana Huxtable, Leslie Jamison, Liz Pelly, Maggie Nelson, Margo Jefferson, Megan Jasper, Ottessa Moshfegh, Simone White, Yiyun Li and Zakia Sewell.

        Published to challenge the historic narrative of music and music writing being written by men, for men, This Woman's Work seeks to confront the male dominance and sexism that have been hard-coded in the canons of music, literature, and film and has forced women to fight pigeon-holing or being side-lined by carving out their own space. Women have to speak up, to shout louder to tell their story - like the auteurs and ground-breakers featured in this collection, including: Anne Enright on Laurie Anderson; Megan Jasper on her ground-breaking work with Sub Pop; Margo Jefferson on Bud Powell and Ella Fitzgerald; and Fatima Bhutto on music and dictatorship.

        This Woman's Work also features writing on the experimentalists, women who blended music and activism, the genre-breakers, the vocal auteurs; stories of lost homelands and friends; of propaganda and dictatorships, the women of folk and country, the racialised tropes of jazz, the music of Trap and Carriacou; of mixtapes and violin lessons.

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        Cover of The Hacienda: Threads - Foreword By Peter Hook by Rebecca Hook.

        Rebecca Hook

        The Hacienda: Threads - Foreword By Peter Hook

        Welbeck

          The people. The love. These are the threads that came together to make the Haçienda great.

          Celebrate the magic of the club that changed everything in this official book, told through evocative photographs and eye-witness accounts of the people who were there, from musicians, DJs and fashion designers to performers, clubbers and staff. Featuring contributions from Peter Hook, John Cooper Clarke, Bez, Noel Gallagher, Rowetta, Mani, Irvine Welsh, Andrew O'Hagan, Mike Pickering, DJ Paulette, Todd Terry and Roger Sanchez - as well as Haçienda staff, club-goers and many more.

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          Cover of A Fool's Journey : To The Beach Boys And Beyond by Carli Munoz.

          Carli Munoz

          A Fool's Journey : To The Beach Boys And Beyond

          Interlink Books

            Cutting his musical teeth in a Puerto Rican jazz club in the 1960s, Carli Munoz came of age during the countercultural flowering of that era; he lived for music, knowledge, and the mind-expanding magic of LSD. Wanting to expand creative horizons for his successful psychedelic rock band, Munoz flew to New York on a whim with 11 dollars in his pocket and embarked on a deep dive into the gritty scene of gigs, girls, and trips, struggling to fill his pockets with dollars and his belly with food. Free-falling into the dark underbelly of the city, Munoz ended up homeless and penniless until an epiphany on the subway brought him back to the surface. On the cusp of a new decade, Munoz moved to LA to fight for a new life and a second chance. Hanging out in Houdini's old mansion in Laurel Canyon, he watched the free-loving idealism of the '60s melt into the disco-and-cocaine-saturated hedonism of the '70s, until one day he found himself on tour with the Beach Boys. He became close friends with Dennis Wilson - a friendship that ranged from pranking each other to working on an album together to watching him spiral irretrievably into self-destruction. He witnessed the feud between Mike Love and the Wilsons firsthand, as well as the unchecked instability of Brian Wilson. Despite the chaos and power struggles within the band, Munoz was able to create enthralling music with them, as well as with some of the other popular musicians of the '70s, including Wilson Pickett, the Association, George Benson, and Peter Cetera. Populated with an eclectic cast of artists, musicians, clairvoyants, record producers, hippies, hobos, and superstars, A Fool's Journey is a vivid snapshot of an era-defining moment that will never be repeated. Although Munoz toured with the Beach Boys for ten years and partied with rock stars, he was also just an island kid from Puerto Rico, forever in exile, forever 'the other.' The story of his journey is as compelling as it is timely.

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            Cover of I Thought I Heard You Speak : Women At Factory Records by Audrey Golden.

            Audrey Golden

            I Thought I Heard You Speak : Women At Factory Records

            White Rabbit

              Factory Records has become the stuff of legend. The histories of the label have been told from many perspectives, from visual catalogues and memoirs to exhibitions. Yet no in-depth history has ever been told from the perspectives of the women who were integral to Factory's cultural significance.

              The untold history of Factory Records is one of women's work at nearly every turn: recording music, playing live gigs, running the label behind the scenes, managing and promoting bands, designing record sleeves, making films and music videos, pioneering sound technology, DJing, and running one of the most chaotic clubs on the planet, The Hacienda. Told entirely in their voices and featuring contributions from Gillian Gilbert, Gina Birch, Cath Carroll, Penny Henry and over fifty more interviewees, I THOUGHT I HEARD YOU SPEAK is an oral history that reveals the true cultural reach of the label and its staying power in the twenty-first century.

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              Cover of The Book Of ABBA : Melancholy Undercover by Jan Gradvall.

              Jan Gradvall

              The Book Of ABBA : Melancholy Undercover

              Faber & Faber

                Over half a century after their songs were recorded, ABBA's songs still make people the world over dance and sing every day, and their ability to evoke every emotion has made them the ultimate soundtrack to major life events, from birthday parties and weddings to heartbreaks and memorials. Since interviewing the four members of ABBA for an article in 2013 - at which time the band had not been interviewed for 30 years - a relationship was sparked between writer Jan Gradvall and the band, and he was granted unique access for the next decade. He has interviewed each of them exclusively for Melancholy Undercover, and they share their thoughts and opinions with him here more openly than ever before.

                Gradvall places ABBA at the centre of the musical universe, and alongside his fascinating interviews, he gives readers the socio-cultural context of how the band's sound was formed - including the melancholic hints of Swedish folk music and the dansband culture of their formative years - and shows how the story of ABBA is also the story of Sweden and the internationalisation of pop culture. With around 2 million tickets sold to the ABBA Voyage experience in London since it opened in May 2023, it is undeniable that, in the history of pop culture and music, there has never been a group like ABBA. This remarkably intimate, approved biography brings readers a few steps closer to one of the world's most famously private bands.

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                Cover of MC5 : An Oral Biography Of Rock's Most Revolutionary Band by Brad Tolinksi.

                Brad Tolinksi

                MC5 : An Oral Biography Of Rock's Most Revolutionary Band

                Omnibus Press

                  A riveting oral biography of the proto-punk Detroit rockers MC5, based on original interviews with the band and key members of their inner circle Few bands have dared to ignite a revolution through their fusion of activism and art like MC5. Managed by the charismatic radical and hippie spokesman, John Sinclair, MC5 wasn't just a band; they were a thunderous proclamation of dissent, amplifying the voices of the marginalized long before it was fashionable. From championing Black Lives Matter to rallying for cannabis legalization, they fearlessly thrust their beliefs onto the world stage. For their efforts, the rabble-rousing musical arm of the White Panther Party, the scourge of J.

                  Edgar Hoover's FBI and other defenders of public decency, were often beaten with clubs, threatened at gunpoint, tossed into jail, and even unceremoniously dumped by their record company, right as their album was storming up the charts--and all while the Sex Pistols were still on training wheels. What has been lost amidst this notoriety is MC5 itself, a band worth remembering not because they were bad boys, but because they were so damn good. In MC5: An Oral Biography of Rock's Most Revolutionary Band?, music journalists Brad Tolinski and Jaan Uhelszki invite readers to reconsider this legendary group. Centered around a series of interviews with MC5, their manager, and their inner circle--many of whom are no longer with us--that Tolinski and Uhelszki inherited from CREEM Magazine founding staffer and Mojo's US editor Ben Edmonds prior to his death, this book presents a genuinely candid, funny, and moving portrait of rock's most uncompromising and articulate band. MC5 also features a virtual "who's who" of 1960s rockers, including Iggy and the Stooges, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, promoter Bill Graham, John Lennon, the Jefferson Airplane, and political firebrands like Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, and Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver. As innovative, insightful, and inspiring as the band itself, MC5 is a fitting testament to the legacy of these iconic rock pioneers--told in their very own words.

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                  Cover of Faith, Hope And Carnage by Nick Cave And Seán O'Hagan.

                  Nick Cave And Seán O'Hagan

                  Faith, Hope And Carnage

                  Canon Gate

                    Faith, Hope and Carnage is a book about Nick Cave's inner life. Created from more than forty hours of intimate conversations with the journalist Sean O'Hagan, this is a profoundly thoughtful exploration, in Cave's own words, of what really drives his life and creativity. The book examines questions of belief, art, music, freedom, grief and love.

                    It draws candidly on Cave's life, from his early childhood to the present day, his loves, his work ethic and his dramatic transformation in recent years. Faith, Hope and Carnage offers ladders of hope and inspiration from a true creative visionary.

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                    Cover of The Stone Roses : War And Peace by Simon Spence.

                    Simon Spence

                    The Stone Roses : War And Peace

                    Penguin Books Ltd

                      The definitive story of The Stone Roses by Simon Spence, with an updated final chapter covering the reunion rollercoaster ride. From the Manchester backwaters to the worldwide 2012 tour, War and Peace lays bare the irresistible tale of the last of the great bands. .

                      Based on 400 hours of interviews with over seventy of The Stone Roses' closest associates, including six former band members, War and Peace is the first major biography of the band that defined a generation. Originally planned in collaboration with Reni, the reclusive drummer, this book had been a year in the making when the Roses, against all odds, announced their re-formation. It is a remarkable coda to an astonishing story.

                      In 1989 their debut album and the single 'Fools Gold' made them the most exciting British export since the Sex Pistols. With their incendiary aura the Roses became figureheads of the 'Madchester' movement. War and Peace traces the band's genesis, studded with violent gigs and abandoned recordings, and shaped by their infamous manager Gareth Evans.

                      The Roses' legendary gigs culminated in the era-defining Spike Island show in 1990. From this pinnacle the unravelling was spectacular. But the true story behind their rise and fall - and resurrection - has never been told.

                      Until now.

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                      Cover of Slint's Spiderland - 33 1/3 by Scott Tennent.

                      Scott Tennent

                      Slint's Spiderland - 33 1/3

                      Continuum Publishing Corporation

                        This is a thorough history of Slint, and the Louisville scene that surrounded the band, leading up to and focusing on the creation of their masterpiece, "Spiderland". Of all the seminal albums to come out in 1991 - the year of "Nevermind", "Loveless", "Ten", and "Out of Time", among others - none were quieter, both in volume and influence, than "Spiderland", and no band more mysterious than Slint. Few single albums can lay claim to sparking an entire genre, but "Spiderland" - all six songs of it - laid the foundation for post rock in the 1990s.

                        Yet for so much obvious influence, both the band and the album remain something of a puzzle. This thoroughly researched book is the first substantive attempt to break through some of the mystery surrounding "Spiderland" and the band that made it. Scott Tennent has written a long overdue look at this remarkable album and its origins, delving into the small, insular musical universe that included bands like Squirrel Bait, Maurice, Bitch Magnet, and Bastro.

                        The story, helped by in-depth interviews with band members David Pajo and Todd Brashear, explores the formation of Slint, the recording of "Tweez", and the band's dramatic move into the sound of "Spiderland". For more information on the series and on individual titles in the series, check out our blog.

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                        Cover of The Cure: Stills by Paul Cox.

                        Paul Cox

                        The Cure: Stills

                        ACC Art Books

                          The Cure "Stills" follows the changing faces of one of the leading British rock bands during the post-punk and new-wave movements of the late '70s and '80s. As the band has continued over a period of nearly 50 years, front man and only constant member Robert Smith has maintained the band's popularity throughout the changing musical eras, while staying true to their individualistic style and quirkiness. Instrumental in the creation of the varying incarnations of The Cure is photographer Paul Cox, who first encountered the group on Top of the Pops in 1980.

                          Having established a creative, productive and trusting relationship with the band, Cox's resulting work is The Cure in all their glory. Including over 200 colour and 75 black-and-white images, with accompanying captions selected and written by Cox and Smith, this book is a celebration of a seminal band through the lens of a skilled photographer. 

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                          Cover of Loaded : The Life (and Afterlife) Of The Velvet Underground by Dylan Jones.

                          Dylan Jones

                          Loaded : The Life (and Afterlife) Of The Velvet Underground

                          White Rabbit

                            Dylan Jones' definitive oral history of The Velvet Underground draws on contributions from remaining members, contemporaneous musicians, critics, film-makers, and the generation of artists who emerged in their wake, to celebrate not only their impact but their legacy, which burns brighter than ever into the 21st century. Rebellion always starts somewhere, and in the music world of the transgressive teen whether it be the 1960s of the 2020s, The Velvet Underground represent ground zero. Crystallizing the idea of the bohemian, urban, narcissistic art school gang, around a psychedelic rock and roll band - a stylistic idea that evolved in the rarefied environs of Andy Warhol's Factory - The Velvets were the first major American rock group with a mixed gender line-up; they never smiled in photographs, wore sunglasses indoors, and in the process invented the archetype that would be copied by everyone from Sid Vicious to Bobby Gillespie.

                            They were avant-garde nihilists, writing about drug abuse, prostitution, paranoia, and sado-masochistic sex at a time when the rest of the world was singing about peace and love. In that sense they invented punk. It could even be argued they invented modern New York.

                            And then some. Drawing on interviews and material relating to all major players from Lou Reed, John Cale, Mo Tucker, Andy Warhol, Jon Savage, Nico, David Bowie, Mary Harron and many more, award-winning journalist Dylan Jones breaks down the band's whirlwind of subversion and, in a narrative rich in drama and detail, with an irresistible narrative pull, proves why The Velvets remain the original kings and queens of edge.

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                            Cover of Sonic Life : The New Memoir From The Sonic Youth Founding Member by Thurston Moore.

                            Thurston Moore

                            Sonic Life : The New Memoir From The Sonic Youth Founding Member

                            Faber & Faber

                              'Were you there? Well this is as close as it gets! Thurston Moore's compelling and spirited account of the streets, the songs, the clothes, the clubs and the contenders! A sensitive and authentic testimony to Moore's life lived through art and music. Beats with the heart of a true artist and mutineer.' Viv Albertine'Downtown scientists rejoice! For Thurston Moore has unearthed the missing links, the sacred texts, the forgotten stories, and the secret maps of the lost golden age. This is history-scuffed, slightly bent, plenty noisy, and indispensable.' Colson WhiteheadA music-obsessed retrospective, beginning with his childhood epiphany of rock 'n' roll in the early 1960s into an infatuation with the subversive world of 1970s punk and no wave blasting forth from New York City - where he eventually runs off to join a band in 1978.

                              By 1981 Moore would form the legendary and notorious experimental rock group Sonic Youth, who proceeded to record and tour relentlessly for almost 30 years, always progressing, always exploring. Along the way we meet a constellation of artists and musicians who colluded and collided with Sonic Youth including Velvet Underground, Stooges, Patti Smith, Television, Sex Pistols, Clash, Nirvana, Hole, Beastie Boys, Neil Young and a cavalcade of other musical visionaries, as well as figures from the art world - Jean Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Gerhard Richter. Simply put, Thurston Moore and Sonic Youth changed the sound of modern alternative rock music and opened the minds of a generation of artists to new possibilities within the form.

                              This is essential reading. 'I thoroughly enjoyed Thurston Moore's trip down the gauntlet of memory lane, dodging beer bottles and pools of blood as he balances the demands of art and survival. Plus I'm a sucker for anyone who name-checks Saccharine Trust.

                              A raw, rollicking document.' Nell Zink

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                              Cover of From Here To The Great Unknown: A Memoir by Lisa Marie Presley & Riley Keough.

                              Lisa Marie Presley & Riley Keough

                              From Here To The Great Unknown: A Memoir

                              Macmillan

                                Born to an American myth and raised in the wilds of Graceland, Lisa Marie Presley tells her whole story for the first time in this raw, riveting, one-of-a-kind memoir faithfully completed by her daughter, Riley Keough. In 2022, Lisa Marie Presley asked her daughter to help finally finish her long-conceived memoir. A month later, Lisa Marie was dead, and the world would never know her story in her own words; never know the passionate, joyful, caring, and complicated woman that Riley loved and grieved.

