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FABER & FABER

Cover of Excavate! : The Wonderful And Frightening World Of The Fall by Bob Stanley.

Bob Stanley

Excavate! : The Wonderful And Frightening World Of The Fall

Faber & Faber

    A definitive insight into the ever-influential world of Mark E. Smith and the Fall, featuring never-before published essays and ephemera from fans, collectors and the artist and band themselves.

    This is not a book about a rock band. This is not even a book about Mark E Smith. This is a book about The Fall group - or more precisely, their world. Over a prolific forty-year career, the Fall created a world that was influential, idiosyncratic and fiercely original; it was an education. Who wouldn't want to be armed with a working knowledge of M.R. James, contemporary dance and Manchester City? Bringing together previously unseen artwork, rare ephemera and handwritten material, alongside essays by a slate of fans, EXCAVATE! is a vivid, definitive record - an illumination of the dark corners of the Fall's wonderful and frightening world.

    'To 50,000 Fall Fans: please buy this inspired & inspiring, profound & provocative, beautiful & bonkers Book of Revelations, choc-stock-full of loving Acts by true Apostles, simultaneously both the scrapbook you wished you'd kept and a portal to futures & pasts, known & unknown, & a Fantastic Celebration of this Nation's Saving Grace. - 'DAVID PEACE

    'A container sized treasure trove bursting at the hinges with strangeness and wonder . . . I strongly advise you to buy it.' - MAXINE PEAKE

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    Cover of Syd Barrett : A Very Irregular Head by Rob Chapman.

    Rob Chapman

    Syd Barrett : A Very Irregular Head

    Faber & Faber

      A new edition as part of the Faber Greatest Hits - books that have taken writing about music in new and exciting directions for the twenty-first century.

      Syd Barrett was the lead guitarist, vocalist, and principle songwriter in the original line up of Pink Floyd. During his brief time with the band (1966-68) he was the driving force behind the unit. After he left the band he made just two further solo albums which were both released in 1970, before withdrawing from public view to lead a quiet, and occasionally troubled life in Cambridge, the town of his birth.

      Rob Chapman's book is the first authoritative and exhaustively researched biography of Syd Barrett that fully celebrates his life and legacy as a musician, lyricist and artist, and which highlights the influence that he continues to have over contemporary bands and music fans alike.

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      Cover of The Wichita Lineman : Searching In The Sun For The World's Greatest Unfinished Song by Dylan Jones.

      Dylan Jones

      The Wichita Lineman : Searching In The Sun For The World's Greatest Unfinished Song

      Faber & Faber

        The sound of 'Wichita Lineman' was the sound of ecstatic solitude, but then its hero was the quintessential loner. What a great metaphor he was: a man who needed a woman more than he actually wanted her. Written in 1968 by Jimmy Webb, 'Wichita Lineman' is the first philosophical country song: a heartbreaking torch ballad still celebrated for its mercurial songwriting genius fifty years later.

        It was recorded by Glen Campbell in LA with a legendary group of musicians known as 'the Wrecking Crew', and something about the song's enigmatic mood seemed to capture the tensions in America at a moment of crisis. Fusing a dribble of bass, searing strings, tremolo guitar and Campbell's plaintive vocals, Webb's paean to the American West describes a telephone lineman's longing for an absent lover, who he hears 'singing in the wire' - and like all good love songs, it's an SOS from the heart. Mixing close-listening, interviews and travelogue, Dylan Jones explores the legacy of a record that has entertained and haunted millions for over half a century.

        What is it about this song that continues to seduce listeners, and how did the parallel stories of Campbell and Webb - songwriters and recording artists from different ends of the spectrum - unfold in the decades following? Part biography, part work of musicological archaeology, The Wichita Lineman opens a window on to America in the late-twentieth century through the prism of a song that has been covered by myriad artists in the intervening decades.

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        Cover of To Throw Away Unopened by Viv Albertine.

        Viv Albertine

        To Throw Away Unopened

        Faber & Faber

          What was I fighting for? Even now I’m not sure. Something so old and so deep, it has no words, no shape, no logic.