                                Riley got the tapes that her mother had recorded for the book, lay in her bed, and listened as Lisa Marie told story after story: about smashing golf carts together in the yards of Graceland; about the unconditional love she felt from her father; about being upstairs, just the two of them. About getting dragged screaming out of the bathroom as she ran towards his body on the floor. About living in Los Angeles with her mother, getting sent to school after school, always kicked out, always in trouble.

                                About her singular, lifelong relationship with Danny Keough, and about being married to Michael Jackson, and what they had in common. About motherhood. About deep addiction.

                                About ever-present grief. Riley knew she had to fulfill her mother’s wish to reveal these memories, incandescent and painful, to the world. To make her mother known.

                                This extraordinary book is composed of both Lisa Marie’s and Riley’s voices, a mother and daughter communicating across the chasm of life and death as they try to heal each other. Profoundly moving and deeply revealing, From Here to the Great Unknown is a book like no other – the last words of the only child of a true legend.

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                                Cover of Before Easter After by Patti Smith & Lynn Goldsmith.

                                Patti Smith & Lynn Goldsmith

                                Before Easter After

                                Rizzoli International Publications

                                  A new trade publication of Before Easter After, originally published in a limited edition at $1,000. With hundreds of rarely seen images by Lynn Goldsmith, one of the great photographers of rock n roll history, and texts by Smith, this book documents a transformative moment in the artist s career and celebrates two women whose creative partnership continues to this day.

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                                  Cover of Never Understood: The Story Of The Jesus And Mary Chain - Record Store Edition by William And Jim Reid.

                                  William And Jim Reid

                                  Never Understood: The Story Of The Jesus And Mary Chain - Record Store Edition

                                  White Rabbit

                                    For 5 years after they'd swapped sought-after apprenticeships for life on the dole, brothers William and Jim Reid sat up till the early hours in the front room of their parents' East Kilbride council house, plotting their path to world domination over endless cups of tea, with the music turned down low so as not to wake their sleeping sister. They knew they couldn't play in the same band because they'd argue too much, so they'd describe their dream ensembles to each other until finally they realised that these two perfect bands were actually the same band, and the name of that band was The Jesus and Mary Chain.

                                    The rest was not silence, and picking up those conversations again more than 40 years later, William and Jim tell the full story of one of Britain's greatest guitar bands for the very first time - a wildly funny and improbably moving chronicle of brotherly strife, feedback, riots, drug and alcohol addiction, eternal outsiders and extreme shyness, that also somehow manages to be a love letter to the Scottish working-class family.

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                                    Reduced Cover of Re-sisters : The Lives And Recordings Of Delia Derbyshire, Margery Kempe And Cosey Fanni Tutti by Cosey Fanni Tutti.

                                    Cosey Fanni Tutti

                                    Re-sisters : The Lives And Recordings Of Delia Derbyshire, Margery Kempe And Cosey Fanni Tutti

                                    Faber & Faber

                                      From the acclaimed author of Art Sex Music comes a vital meditation on womanhood, creativity and self-expression, and a revelatory exploration into the lives of three visionary artists. 'A fascinating tale of the interlinking lives of three legendary trailblazers.'SALENA GODDEN'Re-sisters emanates an enthralling power.'JUDE ROGERS, MOJO'Cosey Fanni Tutti has lived the life and has the stories to tell: not just hers, but those of two other still unheralded female pioneers.'JON SAVAGEMyself , Delia and Margery - a trinity of the sacred and profane , sinners and saints of a kind. Three defiant women with our individual, unconventional attitude to life.

                                      Untameable spirits, progressive thinkers living within the inherent societal constraints of our times. In 2018, boundary-breaking visual and sonic artist Cosey Fanni Tutti received a commission to write the soundtrack to a film about Delia Derbyshire, the pioneering electronic composer who influenced the likes of Aphex Twin and the Chemical Brothers. While researching Delia's life, Cosey became immersed in Derbyshire's story and uncovered some fascinating parallels with her own life.

                                      At the same time Cosey began reading about Margery Kempe, the 15th century mystic visionary who wrote the first English language autobiography. Re-sisters is the story of three women consumed by their passion for life, a passion they expressed through music, art and lifestyle; they were undaunted by the consequences they faced in pursuit of enriching their lives, and fiercely challenged the societal and cultural norms of their time. 'An impeccably researched meditation on womanhood as viewed through the lives of three firebrands.'FIONA STURGES, GUARDIAN'Awe-inspiring.

                                      Read these revelatory portraits: this book is for anybody who wants to discover the work of three women who, without fanfare, have enriched our world.'ROBERT WYATT'Passionate, original and fiercely defiant.'RUPERT THOMSON

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                                      Cover of Shoegaze - 33 1/3 Genre Series by Ryan Pinkard.

                                      Ryan Pinkard

                                      Shoegaze - 33 1/3 Genre Series

                                      Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

                                        What the hell is shoegaze? A scene? A movement? A sound? Back in the Nineties, many would have said the so-called genre was entirely fabricated. The term itself, an offensive piss-take given by the notoriously catty and scene-obsessed British music press, was plainly rejected by the absurdly small collection of bands to which it supposedly applied.

                                        Today shoegaze is undeniable. As a descriptor and as a source of influence, it is used in more ways and by more bands than anyone could have dreamed of 30 years ago. Between those periods of invention and ubiquity, the term, along with the bands it first described, all but disappeared off the face of the earth.

                                        In this ambitious oral history of a genre that has eluded definition for three decades, Ryan Pinkard unearths the first wave of shoegaze, following the core bands, their sounds, their influence, and their journeys in and out of obscurity. His analysis is woven through dozens of original interviews with artists, label heads, and critics. What he discovers is the unlikely odyssey of this esoteric, experimental music form, which nearly became a mainstream entity, only to be viciously killed off, forgotten, and rediscovered by a new generation that regards it as one of the most influential alternative music events since the Velvet Underground.

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                                        Cover of A Thousand Threads by Neneh Cherry.

                                        Neneh Cherry

                                        A Thousand Threads

                                        Fern Press

                                          A deeply personal and powerful memoir from beloved music icon Neneh Cherry. *A GUARDIAN MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2024**A BBC CULTURE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2024*Top of the Pops, December 1988. The world sat up as a young woman made her debut: gold bra, gold bomber jacket, and proudly, gloriously, seven months pregnant.

                                          This was no ordinary artist. This was Neneh Cherry. But navigating fame and family wasn't always simple.

                                          In this beautiful and deeply personal memoir, Cherry remembers the collaborations, the highs and lows, the friendships and loves, and the addictions and traumas that have shaped her as a woman and an artist. At the heart of it, always, is family: the extraordinary three generations of artists and musicians that are her inheritance and her legacy. Musician.

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                                          Cover of A Likely Lad by Peter Doherty With Simon Spence.

                                          Peter Doherty With Simon Spence

                                          A Likely Lad

                                          Little Brown Book

                                            Peter Doherty's is the last of the great rock 'n' roll stories - bad boy and public enemy. To his devoted fans, he is a cult hero, a modern-day Rimbaud. Musically, he has defined the past twenty years of indie rock with his sound, lyrics, lifestyle and aesthetic.

                                            Since The Libertines rose to international fame, Doherty has proved endlessly fascinating. A whirlwind of controversy and scandal has tailed him ever since the early 2000s, so much so that all too often his talents as a songwriter and performer have been overlooked; for every award and accolade, there is a scathing review. Hard drugs, tiny gigs on the hoof, huge stadium shows, collaborations, obliterations, gangsters and groupies - Doherty has led a life of huge highs and incredible lows.

                                            With his wildest days behind him, Doherty candidly explores - with sober and sometimes painful insight - some of his greatest and darkest moments, taking us inside the creative process, decadent parties, substance-fuelled nights, his time in prison and tendency for self-destruction. With his trademark wit and humour, Doherty also details his childhood years, key influences, pre-fame London shenanigans, and reflects on his era-defining relationship with supermodel Kate Moss and the other significant people in his life including Libertines co-founder Carl Barat. There is humour, warmth, insight, baleful reflection and a defiant sense of triumph.

                                            A Likely Lad is Doherty's version of the story - the genuine man behind the fame and infamy. This is a rock memoir like no other.

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                                            Cover of Goth: A History by Lol Tolhurst.

                                            Lol Tolhurst

                                            Goth: A History

                                            Quercus

                                              GOTH is an entertaining and engaging historical memoir of the genre of Goth music and culture, exploring creative giants like The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, Joy Division and many more great bands that offered a place of refuge for the misfits of the 80s and ever since. Written by Lol Tolhurst, co-founder of The Cure, this book offers a fascinating deep dive into the movers and shakers of goth with stories and anecdotes from Tolhurst's personal memories as well as the musicians, magicians and artists who made it all happen - the people, places and events that made goth an inevitable and enduring movement .

                                              Starting with the Origins of Goth, Tolhurst explores early art and literature that inspired the genre and looks into the work of T.S Eliot, Edgar Allan Poe, Sylvia Plath, Albert Camus and more. He also outlines the path of Gothic forebears and shows how many musicians played in punk bands before transitioning into goth endeavours. Next, he introduces readers to the 'Architects of Darkness' - Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division and The Cure - the godfathers of goth who established the genre's roots. Following these early bands, Tolhurst discusses a group he calls the 'Spiritual Alchemists', consisting of bands like Depeche Mode, Cocteau Twins and more, who helped the darkness expand into the culture. He also tracks the expansion of the genre overseas, from England to New York, Los Angeles and beyond. Gothic fashion was an important part of the movement as well and Tolhurst discusses the clothing that accompanied and complemented the music. Finally, Tolhurst examines the legacy of goth music and shows how its influence can still be seen to this day across music, film, TV, visual arts, social media and so much more, finally concluding with 'Why Goth matters!'

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                                              Cover of Autumn 2024 by The Face.

                                              The Face

                                              Autumn 2024

                                                FEATURING... Chappell Roan! Emma Chamberlain! Madeline Argy! Mustafa! Brigette Lundy-Paine and Jane Schoenbrun see the TV glow! Teenage boys! Glorious fashion! And loads more… Grab yourself a copy, go on. 

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                                                Cover of John Grant : The Illustrated Lyrics by John Grant.

                                                John Grant

                                                John Grant : The Illustrated Lyrics

                                                Abacus

                                                  Featuring photographs supplied by the Grant and lyrics from the albums BOY FROM MICHGAN; LOVE IS MAGIC; GREY TICKLES, BLACK PRESSURE; PALE GREEN GHOSTS; QUEEN OF DENMARK

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                                                  Cover of CUREPEDIA: An A-Z Of The Cure by Simon Price.

                                                  Simon Price

                                                  CUREPEDIA: An A-Z Of The Cure

                                                  White Rabbit

                                                    The Cure are arguably the biggest alternative rock band in the world. Their popularity is not limited to any one country, or even continent. Between 1985 and 2000 every album they released went to at least Gold in the UK, the US or both. In America they have earned four Platinum albums, and they are estimated to have sold 30 million albums worldwide. Their iconic status as elder statesmen of Alternative Rock remains undiminished - if anything, their tireless touring has ensured that it has grown with every passing year - and lead singer Robert Smith is an endlessly fascinating figure to successive generations of fans. The Cure's influence reverberates through genres including Emo, Goth, Industrial and Indie Rock.

                                                    The book is an encyclopaedic A-Z of The Cure examining and riffing on miscellaneous trivia, biographies of the band members past and present, summaries of each album and selected songs, details of the band's various tours and films, and essays on broader topics such as their image, their politics and their influences. Playful, eccentric and irreverent - true to the spirit of the band itself - CUREPEDIA is a comprehensive biography of one of the biggest alternative rock bands in the world.

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                                                    Cover of Street-Level Superstar : A Year With Lawrence by Will Hodgkinson.

                                                    Will Hodgkinson

                                                    Street-Level Superstar : A Year With Lawrence

                                                    Bonnier Books Ltd

                                                      'Will has finally written his masterpiece. I'm glad I could be of assistance' LAWRENCE'

                                                      Essential reading' JARVIS COCKER

                                                      'Wonderful' BOBBY GILLESPIE'

                                                      A fascinating tale beautifully told' BRETT ANDERSON

                                                      Lawrence is the greatest pop star you have never heard of, his dreams of glory thwarted over the past five decades by bad luck and self-sabotage. At sixty-one, he set off on a new mission: to escape poverty, obscurity and the humiliation of kids at the bus stop laughing at him by writing a smash hit.

                                                      But what is the cost of a dream?In 1979, Lawrence formed Felt, who released ten albums and ten singles in ten years before splitting up. In 1991, he reinvented himself with novelty-pop outfit Denim. Signed to EMI, riding the wave of Britpop, in 1997, Denim's song 'Summer Smash' became Radio 1's Single of the Week and looked like a sure-fire hit.

                                                      Then Princess Diana was killed in a car crash. All copies were melted down. Crushing depression, addiction and homelessness followed...
                                                      but in the face of it all, Lawrence never gave up. In Street-Level Superstar, bestselling author and journalist Will Hodgkinson follows Lawrence as he rebuilds his life. He gets mistaken for an old lady by an amorous pensioner, is reduced to dragging sacks of 2p coins to his local bank and wanders through London's distant suburbs in search of lyrical inspiration.

                                                      As they walk together down rain-soaked streets, Will tells the story of Britain's most eccentric cult star. Will he write the greatest song the world has ever known before the year is out? And was it worth sacrificing everything - family, relationships, health, sanity - for art?

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                                                      Cover of Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II - 33 1/3 by Marc Weidenbaum.

                                                      Marc Weidenbaum

                                                      Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II - 33 1/3

                                                      Bloomsbury Academic USA

                                                        Extravagantly opaque, willfully vaporous — Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II, released by the estimable British label Warp Records in 1994, rejuvenated ambient music for the Internet Age that was just dawning. In the United States, it was Richard D. James's first full length on Sire Records (home to Madonna and Depeche Mode) under the moniker Aphex Twin; Sire helped usher him in as a major force in music, electronic or otherwise.

                                                        Faithful to Brian Eno’s definition of ambient music, Selected Ambient Works Volume II was intentionally functional: it furnished chill out rooms, the sanctuaries amid intense raves. Choreographers and film directors began to employ it to their own ends, and in the intervening decades this background music came to the fore, adapted by classical composers who reverse-engineered its fragile textures for performance on acoustic instruments. Simultaneously, “ambient” has moved from esoteric sound art to central tenet of online culture.

                                                        This book contends that despite a reputation for being beatless, the album exudes percussive curiosity, providing a sonic metaphor for our technologically mediated era of countless synchronized nanosecond metronomes.

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                                                        Cover of Uncommon People : Britpop And Beyond In 20 Songs by Miranda Sawyer.

                                                        Miranda Sawyer

                                                        Uncommon People : Britpop And Beyond In 20 Songs

                                                        John Murray Publishers Ltd

                                                          When Miranda Sawyer interviewed Noel Gallagher in 1995, his gag wishing Damon Albarn would die of AIDS became front-page news. This fascinating pop history, exploring the mid-90s moment when British music suddenly meant everything, explains why. Picking out twenty key songs, delving into the surprising stories behind them and their unlikely creators, Uncommon People takes us back to when Jarvis Cocker became a national hero, Trainspotting was a global hit, fire-starting seemed like a good night out - and it felt as though the revolution was happening.

                                                          Initially a music press nickname, Britpop became an unexpected musical movement centred around outsiders and misfits, drop-outs and weirdos who refused to compromise on their ideas, even when they were thrust into the international spotlight. Not just a scene for white guys with guitars, but something wilder and more interesting, with songs that have proved timeless. Exploring the era's key artists - Oasis, Blur, Tricky, Pulp, Underworld, Manic Street Preachers, The Prodigy, Suede, Chemical Brothers, Garbage, Supergrass, Radiohead, PJ Harvey and more - through their definitive anthems, Miranda Sawyer transports us back to the beating heart of the nineties.

                                                          Uncommon People re-lives the mad exhilaration of what it was like to hear these songs for the very first time - and what it was like to make them. With amazing new interviews, and I-was-there insights, this book offers a backstage pass to all the most interesting bits of Britpop's Greatest Hits. Forget New Labour, forget earnest trend theories, this book is all about the music, the people and being right there, right now.

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                                                          Cover of High And Rising : A Book About De La Soul by Marcus J. Moore.

                                                          Marcus J. Moore

                                                          High And Rising : A Book About De La Soul

                                                          Hodder & Stoughton

                                                            The first book about De La Soul, High and Rising is a stunning cultural biography of the era-defining hip-hop trio that touched millions of lives and changed rap forever. De La Soul burst onto the scene with the release of their groundbreaking 1989 album 3 Feet High & Rising, an "anything goes" hip-hop masterpiece. Between their dusty drums and obscure samples, De La's debut was received as a new masterwork from a bygone era of Black experimentation.

                                                            Formed in Long Island in 1988 by Kelvin "Posdnuos" Mercer, Dave "Trugoy the Dove" Jolicoeur, and Vincent "Maseo" Mason, De La Soul rebuked classification and appealed to the Black alternative. Their music was positive and psychedelic, their album art and music videos were full of flowers and peace signs. It was rap with a broad sonic palette, which would set a blueprint for artists like The Roots, Pharrell, Kid Cudi, Kanye West, and Kendrick Lamar.

                                                            But as quickly as De La ascended, they were faced with the pressures of a changing industry and legal battles around sampling. Written by the acclaimed journalist Marcus J. Moore, author of The Butterfly Effect: How Kendrick Lamar Ignited the Soul of Black America, High and Rising tells the whole story of one of the most influential rap groups of all time.

                                                            In the process the book unpacks the birth of hip-hop and the evolution of alternative rap. Marcus also weaves in a deeply personal coming-of-age story about his journey through life with De La as a backdrop. Completed in the wake of Dave's passing and the group's arrival on streaming platforms after a long and bitter legal fight, High and Rising is not just a hip-hop tale, it's a triumphant book about staying the course, and how moving with integrity can lead to dynamic results.

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                                                            Cover of Oasis The Masterplan : Photographs By Kevin Cummins by Kevin Cummins.

                                                            Kevin Cummins

                                                            Oasis The Masterplan : Photographs By Kevin Cummins

                                                            Cassell

                                                              How does a band come into being? What are the myriad forces that shape the sound, look, and identity of an emerging band?In 1993, Oasis signed to Creation Records and were shortly to begin recording their first album. Unknown, and unknowing what was ahead, the following year began with a masterplan - the creation of Oasis. At the centre of this enterprise was Kevin Cummins, brought on board to help the band find a look that fitted their sound.

                                                              As chief photographer of Joy Division depicting that band on a snowy bridge and in the chilly environs of Manchester with a backdrop of the black stone of a gothic cathedral, Cummins was well aware of the intersection between the visual and the sonic. Oasis The Masterplan tells the story of how Oasis cemented their identity. Drawing on the first six months of the year, we follow Cummins as he photographs the band in various locations such as London, Manchester and the Netherlands.

                                                              Using many unseen images as well as more well-known iconic shots, Cummins guides us through the ways a band can be shaped and designed, such as the famous photographs of the Gallagher brothers in Manchester City shirts - emblazoned with the Brother logo (a Japanese electronics company) which helped provoke worldwide interest in the band. With input from Noel Gallagher, we see how they played with fashion, were taught how to pose, and present themselves as they approached the summer of that year when their first album, Definitely Maybe was released on 29 August. The story from that moment on is well-known.

                                                              This book reveals just how effective the masterplan was to get them to that point.

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                                                              Cover of Into The Light : Siouxsie And The Banshees 1980-1987 by Laurence Hedges.

                                                              Laurence Hedges

                                                              Into The Light : Siouxsie And The Banshees 1980-1987

                                                              Wymer Publishing

                                                                In 1980, with their highest charting album to date, Kaleidoscope and two successful singles, ‘Happy House’ and ‘Christine’, and a packed tour schedule, Siouxsie and The Banshees are at the top of their game. Swimming in their own stream, the Banshees defy musical categorisation and are head and shoulders above their peers, with one objective: to be the best band in the world. The band’s 1981 90-gig tour included 25 dates in the US, showcasing the exhilarating ‘Spellbound’, grotesque ‘Night Shift’ and the clandestine frisson of ‘Into The Light’, forming the sonic backbone of what is considered to be the Banshees’ magnum opus, Juju, their fourth studio album, released in June 1981.

                                                                Ushering in a new chapter in Siouxsie and The Banshees’ evolution the opulent fifth studio album A Kiss In The Dreamhouse, marks another change in direction, and sees producer Mike Hedges superseding Kaleidoscope and Juju producer Nigel Gray. Released 5th November 1982, several days after guitarist John McGeoch is ousted from the band after two near calamitous performances at the Rock-Ola Club in Madrid, it was the album that marked a potential dip in the band’s fortunes. However the Banshees regroup, calling again on the services of The Cure’s Robert Smith, whose fractured relationship with his own band made the offer of becoming a touring Banshee too attractive to refuse.

                                                                As for what happens next, this in-depth and authoritative account of one of the most original, creative, imaginative and mercurial bands in the history of rock music surveys the twists, turns and episodes of brilliance that define Siouxsie and The Banshees’ evolution from 1980 to 1987, including ancillary ventures ‘The Creatures’ and ‘The Glove’, and the making of the albums Juju and A Kiss In The Dreamhouse, as well as Nocturne, Hyaena, Tinderbox and Through The Looking Glass.

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                                                                Cover of A Quick Ting On: Grime by Franklyn Addo.

                                                                Franklyn Addo

                                                                A Quick Ting On: Grime

                                                                Jacaranda Books Art Music Ltd

                                                                  From pirate radio to Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage, journalist and rapper Franklyn Addo pens an extraordinary narrative of the history, present and future of Grime music. The influence of Grime on contemporary British culture is difficult to understate. From fashion trends and evolving language to potent political statements, Grime is a musical juggernaut that has reverberated far throughout British society.

                                                                  Chronicled for the first time in powerful literary prose, Addo intelligently documents the genre's cultural explosion and investigates how it became the voice of a generation. A phenomenal insight into the captivating and electrifying genre that has taken the British music scene by storm, A Quick Ting On: Grime is an essential and long-awaited read for Stormzy aficionados and grime newcomers alike.

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                                                                  Cover of The Jesus And Mary Chain's Psychocandy - 33 1/3 by Paula Mejia.

                                                                  Paula Mejia

                                                                  The Jesus And Mary Chain's Psychocandy - 33 1/3

                                                                  Bloomsbury Academic USA

                                                                    The Jesus and Mary Chain’s swooning debut Psychocandy seared through the underground and through the pop charts, shifting the role of noise within pop music forever. Post-punk and pro-confusion, Psychocandy became the sound of a generation poised on the brink of revolution, establishing Creation Records as a tastemaking entity in the process. The Scottish band’s notorious live performances were both punishingly loud and riot-spurring, inevitably acting as socio-political commentary on tensions emergent in mid-1980s Britain.

                                                                    Through caustic clangs and feedback channeling the rage of the working-class who’d had enough, Psychocandy gestures toward the perverse pleasure in having your eardrums exploded and loudness as a politics within itself. Yet Psychocandy’s blackened candy heart center – calling out to phantoms Candy and Honey with an unsettling charm – makes it a pop album to the core, and not unlike the sugarcoated sounds the Ronettes became famous for in the 1960s. The Jesus and Mary Chain expertly carved out a place where depravity and sweetness entwined, emerging from the isolating underground of suburban Scotland grasping the distinct sound of a generation, apathetic and uncertain.

                                                                    The irresistible Psychocandy emerged as a clairvoyant account of struggle and sweetness that still causes us to grapple with pop music’s relation to ourselves.

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                                                                    Cover of J Dilla's Donuts - 33 1/3 by Jordan Ferguson.

                                                                    Jordan Ferguson

                                                                    J Dilla's Donuts - 33 1/3

                                                                    Bloomsbury Academic USA

                                                                      From a Los Angeles hospital bed, equipped with little more than a laptop and a stack of records, James “J Dilla” Yancey crafted a set of tracks that would forever change the way beatmakers viewed their artform. The songs on Donuts are not hip hop music as “hip hop music” is typically defined; they careen and crash into each other, in one moment noisy and abrasive, gorgeous and heartbreaking the next. The samples and melodies tell the story of a man coming to terms with his declining health, a final love letter to the family and friends he was leaving behind.

                                                                      As a prolific producer with a voracious appetite for the history and mechanics of the music he loved, J Dilla knew the records that went into constructing Donuts inside and out. He could have taken them all and made a much different, more accessible album. If the widely accepted view is that his final work is a record about dying, the question becomes why did he make this record about dying?Drawing from philosophy, critical theory and musicology, as well as Dilla’s own musical catalogue, Jordan Ferguson shows that the contradictory, irascible and confrontational music found on Donuts is as much a result of an artist’s declining health as it is an example of what scholars call “late style,” placing the album in a musical tradition that stretches back centuries.

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                                                                      Cover of The Double Life Of Bob Dylan Volume 2: 1966-2021 : Far Away From Myself by Clinton Heylin.

                                                                      Clinton Heylin

                                                                      The Double Life Of Bob Dylan Volume 2: 1966-2021 : Far Away From Myself

                                                                      Vintage

                                                                        In 2016 it was announced that Bob Dylan had sold his personal archive to the George Kaiser Foundation in Tulsa, Oklahoma, reportedly for $22 million. As the boxes started to arrive, the Foundation asked Clinton Heylin - author of the acclaimed Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades and 'perhaps the world's authority on all things Dylan' (Rolling Stone) - to assess the material they had been given. What he found in Tulsa - as well as what he gleaned from other papers he had recently been given access to by Sony and the Dylan office - so changed his understanding of the artist, especially of his creative process, that he became convinced that a whole new biography was needed.

                                                                        It turns out that much of what previous biographers - Dylan himself included - have said is wrong; often as not, a case of, Print the Legend. This is the second instalment of the definitive biography (following A Restless Hungry Feeling) of one contemporary culture's most iconic and mysterious figures - musical revolutionary, Nobel Prize-winner, chart-topping recording artist. Clinton Heylin's meticulously researched, all-encompassing and consistently revelatory account of these fascinating early years is the closest we will ever get to a definitive life of an artist who has been the lodestar of popular culture for six decades.

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                                                                        Cover of Rebel Sounds : Music As Resistance by Joe Mulhall.

                                                                        Joe Mulhall

                                                                        Rebel Sounds : Music As Resistance

                                                                        Footnote Press Ltd

                                                                          While the global history of the dictatorships, oppression, racism and state violence over the last century is well known - the role that music played in people's lives during these times is less understood. This book is a collection of stories and hidden histories about how music provided light in the darkest of times over the past century. How it steeled souls and inspired resistance to oppression.

                                                                          Rebel Sounds will explore freedom songs in the Republic of Ireland, the Soviet Union's oppression behind the Berlin Wall, authoritarian dictatorships in Brazil and Nigeria, institutionalised racism and police violence in America and South Africa, street violence in Britain, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and musical resistance in war-torn Ukraine. This is a social history of the twentieth century but one that takes in the human impulse to create, share and enjoy the one thing that connects cultures and spans generations: music

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                                                                          Cover of The Times Lives Behind The Music by Nigel Farndale.

                                                                          Nigel Farndale

                                                                          The Times Lives Behind The Music

                                                                          Times Books

                                                                            Step into the tumultuous world of music stardom with this collection of obituaries from The Times. From the rock’n’roll pioneers of the 1950s, to the pop superstars of the 21st century, and lesser-known innovators with undeniable influence, this book brings to life the enduring spirits of music’s brightest stars. Discover the untold stories behind the music, the triumphs, the tragedies and the unforgettable songs that have shaped our cultural landscape.

                                                                            With era-defining obituaries and behind-the-scenes photos from The Times archive, this collection is a captivating journey through the lives and legends of rock and pop’s most iconic figures.

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                                                                            Cover of Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) by Sly Stone.

                                                                            Sly Stone

                                                                            Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)

                                                                            White Rabbit

                                                                              One of the few indisputable geniuses of pop music, Sly Stone is a trailblazer who created a new kind of music, mixing Black and white, male and female, funk and rock; penned some of the most iconic anthems of the 1960s and 70s, from "Everyday People" to "Family Affair"; and electrified audiences with a persona and stage presence that set a lasting standard for pop culture performance. Yet he has also been a cautionary tale, known as much for how he dropped out of sight as for what put him in the spotlight in the first place. As much as people know the music, the man remains a mystery. In Thank You, his much-anticipated memoir, he's finally ready to share his story - a story that many thought he'd never have the chance to tell. Written with Ben Greenman, who has written memoirs with George Clinton and Brian Wilson among others, Thank You will include a foreword by Questlove. The book was created in collaboration with Sly Stone's manager Arlene Hirschkowitz.

                                                                              "For as long as I can remember folks have been asking me to tell my story," says Stone. "I wasn't ready. I had to be in a new frame of mind to become Sylvester Stewart again to tell the true story of Sly Stone. It's been a wild ride and hopefully my fans enjoy it too."

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                                                                              Cover of Bill Frisell, Beautiful Dreamer : The Guitarist Who Changed The Sound Of American Music by Philip Watson.

                                                                              Philip Watson

                                                                              Bill Frisell, Beautiful Dreamer : The Guitarist Who Changed The Sound Of American Music

                                                                              Faber & Faber

                                                                                The definitive biography of guitar icon and Grammy Award-winning artist Bill Frisell. FEATURING EXCLUSIVE LISTENING SESSIONS WITH: Paul Simon; Justin Vernon of Bon Iver; Gus Van Sant; Rhiannon Giddens; The Bad Plus; Gavin Bryars; Van Dyke Parks; Sam Amidon; Hal Willner; Jim Woodring; Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill'A beautiful and long overdue portrait of one of America's true living cultural treasures.'JOHN ZORN'The perfect companion-piece to the music of its subject.'MOJO'Outlines the subject's life in a series of scrupulous strokes and intimate interviews that are rare in such undertakings . .

                                                                                . a cool, casual victory.'IRISH TIMESOver a period of forty-five years, Bill Frisell has established himself as one of the most innovative and influential musicians at work today. A quietly revolutionary guitar hero for our genre-blurring times, he connects to a diverse range of artists and admirers, including Paul Simon, Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens, Gus Van Sant and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, all of whom feature in this book.

                                                                                A vital addition to any music lover's book collection, Bill Frisell, Beautiful Dreamer tells the legendary guitarist's story for the first time. 'Stuffed with musical encounters, so many that every couple of pages there's an unheard Frisell recording for the reader to chase down.'NEW YORKER'Bill Frisell, Beautiful Dreamer is the definitive biography.'BILL MILKOWSKI, DOWNBEAT'Superb . .

                                                                                . the book races along like Sonny Rollins in full sail. Like subject, like writer: this is super-articulate, adventurous prose.'PERSPECTIVE'[Watson's] writing balances unbridled passion and dispassionate research nearly as deftly as Mr.

                                                                                Frisell's playing does sound and silence . . .

                                                                                compelling.'WALL STREET JOURNAL

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                                                                                Cover of Tomorrow's Here Today : Lightning Seeds, Football And Cosmic Post-Punk by Ian Broudie.