          Every memoir is a battle between reality and invention - but in her follow up to Clothes, Music, Boys, Viv Albertine has reinvented the genre with her unflinching honesty.

          To Throw Away Unopened is a fearless dissection of one woman's obsession with the truth - the truth about family, power, and her identity as a rebel and outsider. It is a gaping wound of a book, both an exercise in blood-letting and psychological archaeology, excavating what lies beneath: the fear, the loneliness, the anger. It is a brutal expose of human dysfunctionality, the impossibility of true intimacy, and the damage wrought upon us by secrets and revelations, siblings and parents.

          Yet it is also a testament to how we can rebuild ourselves and come to face the world again. It is a portrait of the love stories that constitute a life, often bringing as much pain as joy. With the inimitable blend of humour, vulnerability, and intelligence that makes Viv Albertine one of our finest authors working today, To Throw Away Unopened smashes through layers of propriety and leads us into a new place of savage self-discovery.

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          Cover of This Searing Light, The Sun And Everything Else - Joy Division: The Oral History by Jon Savage.

          Jon Savage

          This Searing Light, The Sun And Everything Else - Joy Division: The Oral History

          Faber & Faber

            Jon Savage's magisterial oral history is the last word on Joy Division and a must-read for any fan.

            Joy Division emerged in the mid-70s at the start of a two-decades long Manchester scene that was to become much mythologised. It was then a city still labouring in the wake of the war and entering a phase of huge social and physical change, and something of this spirit made its way into the DNA of the band. Over the course of two albums, a handful of other seminal releases, and some legendary gigs, Joy Division became the most successful and exciting underground band of their generation. Then, on the brink of a tour to America, Ian Curtis took his own life.

            In This searing light, the sun and everything else, Jon Savage has assembled three decades worth of interviews with the principle players in the Joy Division story: Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris, Deborah Curtis, Peter Saville, Tony Wilson, Paul Morley, Alan Hempsall, Lesley Gilbert, Terry Mason, Anik Honore, and many more. It is the story of how a band resurrected a city, how they came together in circumstances that are both accidental and extraordinary, and how their music galvanised a generation of fans, artists and musicians. It is a classic story of how young men armed with electric guitars and good taste in literature can change the world with four chords and three-and-a-half minutes of music. And it is the story of how illness and demons can rob the world of a shamanic lead singer and visionary lyricist.

            This searing light, the sun and everything else presents the history of Joy Division in an intimate and candid way, as orchestrated by the lodestar of British music writing, Jon Savage.

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            Cover of Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys by Viv Albertine.

            Viv Albertine

            Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

            Faber & Faber

              A new edition as part of the Faber Social Greatest Hits - books that have taken writing about music in new and exciting directions for the twenty-first century.

              SUNDAY TIMES MUSIC BOOK OF THE YEAR
              ROUGH TRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR
              MOJO BOOK OF THE YEAR

              In 1975, Viv Albertine was obsessed with music but it never occurred to her she could be in a band as she couldn't play an instrument and she'd never seen a girl play electric guitar.

              A year later, she was the guitarist in the hugely influential all-girl band the Slits, who fearlessly took on the male-dominated music scene and became part of a movement that changed music.

              A raw, thrilling story of life on the frontiers and a candid account of Viv's life post-punk - taking in a career in film, the pain of IVF, illness and divorce and the triumph of making music again - Clothes Music Boys is a remarkable memoir.

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              Cover of Rip It Up And Start Again by Simon Reynolds.

              Simon Reynolds

              Rip It Up And Start Again

              Faber & Faber

                A new edition as part of the Faber Social Greatest Hits - books that have taken writing about music in new and exciting directions for the twenty-first century.

                In this, the first book to take a big-picture view of the entire post punk period, acclaimed author and music journalist Simon Reynolds recreates a time of tremendous urgency and idealism in pop music.