                                                                                Ian Broudie

                                                                                Tomorrow's Here Today : Lightning Seeds, Football And Cosmic Post-Punk

                                                                                Nine Eight Books

                                                                                  'One of the greatest rock 'n' roll stories of the past 50 years recounted with warmth and wisdom' - Hot PressFew musicians have lived a musical life as rich as the songwriter and producer Ian Broudie. From recording the glorious uplifting psychedelic pop of his band The Lightning Seeds to producing bands like Echo & The Bunnymen and The Fall, Ian has journeyed from the energy and potential of the 1970s punk scene to the madness of '90s indie - and out the other side. Throughout nearly fifty years of making music, he has had a front-row seat working with generations of fantastic musicians in the creation of countless groundbreaking records. In Tomorrow's Here Today, he reveals what he has learnt about creativity, how to work with musicians touched by genius and what it is like to stumble through an exploding industry without losing sight of your dreams. Along the way, Ian shares how he wrote the million-selling album Jollification and how - along with the comedians David Baddiel and Frank Skinner - he wrote and recorded the only single in chart history to reach number one in the UK on four separate occasions. 'Three Lions' has since become the undisputed unofficial anthem of English football, soundtracking heartbreaking defeats as well as the wondrous victories of the Lionesses. Following 2022's long-awaited Lightning Seeds comeback, Ian reflects on a life of cosmic adventures spent in thrall to the power of music.

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                                                                                  Cover of The Tao Of Bowie: 10 Lessons From David Bowie's Life To Help You Live Yours by Mark Edwards.

                                                                                  Mark Edwards

                                                                                  The Tao Of Bowie: 10 Lessons From David Bowie's Life To Help You Live Yours

                                                                                  Faber & Faber

                                                                                    What would David Bowie do?

                                                                                    When life gets tough, who can we turn to for help? Who will help us find happiness, meaning and purpose? The Tao of Bowie suggests that we turn to David Bowie for guidance - and use his amazing journey through life as a map to help us navigate our own.

                                                                                    Buddhism was central to David Bowie's life, but he was a wide-ranging thinker who also drew meaning from other sources including Jungian psychology, Nietzschean philosophy and Gnosticism. The Tao of Bowie condenses these concepts - the ideas that inspired and supported Bowie throughout his life and career - into ten powerful lessons, each with a series of exercises, meditations and techniques to encourage readers to apply these learnings to their own lives.

                                                                                    The Tao of Bowie will help readers understand who they really are, clarify their purpose in life, manage their emotions and cope with setbacks and change. This fresh approach to the search for spirituality and happiness unites the perennial human quest for answers with the extraordinary mind and unique career of one of the most important cultural figures of the past halfcentury

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                                                                                    Cover of Bedsit Land : The Strange Worlds Of Soft Cell by Patrick Clarke.

                                                                                    Patrick Clarke

                                                                                    Bedsit Land : The Strange Worlds Of Soft Cell

                                                                                    Manchester University Press

                                                                                      A rich and revealing examination of the legendary pop duo Soft Cell. Soft Cell are not your average pop band. Marc Almond and Dave Ball may be best known for the string of hits they released in 1981, but the powerful first phase of their collaboration embraced a staggering array of sounds, influences and innovations that would change the face of music to come.

                                                                                      In Bedsit land, Patrick Clarke plunges into the archives and interviews more than sixty contributors, including the band members themselves, to follow Soft Cell through the many strange and sprawling worlds that shaped their extraordinary career. They lead him from the faded camp glamour of the British seaside to the dizzying thrills of the New York club scene. From transgressive student performance art to the sleaze and squalor of pre-gentrified Soho.

                                                                                      From the glitz of British showbiz to the drug-addled chaos of post-Franco Spain.

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                                                                                      Cover of I Wouldn't Say It If It Wasn't True : A Memoir Of Life, Music, And The Dream Syndicate by Steve Wynn.

                                                                                      Steve Wynn

                                                                                      I Wouldn't Say It If It Wasn't True : A Memoir Of Life, Music, And The Dream Syndicate

                                                                                      Jawbone

                                                                                        I Wouldn't Say It If It Wasn't True is a tale of writing songs and playing in bands as a conduit to a world its author could once have barely imagined -- a world of major labels, luxury tour buses, and sold-out theaters, but also one of alcohol, drugs, and a low-level rock n roll Babylon. Beginning with Wynn's childhood in California in the 60s and 70s, the book builds to a crescendo with the formation of the first incarnation of The Dream Syndicate in 1981 as an antidote to the prepackaged pop music of the era. It charts the highs and lows of the band's early years at the forefront of the Paisley Underground scene alongside Green On Red, Rain Parade, and The Bangles; the seismic impact of their debut album, The Days Of Wine And Roses; the spiraling chaos of the sessions for the follow-up, Medicine Show; the dissolution of the band s first line-up and the launch of a second phase of The Dream Syndicate with Out Of The Grey and Ghost Stories; and more, culminating with the release of the landmark live album Live At Raji's.

                                                                                        This is Wynn's story, but it also features some of the biggest and most colorful characters of the period, offering a detailed field guide to the music business that manages to both glorify and demystify in equal measure. And, ultimately, it's a tale of redemption, with music as a vehicle for artistic and personal transformation and transcendence.

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                                                                                        Cover of Sufferah : Memoir Of A Brixton Reggae Head by Alex Wheatle.

                                                                                        Alex Wheatle

                                                                                        Sufferah : Memoir Of A Brixton Reggae Head

                                                                                        Quercus Publishing

                                                                                          In this breathtaking memoir, acclaimed writer Alex Wheatle shows how music became his salvation through a childhood marred by abuse. Abandoned as a baby to the British care system, Alex grows up with no knowledge of his Jamaican parentage or family history.

                                                                                          Later, he is inexorably drawn to reggae, his lifeline through disrupted teenage years, the challenges of living as a young Black man in 1980s Britain and his imprisonment for protesting against systemic racism and police brutality. Alex's youth was portrayed in Oscar Award-winning director Steve McQueen's Small Axe series. In Sufferah, he tells his own story, urgently, vividly and unsentimentally.

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                                                                                          Cover of George Harrison : The Reluctant Beatle by Philip Norman.

                                                                                          Philip Norman

                                                                                          George Harrison : The Reluctant Beatle

                                                                                          Simon & Schuster Ltd

                                                                                            From the author of the million-copy selling Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation and the bestselling John Lennon: The Life comes a revealing portrait of George Harrison, the most undervalued and mysterious Beatle. Despite being hailed as one of the best guitarists of his era, George Harrison, particularly in his early decades, battled feelings of inferiority. He was often the butt of jokes from his bandmates owing to his lower-class background and, typically, was allowed to contribute only one or two songs per Beatles album out of the dozens he wrote.

                                                                                            Now, acclaimed Beatles biographer Philip Norman examines Harrison through the lens of his numerous self-contradictions. Compared to songwriting luminaries John Lennon and Paul McCartney he was considered a minor talent, yet he composed such masterpieces as 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' and 'Here Comes the Sun', and his solo debut album 'All Things Must Pass' achieved enormous success, appearing on many lists of the 100 best rock albums ever. Modern music critics place him in the pantheon of Sixties guitar gods alongside Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards and Jimmy Page.

                                                                                            Harrison railed against the material world yet wrote the first pop song complaining about income tax. He spent years lovingly restoring his Friar Park estate as a spiritual journey, but quickly mortgaged the property to help rescue a film project that would be widely banned as sacrilegious, Monty Python's Life of Brian. Harrison could be fiercely jealous, but not only did he stay friends with Eric Clapton when Clapton fell in love with Harrison's wife, Pattie Boyd, the two men grew even closer after Clapton walked away with her.

                                                                                            Unprecedented in scope and filled with numerous colour photos, this rich biography captures George Harrison at his most multi-faceted: devoted friend, loyal son, master guitar-player, brilliant songwriter, cocaine addict, serial philanderer, global philanthropist, student of Indian mysticism, self-deprecating comedian and, ultimately, iconic artist and man beloved by millions.

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                                                                                            Cover of In One Ear : Cocteau Twins, Ivor Raymonde And Me by Simon Raymonde.

                                                                                            Simon Raymonde

                                                                                            In One Ear : Cocteau Twins, Ivor Raymonde And Me

                                                                                            Bonnier Books Ltd

                                                                                              As one-third of seminal band Cocteau Twins, Simon Raymonde helped to create some of the most beautiful and memorable albums of the '80s and '90s - music that continues to cast a spell over millions. This is the story of the band, in his words. Beginning with Simon's remarkable childhood and exploring his relationship with his father, Ivor Raymonde (the legendary producer, musician and arranger for acts such as the Walker Brothers and songwriter for artists including Dusty Springfield), the book will journey through the musician's rise to prominence and his time with Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil.

                                                                                              It will also chart the successful career he has forged running his own label, Bella Union, for the past twenty-seven years, discovering and developing globally renowned artists like Beach House, Fleet Foxes, Father John Misty and John Grant. And the narrative will lead us back to the present day, reflecting on Simon's most recent experiences in the music industry - all while going deaf in one ear. A must-read for music fans, this is the incredible tale of Simon's life and legacy.

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                                                                                              Cover of Dreams : The Many Lives Of Fleetwood Mac by Mark Blake.

                                                                                              Mark Blake

                                                                                              Dreams : The Many Lives Of Fleetwood Mac

                                                                                              Nine Eight Books

                                                                                                Fleetwood Mac have had a chart-topping career that spans over fifty years and includes some of the biggest-selling albums and greatest hits of the 20th and 21st centuries. But the band's story is one of enormous triumph and also unimaginable tragedy. There has never been a band in the history of music riven with as much romantic drama, sexual tension and incredible highs and lows as Fleetwood Mac.

                                                                                                Dreams is a must-read for casual Fleetwood Mac fans and die-hard devotees alike. In this unique collection of mini-biographies, observations and essays, Mark Blake explores all eras of the Fleetwood Mac story to explore what it is that has made them one of the most successful bands in history. Blake draws on his own exclusive interviews with Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham and the late Peter Green and Christine McVie, and addresses the complex human drama at the heart of the Fleetwood Mac story, including the complicated relationships between the band's main members, but he also dives deep into the towering discography that the band have built over the past half-century.

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                                                                                                Reduced Cover of Fly Away Paul : The Extraordinary Story Of How Paul McCartney Survived The Beatles And Found His Wings by Lesley-Ann Jones.

                                                                                                Lesley-Ann Jones

                                                                                                Fly Away Paul : The Extraordinary Story Of How Paul McCartney Survived The Beatles And Found His Wings

                                                                                                Coronet Books

                                                                                                  the remarkable account of Paul McCartney's time in Wings and ascent into solo stardom, by renowned music biographer Lesley-Ann JonesNo comprehensive biography of the time Paul McCartney spent with Wings has ever been published, until now. A period often dismissed as McCartney's 'missing' years, in fact the band lasted for a decade: two years longer than the Beatles, and wielded such impact and influence that they at one point achieved the status as the biggest live band in the world. Band on the Run sold over 6 million copies worldwide and became EMI's biggest selling album of the 1970s in the UK.

                                                                                                  Music biographer Lesley-Ann Jones has met McCartney many times and knew his late wife Linda. Here she shows how crucial Linda was to the evolution of Wings - at great cost to herself given the ridicule she was to encounter. But Linda saw that McCartney needed the band in the wake of the break up of the Beatles.

                                                                                                  Drawing on extensive interviews and her trademark meticulous research, the author shows how this period in Paul McCartney's career was to become crucial not only to his development as an artist, but to his very survival.

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                                                                                                  Cover of Hold On To Your Dreams : Arthur Russell And The Downtown Music Scene, 1973-1992 by Tim Lawrence.

                                                                                                  Tim Lawrence

                                                                                                  Hold On To Your Dreams : Arthur Russell And The Downtown Music Scene, 1973-1992

                                                                                                  Duke University

                                                                                                    Hold On to Your Dreams is the first biography of the musician and composer Arthur Russell, one of the most important but least known contributors to New York's downtown music scene during the 1970s and 1980s. With the exception of a few dance recordings, including "Is It All Over My Face?" and "Go Bang! #5", Russell's pioneering music was largely forgotten until 2004, when the posthumous release of two albums brought new attention to the artist. This revival of interest gained momentum with the issue of additional albums and the documentary film Wild Combination.

                                                                                                    Based on interviews with more than seventy of his collaborators, family members, and friends, Hold On to Your Dreams provides vital new information about this singular, eccentric musician and his role in the boundary-breaking downtown music scene. Tim Lawrence traces Russell's odyssey from his hometown of Oskaloosa, Iowa, to countercultural San Francisco, and eventually to New York, where he lived from 1973 until his death from AIDS-related complications in 1992. Resisting definition while dreaming of commercial success, Russell wrote and performed new wave and disco as well as quirky rock, twisted folk, voice-cello dub, and hip-hop-inflected pop.

                                                                                                    "He was way ahead of other people in understanding that the walls between concert music and popular music and avant-garde music were illusory," comments the composer Philip Glass. "He lived in a world in which those walls weren't there." Lawrence follows Russell across musical genres and through such vital downtown music spaces as the Kitchen, the Loft, the Gallery, the Paradise Garage, and the Experimental Intermedia Foundation. Along the way, he captures Russell's openness to sound, his commitment to collaboration, and his uncompromising idealism.

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                                                                                                    Cover of Limited Edition Of One by Steven Wilson & Mick Wall.

                                                                                                    Steven Wilson & Mick Wall

                                                                                                    Limited Edition Of One

                                                                                                    Constable

                                                                                                      The more I thought about it, the more I realised my career has been unusual. How did I manage to do everything wrong but still end up on the front cover of magazines, headlining world tours and achieving Top 5 albums? How did I attract such obsessive and fanatical fans, many of whom take everything I do or say very personally, which is simultaneously flattering but can also be tremendously frustrating? Even this I somehow cultivated without somehow meaning to. My accidental career.

                                                                                                      Limited Edition of One is unlike any other music book you will ever have read. Part the long-awaited memoir of Steven Wilson: whose celebrated band Porcupine Tree began as teenage fiction before unintentionally evolving into a reality that encompassed Grammy-nominated records and sold-out shows around the world, before he set out for an even more successful solo career. Part the story of a twenty-first century artist who achieved chart-topping mainstream success without ever becoming part of the mainstream.

                                                                                                      From Abba to Stockhausen, via a collection of conversations and thought pieces on the art of listening, the rules of collaboration, lists of lists, personal stories, professional adventurism (including food, film, TV, modern art), old school rock stardom, how to negotiate an obsessive fanbase and survive on social media, and dream-fever storytelling.

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                                                                                                      Cover of Never Understood: The Story Of The Jesus And Mary Chain by William And Jim Reid.

                                                                                                      William And Jim Reid

                                                                                                      Never Understood: The Story Of The Jesus And Mary Chain

                                                                                                      White Rabbit

                                                                                                        For 5 years after they'd swapped sought-after apprenticeships for life on the dole, brothers William and Jim Reid sat up till the early hours in the front room of their parents' East Kilbride council house, plotting their path to world domination over endless cups of tea, with the music turned down low so as not to wake their sleeping sister. They knew they couldn't play in the same band because they'd argue too much, so they'd describe their dream ensembles to each other until finally they realised that these two perfect bands were actually the same band, and the name of that band was The Jesus and Mary Chain.

                                                                                                        The rest was not silence, and picking up those conversations again more than 40 years later, William and Jim tell the full story of one of Britain's greatest guitar bands for the very first time - a wildly funny and improbably moving chronicle of brotherly strife, feedback, riots, drug and alcohol addiction, eternal outsiders and extreme shyness, that also somehow manages to be a love letter to the Scottish working-class family.

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                                                                                                        Cover of Oasis: What's The Story?: Life On Tour With Liam And Noel Gallagher by Iain Robertson.

                                                                                                        Iain Robertson

                                                                                                        Oasis: What's The Story?: Life On Tour With Liam And Noel Gallagher

                                                                                                        John Blake Publishing Ltd

                                                                                                          Oasis were a band like bands used to be. Hard-drinking and substance abusing. If they liked you, they loved you.

                                                                                                          If they didn't, you had to be prepared for confrontation. Iain Robertson is used to tough jobs - after retiring from the Parachute Regiment, he took on jobs guarding George Harrison, Gary Moore and Johnny Rotten. But keeping Oasis on the rails after debut album Definitely Maybe ignited their rise toward global superstardom would be the toughest gig of them all.

                                                                                                          Oasis would explode into public consciousness and have the world at their feet in the wake of their epic first album and a huge world tour. Iain was side-by-side as their road manager and minder, twenty-four hours a day, eight days a week, as they took on the world and won. No one was closer.

                                                                                                          Now updated with new unpublished material ahead of the thirty year anniversary of Definitely Maybe, this story is the defining chronicle of life on tour with Oasis.

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                                                                                                          Cover of A Continual Farewell : My Life In Letters With Tony Wilson by Lindsay Reade.

                                                                                                          Lindsay Reade

                                                                                                          A Continual Farewell : My Life In Letters With Tony Wilson

                                                                                                          Omnibus Press

                                                                                                            A full-colour account of Lindsay Reade and Tony Wilson’s working life and relationship told through scans of their letters, pictures and Lindsay’s diary entries accompanied by commentary and reflections from Lindsay.

                                                                                                            A Continual Farewell tells the story of the relationship between Factory Records’ Tony Wilson and his first wife, Lindsay Reade, through their letters, Factory Records memorabilia and numerous family photos and snapshots.

                                                                                                            Many are typed on Factory notepaper, or are scrawled on pages from various studios and hotels. They begin in the punk year of 1976 from love at first sight to marriage, from a music show entitled So It Goes to the formation of Factory and the Hacienda, across domestic infidelities, separation, stalled reconciliations and a brutal sacking.

                                                                                                            After all that, when the reader would doubt any recovery was possible, the letters describe a renewed but now illicit love affair of former marriage partners. And beyond that, to a lasting friendship.

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                                                                                                            Cover of Tim Book Two by Tim Burgess.

                                                                                                            Tim Burgess

                                                                                                            Tim Book Two

                                                                                                            Faber & Faber

                                                                                                              In 2012, Tim Burgess of the Charlatans published his hugely successful and critically acclaimed memoir, Telling Stories. Tim really enjoyed his new role as an author, and so here it is: Tim Book Two - a tale of Tim's lifelong passion for records, the shops that sell them, and the people who make them.

                                                                                                              In some ways, the biggest events in Tim's life happened in the couple of years after he had finished writing his first book rather than in the forty years before. So he had more to say, but instead of another autobiography he chose a different way of telling the story. Tim set himself a quest. He would get in touch with people he admired, and ask them to suggest an album for him to track down on his travels, giving an insight into what makes them tick. It would also offer a chance to see how record shops were faring in the digital age - one in which vinyl was still a much-treasured format.

                                                                                                              Tim assembled his cast of characters, from Iggy Pop to Johnny Marr, David Lynch to Cosey Fanni Tutti. Texts, phone calls, emails and handwritten notes went out. Here is the tender, funny and surprising story of what came back.

                                                                                                              Tim Burgess is a singer-songwriter and record label owner, best known as the lead singer of one of the defining bands of the 1990s, The Charlatans.

                                                                                                              Tim was born in Salford but grew up in a village near Northwich, Cheshire. Leaving school at 16 to work at ICI, his real love was music and soon afterwards he was invited to join new band, The Charlatans. They went on to have 3 number 1 albums and 17 top 30 singles. For 12 years, Burgess lived in Los Angeles but now lives back in the UK. 

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                                                                                                              Cover of How To Run An Indie Label - Signed Edition by Alan McGee.

                                                                                                              Alan McGee

                                                                                                              How To Run An Indie Label - Signed Edition

                                                                                                              Faber & Faber

                                                                                                                *Signed edition.*

                                                                                                                Music is like no other business. It's about being at the right place at the right time, following your nose and diving in feet first. It's about being plugged into the mystical electricity and about surfing on the wild energy. It's about how to fuck up and how to survive and be sustained by the holy grail of the high decibel. No-one captures this wild feral spirit better than Alan McGee whose helter skelter career through music has made him a major force. Wilder than his bands, more out of control than his most lunatic singer, more driven than his contemporaries and closer in spirit to the rock n roll star he could never be himself, McGee was always in a rush. Creation would sign people and not just the music. McGee understood that running an indie label is mainly about the charisma, the game changers, the iconography and the story. It's about neverbeing boring.

                                                                                                                His ability to start a raw power ruckus brought the visceral danger back to a moribund mid-eighties music scene. His nose for danger and his ear for classic guitar rock n roll brought us Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine, Teenage Fan Club and Ride before topping out in the nineties with the biggest band in the world, Oasis.

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                                                                                                                Cover of Hope I Get Old Before I Die : Why Rock Stars Never Retire by David Hepworth.

                                                                                                                David Hepworth

                                                                                                                Hope I Get Old Before I Die : Why Rock Stars Never Retire

                                                                                                                Bantam

                                                                                                                  From the author of Abbey Road comes the story of how enduring rock icons like Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen and many more have remained in the ever changing music game. When Paul McCartney closed Live Aid in July 1985 we thought he was rock's Grand Old Man. He was forty-three years old.

                                                                                                                  As the forty years since have shown he - and many others of his generation - were just getting started. This was the time when live performance took over from records. The big names of the 60s and 70s exploited the age of spectacle that Live Aid had ushered in to enjoy the longest lap of honour in the history of humanity, continuing to go strong long after everyone else had retired.

                                                                                                                  Hence this is a story without precedent, a story in which Elton John plays a royal funeral, Mick Jagger gets a knighthood, Bob Dylan picks up the Nobel Prize, the Beatles become, if anything, bigger than the Beatles and it's beginning to look as though all of the above will, thanks to the march of technology, be playing Las Vegas for ever.

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                                                                                                                  Cover of LYF011 - Archives 1998-2012 by Wu Lyf.

                                                                                                                  Wu Lyf

                                                                                                                  LYF011 - Archives 1998-2012

                                                                                                                  Wu Lyf

                                                                                                                    A Celebration of the glimpses of gold that characterised WU LYF’s short reign-Featuring New Essays, Original Art, Photography & Lyrics.

                                                                                                                    Whilst preparing the 10th Anniversary Re-issue of the Singular WU LYF LP- "Go Tell Fire to the Mountain" a long forgotten hard drive was unearthed that held a pristine archive of the golden years of the LYF's creative output.
                                                                                                                    On it we found many snapshots of early Live Performances, Scans of all the Collaged Art works and Paintings, numerous Beautiful Photos captured by Friends and Lovers.

                                                                                                                    For those directly involved browsing over it provoked some giddy nostalgia for a well spent youth - a glorification of what was and some starry eyed speculation as to what could have been…

                                                                                                                    The conversation then arose that it would be a real shame to leave the work of WU LYF entirely overlooked in cultural history, lost to the sands of time, left as mere digital ash decaying in discarded digital urns.

                                                                                                                    So why not share it all?

                                                                                                                    Featuring text by and interviews by our very own Liam with Joe, Tom, Ellery and Evans. Plus additional text by Warren (War God) Bramley, JD Beauvalet, Matt Wilkinson, Beatrice Miniconi, Mino Tristovskij & Sean Wood.

                                                                                                                    STAFF COMMENTS

                                                                                                                    Liam says: In 2021, I had the privilege of being able to contribute to the LYF ARCHIVES 1998-2012 by interviewing members Ellery, Joe and Tom. Fast forward to July of this year, LYF ARCHIVES saw life. Documenting the short but spirited life of this seminal band, this is a must for anyone who followed the WU in any capacity during their brief existence.

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                                                                                                                    Cover of Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success by Miki Berenyi.

                                                                                                                    Miki Berenyi

                                                                                                                    Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success

                                                                                                                    Nine Eight Books

                                                                                                                      'Compelling, funny, vivid.' Mojo
                                                                                                                      'Beautifully written.' Stylist
                                                                                                                      'Remarkable, revelatory.' The Times

                                                                                                                      Formed in 1988, Lush were part of the London gig scene during one of the most vibrant and creative periods in UK music. Now, Miki Berenyi tells all. From the bohemian ways of her father's social circle to the privileged glamour of her mother's acting career, Miki's young life was a blur of travel, celebrities and peripatetic schooling.

                                                                                                                      But frequent relocation, parental neglect and the dark presence of her abusive grandmother resulted in crippling shyness, mental-health issues and a vulnerability to exploitation. The route out of this hole was music - a passion shared by schoolmate Emma Anderson. The teenagers began attending gigs together and would ultimately go on to form Lush.

                                                                                                                      Talented and exuberant, the band became hot property, swiftly transitioning from shoegaze icons to Britpop darlings. Re-living the tours, recording sessions and music-industry madness they experienced along the way, this uncompromising memoir documents Lush's thrilling rise and untimely fall. Yet at the heart of the book are Miki's own battles: the conflict between her mouthy public persona and her thin-skinned private identity; the trials of being a woman in an infuriatingly male world; the struggle to find a middle ground between 'safe' indie obscurity and 'sell-out' international success.

                                                                                                                      Miki also explores her complicated relationship with Emma - one that has fluctuated between camaraderie and rivalry over the years - and addresses the devastating tragedy that led to the band's split. Told through frank confession, wry humour and searing emotional honesty, this is the incredible tale of a trailblazing woman and a seminal band.

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                                                                                                                      Cover of Madvillain's Madvillainy - 33 1/3 by Will Hagle.

                                                                                                                      Will Hagle

                                                                                                                      Madvillain's Madvillainy - 33 1/3

                                                                                                                      Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

                                                                                                                        This book celebrates Madvillainy as a representation of two genius musical minds melding to form one revered supervillain. A product of circumstance, the album came together soon after MF DOOM's resurgence and Madlib's reluctant return from avant-garde jazz to hip-hop. Written from the alternating perspectives of three fake music journalist superheroes—featuring interviews with Wildchild, M.E.D., Walasia, Daedelus, Stones Throw execs, and many other real individuals involved with the album's creation—this book blends fiction and non-fiction to celebrate Madvillainy not just as an album, but as a folkloric artifact.

                                                                                                                        It is one specific retelling of a story which, like Madvillain's music, continues to spawn infinite legends.

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                                                                                                                        Cover of Rave New World : Confessions Of A Raving Reporter by Kirk Field.

                                                                                                                        Kirk Field

                                                                                                                        Rave New World : Confessions Of A Raving Reporter

                                                                                                                        Nine Eight Books

                                                                                                                          As a humble barman at the M25 Orbital raves, Kirk Field witnessed the moment acid house exploded. Inspired by media lies to start writing the truth about what he saw unfolding, Kirk became a 'raving' reporter for the clubbers' bible Mixmag, covering the historic parties from the inside and sending sweat-soaked dispatches from distant dancefloors as the scene expanded across Europe and beyond. With a cast of characters including Diego Maradona, Timothy Leary, the KLF, Michael Eavis, Genesis P-Orridge, Brigitte Nielsen, Boris Yeltsin, Boy George, Saddam Hussein's wife, the president of Tunisia, the CIA, the KGB, Dave Courtney, Norman Lamont's dominatrix and even Her Majesty the Queen, Kirk's whirlwind account of the golden age of clubbing tells the story of what really happened in the 'naughty '90s', exposing the seedy underbelly of rave culture while also capturing the nostalgic spirit of the era.

                                                                                                                          Told through a mixture of vivid first-person narrative, surreal insider anecdotes and incisive social commentary, this honest, hilarious and uncensored postcard of hedonism will appeal to anyone who's ever put their hands in the air like they just don't care.


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                                                                                                                          Cover of Listen : On Music, Sound And Us by Michel Faber.

                                                                                                                          Michel Faber

                                                                                                                          Listen : On Music, Sound And Us

                                                                                                                          Canongate Books

                                                                                                                            'I'm not here to change your mind about Dusty Springfield or Shostakovich or Tupac Shakur or synthpop. I'm here to change your mind about your mind.' There are countless books on music with much analysis given to musicians, bands, eras and/or genres. But rarely does a book delve into what's going on inside us when we listen.

                                                                                                                            Michel Faber explores two big questions: how we listen to music and why we listen to music. To answer these he considers biology, age, illness, the notion of 'cool', commerce, the dichotomy between 'good' and 'bad' taste and, through extensive interviews with musicians, unlocks some surprising answers. From the award-winning author of The Crimson Petal and the White and Under the Skin, this curious and celebratory book reflects Michel Faber's lifelong obsession with music of all kinds.

                                                                                                                            Listen will change your relationship with the heard world.

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                                                                                                                            Cover of Pressure Drop : Reggae In The Seventies by John Masouri.

                                                                                                                            John Masouri

                                                                                                                            Pressure Drop : Reggae In The Seventies

                                                                                                                            Omnibus Press

                                                                                                                              Pressure Drop chronicles reggae’s most tumultuous and influential decade. Beginning in 1970 and unfolding both in Britain and Jamaica, reggae flourished against a backdrop of political upheaval, gang warfare, Black Nationalism, racial and class discrimination and grinding poverty.

                                                                                                                              The music that developed as rocksteady and early reggae gave birth to deejays, dub, rockers, lovers rock, early dancehall and 2 Tone was by turns brutal and revelatory.

                                                                                                                              Including an extensive analysis of the decade’s major singles and albums, Pressure Drop includes eyewitness accounts and experiences of the decade from the likes of Burning Spear, Chris Blackwell, Gregory Isaacs, Bunny Wailer, Jimmy Cliff, Black Uhuru, U-Roy, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Augustus Pablo, Toots and the Maytals, Desmond Dekker, Sly & Robbie, Dennis Bovell, Don Letts and members of the Specials, as well as first-hand anecdotes of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh.

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                                                                                                                              Cover of Modest Mouse’s The Moon & Antarctica by Zachary Petit.

                                                                                                                              Zachary Petit

                                                                                                                              Modest Mouse’s The Moon & Antarctica

                                                                                                                              Bloomsbury Publishing USA

                                                                                                                                In 1999, Modest Mouse struck out for Chicago to record their major-label debut for Epic Records. Amid indie circle cries of “sellouts,” a largely untested producer, and a half-built studio, the trio recorded the instrumental basics of The Moon & Antarctica … and then singer/songwriter Isaac Brock got his face smashed by a hooligan in a park.

                                                                                                                                With barely any vocals recorded, Brock emerged from the hospital with his jaw completely wired shut, and returned to a mostly empty studio. And there, on a diet of painkillers, in a neighborhood that wanted to purge the band from its borders, a creative alchemy took place that would redefine Modest Mouse and indie rock at large.

                                                                                                                                The fact that the band finished the album at all is surprising. The fact that it is now considered by critics as “hands-down one of the greatest records ever made” (NME) is perhaps an utter miracle.

                                                                                                                                The Moon & Antarctica is an album so strange and enigmatic, from those sweet opening notes, to the plunging depths of the middle, to the shocking, furious end, that you almost hesitate to listen to it again for fear of it losing its chaotic magic. But then you do, and you discover all-new sounds-a lost harmonic here, a stray percussion element there, a fresh interpretation of a lyric that leaves you thunderstruck.

                                                                                                                                And that ever-looming question, years on: How the hell did Modest Mouse pull this off?!

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                                                                                                                                Cover of Renegade : The Lives And Tales Of Mark E. Smith by Mark E Smith (The Fall).

                                                                                                                                Mark E Smith (The Fall)

                                                                                                                                Renegade : The Lives And Tales Of Mark E. Smith

                                                                                                                                Penguin

                                                                                                                                  The only way to appreciate the legendary Mark E Smith is to encounter the man in his own words.

                                                                                                                                  'Ranting, raging, burning...relentlessly splenetic, a long and sustained rant... may also be the funniest music book ever written' - Observer

                                                                                                                                  'Unutterably funny... a riot of aimings and blamings and score-settlings. Smith manages to have a right laff, and reveal himself as a figure of dazzling sociological import' - Independent on Sunday

                                                                                                                                  The Fall are one of the most distinctive British bands ever, their music - odd, spare, cranky and repetitious - an acknowledged influence on The Smiths, The Happy Mondays, Nirvana and Franz Ferdinand. And Mark E. Smith IS The Fall - 66 members came and went over the years yet he remained its charismatic leader until his death in 2018.

                                                                                                                                  'If it's me and yer granny on bongos, it's The Fall.' - Mark E. Smith

                                                                                                                                  Mark was a professional outsider and all-round enemy of compromise, a true enigma. There have been a number of biographies of the legendary Smith, but this is the first time he opened up in a full autobiography. For the first time we hear his full, candid take on the ups and downs of a band as notorious for its in-house fighting as for its great music; and on a life that endured prison in America, drugs, bankruptcy, divorce, and the often bleak results of a legendary thirst.

                                                                                                                                  'Remarkable, brilliant. A provocative joy. Smith's rant gushes like a furious fountain of razor-sharp invective over his childhood and the early days of The Fall, relationships/ marriage, the record industry/ musicians and his views on everything from football to mobile phones, from drinking and drugs to driving, from books to bankruptcy, from Paul Morley to pubs. Unbeatable' - Time Out

                                                                                                                                  'Engrossing, exhausting, dense with fascinating detail. As both memoir and cultural history, Renegade is a remarkable achievement' - Daily Telegraph

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                                                                                                                                  Cover of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless - 33 1/3 by Mike McGonigal.

                                                                                                                                  Mike McGonigal

                                                                                                                                  My Bloody Valentine's Loveless - 33 1/3

                                                                                                                                  Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

                                                                                                                                    This epoch-making record of the late '80s effortlessly combines dense swathes of guitar noise and dance music. This turned out to be their last record, guitarist and studio maestro Kevin Shields having set their standards so high it was impossible to surpass them. Shields is now playing with Primal Scream.


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                                                                                                                                    Cover of The Stone Roses' The Stone Roses - 33 1/3 by Alex Green.

                                                                                                                                    Alex Green

                                                                                                                                    The Stone Roses' The Stone Roses - 33 1/3

                                                                                                                                    Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

                                                                                                                                      The Stone Roses shows a band sizzling with skill, consumed with drive and aspiration and possessing an almost preternatural mastery of the pop paradigm. This book explores the political and cultural zeitgeist of England in 1989 and attempts to apprehend the magic ingredients that made The Stone Roses such a special and influential album.

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                                                                                                                                      Cover of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures - 33 1/3 by Chris Ott.

                                                                                                                                      Chris Ott

                                                                                                                                      Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures - 33 1/3

                                                                                                                                      Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

                                                                                                                                        33 1/3 is a series of short books about critically acclaimed and much-loved albums of the last 40 years. Focusing on one album rather than an artist's entire output, the books dispense with the standard biographical background that fans know already, and cut to the heart of the music on each album. The authors provide fresh, original perspectives - often through their access to and relationships with the key figures involved in the recording of these albums.

                                                                                                                                        By turns obsessive, passionate, creative, and informed, the books in this series demonstrate many different ways of writing about music. (A task which can be, as Elvis Costello famously observed, as tricky as dancing about architecture.) What binds this series together, and what brings it to life, is that all of the authors - musicians, scholars, and writers - are deeply in love with the album they have chosen.

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                                                                                                                                        Cover of Chaise Longue by Baxter Dury.

                                                                                                                                        Baxter Dury

                                                                                                                                        Chaise Longue

                                                                                                                                        Corsair

                                                                                                                                          Methods of parenting and education have progressed in recent years, especially compared to some of the more casually experimental routes inflicted on children of artistic professionals in the 70s and 80s. One experience that would take some beating is that endured by Baxter Dury. When punk rock star Ian Dury disappeared to make films in the late 80s, he left his teenage son in the care of his roadie, in a rundown flat in Hammersmith.

                                                                                                                                          But this was no ordinary roadie; this was the Sulphate Strangler. The Strangler, having taken a lot of LSD in the 60s, was prone to depression, anger and hallucinations. He was also, as the name suggests, a drug dealer.

                                                                                                                                          What could possibly go wrong?In a period that we can now only imagine, a young Baxter ricocheted from one adventure to another, narrowly swerving one disaster only immediately to collide with another. At times, his situation was perilous in the extreme - the world is lucky to have him at all. CHAISE LONGUE is an intimate account of those escapades, evocatively illuminating a bohemian west London populated with feverishly grubby characters.

                                                                                                                                          Narrated in Dury's candid tone, both sad and funny, this moving story will leave an indelible imprint on its readers.

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                                                                                                                                          Cover of The Listening Service: 101 Journeys Through The Musical Universe by Tom Service.

                                                                                                                                          Tom Service

                                                                                                                                          The Listening Service: 101 Journeys Through The Musical Universe

                                                                                                                                          Faber & Faber

                                                                                                                                            Based on his critically-acclaimed BBC Radio 3 programme The Listening Service, in which Tom Service takes an idea on an ear-opening and mind-expanding walk through the musical landscape every week, this book is a celebration of music's multi-dimensional power in our lives. With 101 short chapters based on the programmes and grouped thematically the book will open ears and imaginations to find answers to the questions we all have about why and how music - from Toots and the Maytals and J S Bach, Gustav Mahler and Miley Cyrus, to Anna Meredith and Mozart - works its magic over us. With direct links to the programmes using a QR code, the chapters draw on powerful and communicative anecdotes and analogies, as well as the latest scientific research, and above all, a spirit of discovery and connection across genres, cultures, and histories. At its heart is the conviction that music changes us.

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                                                                                                                                            Cover of The Smiths' Meat Is Murder - 33 1/3 by Joe Pernice.

                                                                                                                                            Joe Pernice

                                                                                                                                            The Smiths' Meat Is Murder - 33 1/3

                                                                                                                                            Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

                                                                                                                                              A Catholic high school near Boston in 1985. A time of suicides, gymnasium humiliations, smoking for beginners, asthma attacks, and incendiary teenage infatuations. Infatuations with a girl (Allison), with a band (The Smiths) and with an album, Meat is Murder, that was so raw, so vivid and so melodic that you could cling to it like a lifeboat in a storm.

                                                                                                                                              In this brilliant novella Joe Pernice tells the story of an asthmatic kid's discovery of Meat is Murder. Here is a short exceropt: One morning as I was jogging my way past the bronze plaque commemorating the deaths of one student and one motorcyclist, my necktie flapping like a windsock, Ray floored the brake pedal of his Dodge as he closed in on me. Fifty mile an hour traffic came to a screeching, nearly murderous halt behind him.

                                                                                                                                              He leaned over and rolled down the passenger side window in one fluid motion. He dispensed with formalities while I marveled at the audacity of his driving and, tossing something at me, winked and said, "Here. I'm going to kill myself." He pegged the gas, leaving a surprisingly good patch of rubber for such a shitty car.

                                                                                                                                              In the gutter, sugared with sand put down during the winter's last snow, I saw written in red felt ink on masking tape stuck to a smoky-clear cassette: "Smiths: Meat."

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                                                                                                                                              Cover of Oasis' Definitely Maybe - 33 1/3 by Alex Niven.

                                                                                                                                              Alex Niven

                                                                                                                                              Oasis' Definitely Maybe - 33 1/3

                                                                                                                                              Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

                                                                                                                                                Oasis' incendiary 1994 debut album Definitely Maybe managed to summarize almost the entire history of post-fifties guitar music from Chuck Berry to My Bloody Valentine in a way that seemed effortless. But this remarkable album was also a social document that came closer to narrating the collective hopes and dreams of a people than any other record of the last quarter century. In a Britain that had just undergone the most damaging period of social upheaval in a century under the Thatcher government, Noel Gallagher ventriloquized slogans of burning communitarian optimism through the mouth of his brother Liam and the playing of the other Oasis ‘everymen’: Paul McGuigan, Paul Arthurs and Tony McCarroll.

                                                                                                                                                On Definitely Maybe, Oasis communicated a timeworn message of idealism and hope against the odds, but one that had special resonance in a society where the widening gap between high and low demanded a newly superhuman kind of leaping. Alex Niven charts the astonishing rise of Oasis in the mid 1990s and celebrates the life-affirming, communal force of songs such as “Live Forever,” “Supersonic,” and “Cigarettes & Alcohol.” In doing so, he seeks to reposition Oasis in relation to their Britpop peers and explore one of the most controversial pop-cultural narratives of the last thirty years.

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                                                                                                                                                Cover of Autonomy : Portrait Of A Buzzcock by Steve Diggle.

                                                                                                                                                Steve Diggle

                                                                                                                                                Autonomy : Portrait Of A Buzzcock

                                                                                                                                                Omnibus Press

                                                                                                                                                  From bass player to lead guitarist, member, Steve Diggle has been the driving force keeping Buzzcocks alive since he first met Pete Shelley in 1976. Together they would ignite the Manchester music scene, kickstart indie and become one of the best loved and most influential punk groups of all time. Following Shelley's untimely death in 2018, Autonomy is Diggle's definitive inside account of their shared musical legacy and complex friendship through the band's rise, fall, and rise again - from their punk origins supporting Sex Pistols with original singer Howard Devoto to Top of the Pops, the excess of success, break-up, reformation and life beyond bereavement.

                                                                                                                                                  Funny, honest and touchingly philosophical, it is also Diggle's very personal story of working class escape, dreams, redemption and loss - an ultimately heroic survivor's tale from an irrepressible rock'n'roll spirit.

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                                                                                                                                                  Reduced Cover of Spaceships Over Glasgow - Indie Record Store Edition by Stuart Braithwaite.

                                                                                                                                                  Stuart Braithwaite

                                                                                                                                                  Spaceships Over Glasgow - Indie Record Store Edition

                                                                                                                                                  White Rabbit

                                                                                                                                                    Signed & slipcase with exclusive colourway. Plus, bonus hardback folio ‘Photographic Evidence’, featuring previously unseen photographs from throughout the band’s career.

                                                                                                                                                    Born the son of Scotland’s last telescope-maker, Stuart Braithwaite was perhaps always destined for a life of psychedelic adventuring on the furthest frontiers of noise in MOGWAI, one of the best loved and most groundbreaking post-rock bands of the past three decades.

                                                                                                                                                    Modestly delinquent at school, Stuart developed an early appetite for ‘alternative’ music in what might arguably be described as its halcyon days, the late 80s. Discovering bands like Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, and Jesus and Mary Chain, and attending seminal gigs (often incongruously incognito as a young girl with long hair to compensate for his babyface features) by The Cure and Nirvana, Stuart compensated for his indifference to school work with a dedication to rock and roll … and of course the fledgling hedonism that comes with it.

                                                                                                                                                    After an initial outing in the unfortunately (and provocatively named), Pregnant Nun, Stuart – alongside teenage friends Dominic Aitchison and Martin Bulloch - upgrades the band name to MOGWAI. They release their first single ‘Tuner/Lower’ in 1996. Championed by the legendary John Peel, and making a name for themselves for tinnitus-inducing live shows, MOGWAI’S subsequent single ‘Summer’ is named Single of the Week in NME. Their first album, Mogwai Young Team, follows to significant critical acclaim.

                                                                                                                                                    Spaceships Over Glasgow is a lovesong to live rock and roll; to the passionate abandon we’ve all felt in the crowd (and some of us, if lucky enough, from the stage) at a truly incendiary rock and roll show. It is also the story of a life lived on the edge; of the high-times and hazardous pit-stops of international touring with a band of misfits and miscreants.

                                                                                                                                                    Lee Brackstone, Publisher at White Rabbit said: ‘MOGWAI have blown my head apart live on many occasions; Stuart’s book has the equivalent impact on the page. A chronicle of a life lived on the stage making truly contemporary psychedelic music, Spaceships Over Glasgow is the first book told from the source about a band who have truly lived the rock n roll lifestyle, survived, and thrived, to create some of the most powerful post-rock music of the past two decades plus.’

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                                                                                                                                                    Cover of To Ease My Troubled Mind: The Authorised, Unauthorised History Of Billy Childish - SPECIAL EDITION by Ted Kessler.

                                                                                                                                                    Ted Kessler

                                                                                                                                                    To Ease My Troubled Mind: The Authorised, Unauthorised History Of Billy Childish - SPECIAL EDITION

                                                                                                                                                    White Rabbit

                                                                                                                                                      SPECIAL EDITION SIGNED BY BILLY CHILDISH & TED KESSLER.

                                                                                                                                                      BOUND IN LIME GREEN LINEN BOARDS, WITH FOILED TITLES DESIGNED BY BILLY AND HOUSED IN A CUSTOM KRAFT PAPER SOLANDER BOX WITH FOUR-COLOUR INSIDE PAINTING.

                                                                                                                                                      THIS EDITION ALSO INCLUDES AN EXCLUSIVE VINYL AND SIGNED WOODCUT PRINT BY BILLY CHILDISH.

                                                                                                                                                      STRICTLY LIMITED TO JUST 500 COPIES.

                                                                                                                                                      In 1977, 17-year-old Steven Hamper was a stonemason in the dockyards of Chatham, Kent. His heart, however, beat in sync with the punk rock tremors of the era, seduced by its celebration of amateurism. So, in a gesture of revolutionary defiance, he took a 3lb club hammer and smashed his hand, vowing to never work again. In doing so, Steven Hamper metamorphosed into Billy Childish, a true renaissance man.

                                                                                                                                                      Childish has since remained steadfastly true to punk's DIY cred, becoming one of the most recognisable and authentic voices in whichever artistic endeavour he undertakes. He has released over one hundred and fifty albums of raw rock and roll, punk, blues and folk, written many volumes of searing poetry as well as several autobiographical novels. But what he is perhaps best known for in recent years is his painting, for which he is now critically, commercially and internationally feted. He hasn't changed course in any of his disciplines, though. The world just caught up with the sheer volume of his brutally honest work.

                                                                                                                                                      To Ease My Troubled Mind is a mosaic portrait collated over a year of interviews with Childish, as well as with close family, ex-girlfriends, bandmembers past and present, friends, foes, collaborators, even his therapist. It is an unflinching, yet frequently spiritual and funny portrait of an artist whose obstacle-strewn upbringing formed the backbone of his work: raised in a broken home and abused as a child, Childish was an undiagnosed dyslexic in remedial class at school who is nevertheless now Britain's most prolific and uncompromising creative force.

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                                                                                                                                                      Cover of Nick Drake: The Life by Richard Morton Jack.

                                                                                                                                                      Richard Morton Jack

                                                                                                                                                      Nick Drake: The Life

                                                                                                                                                      John Murray Publishers Ltd

                                                                                                                                                        'This is the book we've been waiting for . . .

                                                                                                                                                        It is a biography to be treasured' Joe Boyd'The Drake completist could ask for nothing else' Telegraph'Illuminating. The definitive word on Drake' ObserverIn 1968 Nick Drake had everything to live for. The product of a loving, creative family and a privileged background, he was not only a handsome and popular Cambridge undergraduate, but also a new signing to the UK's hippest record label, Island.

                                                                                                                                                        Three years later, however - having made three well-reviewed but low-selling albums - Nick had been overwhelmed by a mysterious mental illness. He returned to live in his family home in rural Warwickshire in 1971, and died in obscurity in 1974, aged just 26. In the decades since, Nick has become the subject of ever-growing fascination and speculation.

                                                                                                                                                        Combined sales of his records now stand in the millions, his songs are frequently heard on TV and in films, and he has become one of the most widely known and admired singer-songwriters of his generation. Nick Drake: The Life is the only biography of Nick to be written with the blessing and involvement of his sister and Estate. Drawing on copious original research and new interviews with his family, friends and musical collaborators, as well as deeply personal archive material unavailable to previous writers - including his father's diaries, his essays and private correspondence - this is the most comprehensive and authoritative account possible of Nick's short and enigmatic life.

                                                                                                                                                        Includes a foreword by Gabrielle Drake and over 75 photos, many rare or previously unseen.

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                                                                                                                                                        Cover of Jeff Buckley's Grace - 33 1/3 by Daphne A. Brooks.

                                                                                                                                                        Daphne A. Brooks

                                                                                                                                                        Jeff Buckley's Grace - 33 1/3

                                                                                                                                                        Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.

                                                                                                                                                          The power and influence of Grace increases with each passing year. Here, Daphne Brooks traces Jeff Buckley's fascinating musical development through the earliest stages of his career, up to the release of the album. With access to rare archival material, Brooks illustrates Buckley's passion for life and hunger for musical knowledge, and shows just why he was such a crucial figure in the American music scene of the 1990s.

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                                                                                                                                                          Cover of Echoes : A Memoir Continued... by Will Sergeant.

                                                                                                                                                          Will Sergeant

                                                                                                                                                          Echoes : A Memoir Continued...

                                                                                                                                                          Constable

                                                                                                                                                            Scenic Wye Valley isn't the typical place for a rock story to begin, but when Echo & the Bunnymen hit the studio to record their ground-breaking debut album, Crocodiles, it was anything but ordinary. The album was the making of the band - cultivating a cult following which would soon evolve into staggering mainstream success. Their lives would never be the same again.

                                                                                                                                                            In Echoes, legendary guitarist and founding member of Echo & the Bunnymen, Will Sergeant, recounts the band's whirlwind rise to stardom with his trademark wryness and intelligence. Sharing never-before-told anecdotes - including the heady Rockfield Studio sessions and touring across the US, playing sold-out shows at Whisky a Go Go and experiencing the iconic New York club scene from dusk 'til dawn - and accompanied by snapshots of the cultural, social and political scene at the time, this is a memoir to remember.

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                                                                                                                                                            Cover of Shooting Star : The Definitive Story Of Elliott Smith by Paul Rees.

                                                                                                                                                            Paul Rees

                                                                                                                                                            Shooting Star : The Definitive Story Of Elliott Smith

                                                                                                                                                            Nine Eight Books

                                                                                                                                                              'Elliott was one of the best songwriters of our day and a formidable musician.' - Beck'There's an undercurrent of real sadness in a lot of his music ... and that's just really the way he was.' - Steve Drozd, Flaming Lips'I'm the wrong kind of person to be really big and famous.' - Elliott Smith, speaking in 1997In 2003, Steven 'Elliott' Smith died from two stab wounds to the heart. To this day, the autopsy evidence remains inconclusive as to whether the wounds were self-inflicted or the result of homicide.

                                                                                                                                                              Either way, this tragic end to Elliott's short-lived though prodigiously talented life became the dark denouement of a story riddled with depression, mental illness, addiction and chronic substance abuse. Yet it is also a story of worldwide critical acclaim, of Oscar nominations and of some of the finest recorded music of the late twentieth century. Now, two decades after Elliott's death, Shooting Star seeks to encapsulate the many complexities of this shy, funny, engaging, enigmatic musician and his desperately troubled soul.

                                                                                                                                                              With contributions from those closest to Elliott who have not previously spoken about their friend, this masterful biography places the singer-songwriter's vulnerabilities and decline within the broader context of all that he achieved: the sheer, stark beauty of the records he made and the resounding impact they went on to have across a whole spectrum of contemporary music. This is the definitive account of Elliott Smith - a once-in-a-generation artist.

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                                                                                                                                                              Cover of Neu Klang: The Definitive History Of Krautrock by Christoph Dallach.

                                                                                                                                                              Christoph Dallach

                                                                                                                                                              Neu Klang: The Definitive History Of Krautrock

                                                                                                                                                              Faber & Faber

                                                                                                                                                                West Germany, 1968. Like everywhere else in the Western world, the young generation is pushing for radical change, still suffering the after-effects of the Second World War. Many stream out of the lecture halls and onto the streets.

                                                                                                                                                                Some into the underground. And some into the practice basements, in search of the soundtrack of the movement. The unique and adventurous sounds that German bands like Can, Neu!, Amon Düül, Popul Vuh, Tangerine Dream, Faust, Cluster or Kraftwerk produced back then, now known as Krautrock, are considered a blueprint for modern rock music.

                                                                                                                                                                And the stream of their creative admirers and continuators has been constantly widening since the first fans like David Bowie and Iggy Pop: whether Blur, Aphex Twin, Sonic Youth, Radiohead or the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. In Neu Klang, Christoph Dallach interviewed its pioneers, including Irmin Schmidt, Jaki Liebezeit and Holger Czukay of CAN; Neu!'s Michael Rother; Dieter Moebius of Cluster; Klaus Schulze of Tangerine Dream; Karl Bartos of Kraftwerk, Brian Eno and many others. Their answers combine to form an oral history that points far beyond the individual band histories: on the one hand, into the past, to Nazi teachers, post-war parental homes, free jazz, terrorism, LSD and extremely long hair; but just as much into the future, to global recognition, myth-making, techno or post-rock.

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                                                                                                                                                                Cover of Rebel Girl: My Life As A Feminist Punk by Kathleen Hanna.

                                                                                                                                                                Kathleen Hanna

                                                                                                                                                                Rebel Girl: My Life As A Feminist Punk

                                                                                                                                                                HarperCollins Publishers

                                                                                                                                                                  An electric, searing memoir by the original riot grrrl and legendary frontwoman of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre Hey girlfriend I got a proposition, goes something like this: Dare ya to do what you want. Kathleen Hanna’s rallying cry to feminists echoed far and wide through the punk scene of the 1980s, ’90s, and beyond. Her band, Bikini Kill, embodies this iconic time, and today their gutsy, radical lyrics of anthems like ‘Rebel Girl’ and ‘Double Dare Ya’ are more powerful than ever.

                                                                                                                                                                  But where did this transformative voice come from? In Rebel Girl, Hanna’s raw and insightful new memoir, she takes us from her tumultuous childhood home, to her formative college years in Olympia, Washington, and on to her first years on tour, fighting hard for gigs and for her band. As Hanna makes blindingly clear, being in a ‘girl band’, especially a punk girl band, in those years was not a simple or a safe prospect. Male violence and antagonism threatened at every turn, and surviving as a singer who was a lightening rod for controversy took limitless amounts of determination.

                                                                                                                                                                  But the relationships she developed during those years buoyed her – including with her bandmates Tobi Vail, Kathi Wilcox, and Billy Karren; her friendship with Kurt Cobain; and her introduction to Joan Jett – and they were a testament to how the true punk world nurtured and cared for its own. Hanna opens up about falling in love with Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys and her debilitating battle with Lyme disease, and she brings us behind the scenes of her later bands, Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin. She also writes candidly about the Riot Grrrl movement and its decline, documenting with love its grassroots origins but critiquing its later exclusivity.

                                                                                                                                                                  In an uncut voice all her own, Hanna reveals the darkest, hardest times along with the most joyful – and how it all fuelled her revolutionary art, from the 1980s to today.

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                                                                                                                                                                  Cover of How To Be A Rock Star by Shaun Ryder.

                                                                                                                                                                  Shaun Ryder

                                                                                                                                                                  How To Be A Rock Star

                                                                                                                                                                  Atlantic

                                                                                                                                                                    As lead singer of Happy Mondays and Black Grape, Shaun Ryder was the Keith Richards and Mick Jagger of his generation. A true rebel, who formed and led not one but two seminal bands, he's had number-one albums, headlined Glastonbury, toured the world numerous times, taken every drug under the sun, been through rehab - and come out the other side as a national treasure.

                                                                                                                                                                    Now, for the first time, Shaun lifts the lid on the real inside story of how to be a rock star. With insights from three decades touring the world, which took him from Salford to San Francisco, from playing working men's clubs to headlining Glastonbury and playing in front of the biggest festival crowd the world has ever seen, in Brazil, in the middle of thunderstorm. From recording your first demo tape to having a number-one album, Shaun gives a fly-on-thewall look at the rock 'n' roll lifestyle - warts and all: how to be a rock star - and also how not to be a rock star.

                                                                                                                                                                    From numerous Top of the Pops appearances to being banned from live TV, from being a figurehead of the acid-house scene to hanging out backstage with the Rolling Stones, Shaun has seen it all. In this book he pulls the curtain back on the debauchery of the tour bus, ridiculous riders, run-ins with record companies, drug dealers and the mafia, and how he forged the most remarkable comeback of all time.

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                                                                                                                                                                    Cover of A Year With Swollen Appendices : Brian Eno's Diary by Brian Eno.

                                                                                                                                                                    Brian Eno

                                                                                                                                                                    A Year With Swollen Appendices : Brian Eno's Diary

                                                                                                                                                                    Faber & Faber

                                                                                                                                                                      The diary and essays of Brian Eno republished twenty-five years on with a new introduction by the artist in a beautiful hardback edition. 'One of the seminal books about music . .

                                                                                                                                                                      . an invaluable insight into the mind and working practices of one of the industry's undeniable geniuses.'GUARDIAN.

                                                                                                                                                                      At the end of 1994, musician, producer and artist Brian Eno resolved to keep a diary. His plans to go to the cinema, theatre and galleries fell through quickly.

                                                                                                                                                                      What he did do - and write - however, was astonishing: ruminations on his collaborative work with artists including David Bowie, U2, James and Jah Wobble, interspersed with correspondence and essays dating back to 1978. These 'appendices' covered topics from the generative and ambient music Eno pioneered to what he believed the role of an artist and their art to truly be, alongside razor-sharp commentary on his day-to-day tribulations and happenings around the world. A fascinating, candid and intimate insight into one of the most influential creative artists of our time, A Year with Swollen Appendices is an essential classic, reissued for a new generation of readers.

                                                                                                                                                                      This beautiful 25th anniversary paperback edition has been re-designed in A5, the same size as the diary that eventually became this book. It features two ribbons, pink paper delineating the appendices (matching the original hardback edition) and a two-tone cover that pays homage to the original design.

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                                                                                                                                                                      Cover of I Am Hated For Loving - A Morrissey Tour On The Brink by Dickie Felton.

                                                                                                                                                                      Dickie Felton

                                                                                                                                                                      I Am Hated For Loving - A Morrissey Tour On The Brink

                                                                                                                                                                      Dickie Felton

                                                                                                                                                                        Morrissey marks 40 years in music with no record label, no management, no airplay, no promotion, no new release and no media support.

                                                                                                                                                                        The legendary singer embarks on a world tour facing an uncertain future. Frenzied front-line fans rally to their under-fire hero in a series of concerts across the globe. Dickie Felton attends 16 Morrissey shows in little over a year and captures a singer and his audience bonded in history, unity and love.

                                                                                                                                                                        Focussing on gigs in iconic cities of Dublin, Liverpool and New York, Felton photographs fans and captures the world of Morrissey at a crossroads.

                                                                                                                                                                        Featuring more than 125 images, 'I AM HATED FOR LOVING' is a visual and written documentary of a unique subculture. The sanest days are mad everywhere from The Stockton Globe to the Salle Pleyel in Paris – yet the world won’t listen.

                                                                                                                                                                        The book is a collaboration between Dickie and Persian artist Iman Kakai-Lazell who has created books with Kristin Hersh, Mark Lanegan and Kirk Brandon.

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                                                                                                                                                                        Cover of To Ease My Troubled Mind: The Authorised, Unauthorised History Of Billy Childish by Ted Kessler.

                                                                                                                                                                        Ted Kessler

                                                                                                                                                                        To Ease My Troubled Mind: The Authorised, Unauthorised History Of Billy Childish

                                                                                                                                                                        White Rabbit

                                                                                                                                                                          In 1977, 17-year-old Steven Hamper was a stonemason in the dockyards of Chatham, Kent. His heart, however, beat in sync with the punk rock tremors of the era, seduced by its celebration of amateurism. So, in a gesture of revolutionary defiance, he took a 3lb club hammer and smashed his hand, vowing to never work again. In doing so, Steven Hamper metamorphosed into Billy Childish, a true renaissance man.

                                                                                                                                                                          Childish has since remained steadfastly true to punk's DIY cred, becoming one of the most recognisable and authentic voices in whichever artistic endeavour he undertakes. He has released over one hundred and fifty albums of raw rock and roll, punk, blues and folk, written many volumes of searing poetry as well as several autobiographical novels. But what he is perhaps best known for in recent years is his painting, for which he is now critically, commercially and internationally feted. He hasn't changed course in any of his disciplines, though. The world just caught up with the sheer volume of his brutally honest work.

                                                                                                                                                                          To Ease My Troubled Mind is a mosaic portrait collated over a year of interviews with Childish, as well as with close family, ex-girlfriends, bandmembers past and present, friends, foes, collaborators, even his therapist. It is an unflinching, yet frequently spiritual and funny portrait of an artist whose obstacle-strewn upbringing formed the backbone of his work: raised in a broken home and abused as a child, Childish was an undiagnosed dyslexic in remedial class at school who is nevertheless now Britain's most prolific and uncompromising creative force.

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                                                                                                                                                                          Cover of Baby Girl: Better Known As Aaliyah by Kathy Iandoli.

                                                                                                                                                                          Kathy Iandoli

                                                                                                                                                                          Baby Girl: Better Known As Aaliyah

                                                                                                                                                                          Simon & Schuster

                                                                                                                                                                            In a definitive and "excellent homage to a star who left this planet too soon" (Questlove), the life, career, tragic death, and evolution of Aaliyah into a music legend are explored-now updated with new material featuring in-depth research and exclusive interviews. By twenty-two years old, Aaliyah had already accomplished a staggering amount: hit records, acclaimed acting roles, and fame that was just about to cross over into superstardom. Like her song, she was already "more than a woman" but her shocking death in a plane crash prevented her from fully growing into one.

                                                                                                                                                                            Now, two decades later, the full story of Aaliyah's life and cultural impact is finally and lovingly revealed. Baby Girl features never-before-told stories, including studio anecdotes, personal tales, and eyewitness accounts on the events leading up to her untimely passing. Her enduring influence on today's artists-such as Rihanna, Drake, Normani, and many more-is also celebrated, providing Aaliyah's discography a cultural critique that is long overdue.

                                                                                                                                                                            "There's no better way to pay your respect to R&B's true angel than to lose yourself in the pages" (Kim Osorio, journalist and author of Straight from the Source) of this "dazzling biography" (Publishers Weekly) that is as unforgettable as its subject. This book was written without the participation of Aaliyah's family/estate.

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                                                                                                                                                                            Cover of I Was There : Dispatches From A Life In Rock And Roll by Alan Edwards.

                                                                                                                                                                            Alan Edwards

                                                                                                                                                                            I Was There : Dispatches From A Life In Rock And Roll

                                                                                                                                                                            Simon & Schuster Ltd

                                                                                                                                                                              Alan Edwards, the godfather of British music PR, has worked with some of the most legendary artists of our time, from David Bowie to the Spice Girls via the Rolling Stones, the Stranglers, Prince and Amy Winehouse. In I Was There, he describes getting his break in the mid-'70s as a scruffy, stoned 20-year-old just back from the hippie trail; his encounter with London's thriving punk scene, which inspired him to set up his own PR company; broadening his horizons as his work with the likes of Blondie takes him to the US and beyond; and his move into the world of pop with the Spice Girls during the tabloid-crazed '90s.

                                                                                                                                                                              At the centre of this story sits the defining relationship of Edwards' career: his close, thirty-year collaboration with David Bowie. He guides us through a series of vivid, funny, always insightful behind-the-scenes reports, whether he's playing a spontaneous game of football with Bob Marley, listening to Prince discuss the future of civilisation in a nightclub VIP area, or being used as a pawn in the power struggle between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Above all, we're treated to Edwards' fascinating observations about the brilliant artists he has worked with and what makes them tick, as he looks back on his role in the last five decades of music and culture.

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                                                                                                                                                                              Cover of Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp A Butterfly - 33 1/3 by Sequoia Maner.

                                                                                                                                                                              Sequoia Maner

                                                                                                                                                                              Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp A Butterfly - 33 1/3

                                                                                                                                                                              Bloomsbury Academic USA

                                                                                                                                                                                Breaking the global record for streams in a single day, nearly 10 million people around the world tuned in to hear Kendrick Lamar’s sophomore album in the hours after its release. To Pimp a Butterfly was widely hailed as an instant classic, garnering laudatory album reviews, many awards, and even a canonized place in Harvard’s W. E.

                                                                                                                                                                                B. Du Bois archive. Why did this strangely compelling record stimulate the emotions and imaginations of listeners?This book takes a deep dive into the sounds, images, and lyrics of To Pimp a Butterfly to suggest that Kendrick appeals to the psyche of a nation in crisis and embraces the development of a radical political conscience.

                                                                                                                                                                                Kendrick breathes fresh life into the Black musical protest tradition and cultivates a platform for loving resistance. Combining funk, jazz, and spoken word, To Pimp a Butterfly’s expansive sonic and lyrical geography brings a high level of innovation to rap music. More importantly, Kendrick’s introspective and philosophical songs compel us to believe in a future where, perhaps, we gon’ be alright.

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                                                                                                                                                                                Cover of Electri_City: The Dusseldorf School Of Electronic Music by Rudi Esch.

                                                                                                                                                                                Rudi Esch

                                                                                                                                                                                Electri_City: The Dusseldorf School Of Electronic Music

                                                                                                                                                                                Omnibus

                                                                                                                                                                                  Just like Memphis for Rock'n'Roll, Dusseldorf is regarded as the Mecca for electronic music. The capital of North Rhine-Westphalia became the centre of an analog electronic movement which changed the course of all popular music to come.

                                                                                                                                                                                  Electri_City is the oral account of the city's most influential bands, including Kraftwerk, NEU!, DAF, Die Krupps and many more. This history uncovers the myths and reality of the bands emerging from the artistic backdrop of a wealthy, modern, post-WWII German city; the conditions that fostered such a creative explosion.

                                                                                                                                                                                  Interviews include Daniel Miller (Mute Records), Paul Humphreys and Andy McCluskey (OMD), Martyn Ware (Human League), Glenn Gregory (Heaven 17), Rusty Egan (Visage) Ryuichi Sakamoto and producer, Giorgio Moroder.

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                                                                                                                                                                                  Cover of Brothers by Alex Van Halen.

                                                                                                                                                                                  Alex Van Halen

                                                                                                                                                                                  Brothers

                                                                                                                                                                                  HarperCollins

                                                                                                                                                                                    In this intimate and open account - nothing like any rock-and-roll memoir you've ever read - Alex Van Halen shares his personal story of family, friendship, music and brotherly love in a remarkable tribute to his beloved brother and band mate. Told with acclaimed New Yorker writer Ariel Levy Brothers is seventy-year-old drummer Alex Van Halen's love letter to his younger brother, Edward, (maybe "Ed," but never "Eddie"), written while still mourning his untimely death.In his rough yet sweet voice, Alex recounts the brothers' childhood, first in the Netherlands and then in working class Pasadena, California, with an itinerant musician father and a very proper Indonesian-born mother - the kind of mum who admonished her boys to "always wear a suit" no matter how famous they became - a woman who was both proud and practical, nonchalant about taking a doggie bag from a star-studded dinner. He also shares tales of musical politics, infighting, and plenty of bad-boy behaviour.

                                                                                                                                                                                    But mostly his is a story of brotherhood, music, and enduring love."I was with him from day one," Alex writes. "We shared the experience of coming to America and figuring out how to fit in. We shared a record player, an 800 square foot house, a mom and dad, and a work ethic.

                                                                                                                                                                                    Later, we shared the back of a tour bus, alcoholism, the experience of becoming famous, of becoming fathers and uncles, and of spending more hours in the studio than I've spent doing anything else in this life. We shared a depth of understanding that most people can only hope to achieve in a lifetime."There has never been an accurate account of them or the band, and Alex wants to set the record straight on Edward's life and death.Brothers includes never-before-seen photos from the author's private archives.

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                                                                                                                                                                                    Cover of Techno Is Boring by Daniel Avery.

                                                                                                                                                                                    Daniel Avery

                                                                                                                                                                                    Techno Is Boring

                                                                                                                                                                                    Velocity Press

                                                                                                                                                                                      Long-time friends and collaborators, musician Daniel Avery, alongside photographer Keffer are proud to present Techno Is Boring, a new book that collects a decade of work chronicling club culture in visceral form.

                                                                                                                                                                                      Techno Is Boring also includes short written essays and notes from Avery and fellow DJ, writer and collaborator John Loveless, who also provides an introduction, appearing alongside guest contributions from friends and allies.


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                                                                                                                                                                                      Cover of Forever Changes: The Authorized Biography Of Arthur Lee And Love by John Einarson.

                                                                                                                                                                                      John Einarson

                                                                                                                                                                                      Forever Changes: The Authorized Biography Of Arthur Lee And Love

                                                                                                                                                                                      Jawbone

                                                                                                                                                                                        Widely hailed as a genius, Arthur Lee was a character every bit as colorful and unique as his music. In 1966, he was Prince of the Sunset Strip, busy with his pioneering racially mixed band, Love, and accelerating the evolution of California folk-rock by infusing it with jazz and orchestral influences, a process that would climax in a timeless masterpiece, the Love album Forever Changes. Shaped by a Memphis childhood and a South Los Angeles youth, Lee always craved fame.

                                                                                                                                                                                        He would achieve his ambition with a mixture of vaulting talent and colossal chutzpah. Drug use and a reticence to tour were his Achilles heels, and he succumbed to a dissolute lifestyle just as superstardom was beckoning. Despite endorsements from the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, Lee s subsequent career was erratic and haunted by the shadow of Forever Changes, reaching a nadir with his imprisonment in 1996 for a firearms offence.

                                                                                                                                                                                        Redemption followed, culminating in an astonishing postmillennial comeback that found him playing Forever Changes to adoring, multi-generational fans around the world. This upswing was only interrupted by his untimely death from leukemia in 2006. Written with the full consent and cooperation of Arthur s widow, Diane Lee, Forever Changes is a meticulously researched biography that includes lengthy extracts from Arthur s vivid, comic, and poignant memoirs, published here for the first time.

                                                                                                                                                                                        Author John Einarson has also amassed dozens of new interviews with the surviving members of Love and with many others who fell into the incomparable Lee s flamboyant orbit. This updated edition adds a new foreword by Love s co-founder and lead guitarist, Johnny Echols.

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                                                                                                                                                                                        Cover of Into The Void : From Birth To Black Sabbath by Geezer Butler.

                                                                                                                                                                                        Geezer Butler

                                                                                                                                                                                        Into The Void : From Birth To Black Sabbath

                                                                                                                                                                                        HarperCollins

                                                                                                                                                                                          With over 70 million records sold, heavy metal pioneers Black Sabbath are one of the most influential bands of all time. From the very beginning, Geezer Butler was at the heart of their success. He named the group, provided the bass behind their distinctive sound and wrote the lyrics that resonated so powerfully with fans around the world.

                                                                                                                                                                                          At long last, Geezer is ready to tell his side of the Sabbath story, from early days as a scrappy blues quartet through to the many lineup changes, the record-breaking tours and the international hell-raising with Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi and Bill Ward. Featuring Geezer’s candid reflections on his working-class childhood in Luftwaffe-battered Birmingham, his almost-life as an accountant and his fascination with horror, religion and the occult, Into the Void reveals the softer side of the heavy metal legend, while holding nothing back. Like Geezer’s bass lines and the story of Black Sabbath themselves, Into the Void is original, dramatic and one hell of a ride.

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                                                                                                                                                                                          Cover of Too Much Too Young: The 2 Tone Records Story Rude Boys, Racism And The Soundtrack Of A Generation by Daniel Rachel.

                                                                                                                                                                                          Daniel Rachel

                                                                                                                                                                                          Too Much Too Young: The 2 Tone Records Story Rude Boys, Racism And The Soundtrack Of A Generation

                                                                                                                                                                                          White Rabbit

                                                                                                                                                                                            In 1979, 2 Tone exploded into the national conscience as records by The Specials, The Selecter, Madness, The Beat, and The Bodysnatchers burst onto the charts and a youth movement was born.

                                                                                                                                                                                            2 Tone was black and white: a multi-racial force of British and Caribbean island musicians singing about social issues, racism, class and gender struggles. It spoke of injustices in society and took fight against right wing extremism.

                                                                                                                                                                                            The music of 2 Tone was exuberant: white youth learning to dance to the infectious rhythm of ska and reggae; and crossed with a punk attitude to create an original hybrid. The idea of 2 Tone was born in Coventry, masterminded by a middle-class art student raised in the church. Jerry Dammers had a vision of an English Motown. Borrowing £700, the label's first record featured 'Gangsters' by The Specials' backed by an instrumental track by the, as yet, unformed, Selecter. Within two months the single was at number six in the national charts. Dammers signed Madness, The Beat and The Bodysnatchers as a glut of successive hits propelled 2 Tone onto Top of the Pops and into the hearts and minds of a generation. However, soon infighting amongst the bands and the pressures of running a label caused 2 Tone to bow to an inevitable weight of expectation and recrimination.

                                                                                                                                                                                            Still under the auspices of Jerry Dammers, 2 Tone entered in a new phase. Perhaps not as commercially successful as its 1979-1981 incarnation the label nevertheless continued to thrive for a further four years releasing a string of fresh signings and a stunning endpiece finale in '(Free) Nelson Mandela'.

                                                                                                                                                                                            Told in three parts, Too Much Too Young is the definitive story of a label that for a brief, bright burning moment, shaped British culture.

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                                                                                                                                                                                            Cover of Dance Your Way Home : A Journey Through The Dancefloor by Emma Warren.

                                                                                                                                                                                            Emma Warren

                                                                                                                                                                                            Dance Your Way Home : A Journey Through The Dancefloor

                                                                                                                                                                                            Faber & Faber

                                                                                                                                                                                              This book is about the kind of ordinary dancing you and I might do in our kitchens when a favourite tune comes on. It's more than a social history: it's a set of interconnected histories of the overlooked places where dancing happens . .

                                                                                                                                                                                              . Why do we dance together? What does dancing tells us about ourselves, individually and collectively? And what can it do for us? Whether it be at home, '80s club nights, Irish dancehalls or reggae dances, jungle raves or volunteer-run spaces and youth centres, Emma Warren has sought the answers to these questions her entire life. Dancing doesn't just refract the music and culture within which it evolves; it also generates new music and culture.

                                                                                                                                                                                              When we speak only of the music, we lose part of the story - the part that finds us dancing as children on the toes of adults; the half that triggers communication across borders and languages; the part that finds us worried that we'll never be able to dance again, and the part that finds us wondering why we were ever nervous in the first place. At the intersection of memoir, social and cultural history, Dance Your Way Home is an intimate foray onto the dancefloor - wherever and whenever it may be - that speaks to the heart of what it is that makes us move.

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                                                                                                                                                                                              Reduced Cover of Hanging Around Musicians by Gareth Ashton.

                                                                                                                                                                                              Gareth Ashton

                                                                                                                                                                                              Hanging Around Musicians

                                                                                                                                                                                              Empire Publications

                                                                                                                                                                                                As meteoric rises go - Gareth Ashton's takes some beating. Born and bred in Derbyshire, he had always been a keen drummer, like his father and in 1977 discovered the joys of punk via The Jam's performance on Top Of The Pops. Within weeks he was forming his own band The Ruin and within months he was playing on the same bill as punk trendsetters The Damned on a nationwide tour and living the dream with the short-lived The Irritators. After gigs in Sheffield, Edinburgh, Dundee and Manchester Gareth went on to pursue other musical goals but never quite hit those heights again. Nonetheless he drummed successfully all over the UK for over two decades playing everything from jazz-funk to country & western. Now retired, Gareth reflects on the lot of a semi-professional musician, a world away from the gilded lives of rock stars and their entourages.

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                                                                                                                                                                                                Cover of Changes : An Oral History Of Tupac Shakur by Sheldon Pearce.

                                                                                                                                                                                                Sheldon Pearce

                                                                                                                                                                                                Changes : An Oral History Of Tupac Shakur

                                                                                                                                                                                                Simon & Schuster

                                                                                                                                                                                                  A New Yorker writer's intimate, revealing account of Tupac Shakur's life and legacy, timed to the fiftieth anniversary of his birth and twenty-fifth anniversary of his death. In the summer of 2020, Tupac Shakur's single "Changes" became an anthem for the worldwide protests against the murder of George Floyd. The song became so popular, in fact, it was vaulted back onto the iTunes charts more than twenty years after its release-making it clear that Tupac's music and the way it addresses systemic racism, police brutality, mass incarceration, income inequality, and a failing education system is just as important now as it was back then.

                                                                                                                                                                                                  In Changes, published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Tupac's birth and twenty-fifth anniversary of his death, Sheldon Pearce offers one of the most thoughtful and comprehensive accounts yet of the artist's life and legacy. Pearce, an editor and writer at The New Yorker, interviews dozens who knew Tupac throughout various phases of his life. While there are plenty of bold-faced names, the book focuses on the individuals who are lesser known and offer fresh stories and rare insight.

                                                                                                                                                                                                  Among these are the actor who costarred with him in a Harlem production of A Raisin in the Sun when he was twelve years old, the high school drama teacher who recognized and nurtured his talent, the music industry veteran who helped him develop a nonprofit devoted to helping young artists, the Death Row Records executive who has never before spoken on the record, and dozens of others. Meticulously woven together by Pearce, their voices combine to portray Tupac in all his complexity and contradiction. This remarkable book illustrates not only how he changed during his brief twenty-five years on this planet, but how he forever changed the world.


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                                                                                                                                                                                                  Cover of 1984: The Year Pop Went Queer by Ian Wade.

                                                                                                                                                                                                  Ian Wade

                                                                                                                                                                                                  1984: The Year Pop Went Queer

                                                                                                                                                                                                  Nine Eight Books

                                                                                                                                                                                                    In 1984, pop came out of the closet - even if not all of the artists felt that they could - and, in the process, charted the course of the rest of the decade. In 1984: The Year Pop Went Queer, writer and musician Ian Wade charts where these artists, including Queen, George Michael, David Bowie, Pet Shop Boys, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Madonna - who all enjoyed chart success in 1984 - were during that epoch-making year. It studies the impact these groundbreaking musicians had before, during and after on the gay community and popular culture, and it demonstrates how they were able to break down barriers, raise consciousness and set in motion the first nascent ripples in a pond that are still being felt today. As a backdrop, it explores the strides made in the name of the cause and how the wider surrounding culture reacted with equal parts glee, bafflement and disgust.

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                                                                                                                                                                                                    Cover of Wales - 100 Records by Huw Stephens.

                                                                                                                                                                                                    Huw Stephens

                                                                                                                                                                                                    Wales - 100 Records

                                                                                                                                                                                                    Y Lolfa

                                                                                                                                                                                                      DJ Huw Stephens analyses the highlights of the careers of the most important recording artists that Wales has ever produced, singing in English or Welsh - favourites such as Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey, Dafydd Iwan, Max Boyce, Manic Street Preachers, Super Furry Animals, Adwaith and Kelly Lee Owens. -- Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru

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                                                                                                                                                                                                      Cover of World Within A Song : Music That Changed My Life And Life That Changed My Music by Jeff Tweedy.

                                                                                                                                                                                                      Jeff Tweedy

                                                                                                                                                                                                      World Within A Song : Music That Changed My Life And Life That Changed My Music

                                                                                                                                                                                                      Faber & Faber

                                                                                                                                                                                                        What makes us fall in love with a song? What makes us want to write our own songs? Do songs help? Do songs help us live better lives? And do the lives we live help us write better songs? Following publication of Let's Go (So We Can Get Back) and How To Write One Song, both New York Times bestsellers that cemented and expanded his legacy as one of America's best-loved performers and songwriters, Jeff Tweedy is back with another disarming, beautiful, and inspiring book. Featuring over fifty songs that have both changed Jeff's life and influenced his music-including songs by the Velvet Underground, Joni Mitchell, Otis Redding, Dolly Parton, and Billie Eilish-as well as thoughts on Jeff's own songs, World Within a Song asks why do we listen to music, why we love songs, and how music can connect us to each other and to ourselves.

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