                Full of anecdote and insight, and featuring the likes of Joy Division, The Fall, Pere Ubu, PiL and Talking Heads, Rip It Up And Start Again stands as one of the most inspired and inspiring books on popular music ever written.

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                Cover of Girl In A Band by Kim Gordon.

                Kim Gordon

                Girl In A Band

                Faber & Faber

                  A new edition, part of the Faber Social's Greatest Hits series -- books that have taken writing about music in new and exciting directions for the twenty-first century.

                  In Girl in a Band Kim Gordon, founding member of Sonic Youth and role model for a generation of women, tells her story. She writes frankly about her route from girl to woman and pioneering icon within the music and art scene of New York City in the 1980s and 90s as well as marriage, motherhood, and independence.

                  Filled with the sights and sounds of a changing world and a remarkable life, Girl in a Band is a moving, evocative chronicle of an extraordinary artist.

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                  Cover of Wrote For Luck by Shaun Ryder.

                  Shaun Ryder

                  Wrote For Luck

                  Faber & Faber

                    30 of Shaun Ryder's lyrics with commentary by the 'Salford Dylan' collected for the first time

                    In the mid-1980s the Happy Mondays emerged as the prime mischief makers on the Madchester scene. Chief protagonist was Shaun Ryder, a man whose lyrical street swagger in songs like Kinky Afro, 24 Hour Party People and Performance, would come to define a generation. Here, collected and edited for the first time, in trade and special editions, are his unforgettable lyrics with commentary by the man himself and an introduction by his literary collaborator, Luke Bainbridge.

                    With characteristic understatement, Tony Wilson once compared Shaun William Ryder's lyrics to the poetry of W. B. Yeats. That is, if W. B. Yeats had been an inveterate drug-taker and occasional dealer, a compatriot of criminals and crazies, an aficionado of low life and high times; if he had painted artful sketches of endless parties and urban blight, of chancers, dead beats, fanatics and, always, an endless stream of pharmaceuticals; if W. B. Yeats had composed fractured, hilarious, grubby and shrewdly observed anthems for the Madchester generation. That W. B. Yeats: Shaun William Ryder.

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                    Cover of Meet Me In The Bathroom by Lizzy Goodman.

                    Lizzy Goodman

                    Meet Me In The Bathroom

                    Faber & Faber

                      New York, 2001. 9/11 plunges the US into a state of war and political volatility—and heralds the rebirth of the city’s rock scene. As the old-guard music industry crumbles, a group of iconoclastic bands suddenly become the voice of a generation desperately in need of an anthem.

                      In this fascinating and vibrant oral history, acclaimed journalist Lizzy Goodman charts New York’s explosive musical transformation in the early 2000s. Drawing on over 200 original interviews, Goodman follows the meteoric rise of the artists that revolutionised the cultural landscape and made Brooklyn the hipster capital of cool—including The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem, Interpol, and Vampire Weekend.

                      Joining the ranks of classics like Please Kill Me, Our Band Could Be Your Life, and Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, Meet Me in the Bathroom is the definitive account of an iconic era in rock-and-roll.

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                      Cover of The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise by Brix Smith Start.

                      Brix Smith Start

                      The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise

                      Faber & Faber

                        The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise is the extraordinary story, in her own words, of Brix Smith Start.

                        Best known for her work in The Fall at the time when they were perhaps the most powerful and influential anti-authoritarian postpunk band in the world – This Nation's Saving Grace, The Wonderful and Frightening World Of ... – Brix spent ten years in the band before a violent disintegration led to her exit and the end of her marriage with Mark E. Smith.

                        But Brix's story is much more than rock 'n' roll highs and lows in one of the most radically dysfunctional bands around. Growing up in the Hollywood Hills in the '60s in a dilapidated pink mansion her life has taken her from luxury to destitution, from the cover of the NME to waitressing in California, via the industrial wasteland of Manchester in the 1980s.

                        What emerges is a story of constant reinvention, jubilant highs and depressive ebbs; a singular journey of a teenage American girl on a collision course with English radicalism on her way to mid-life success on TV and in fashion.

                        Too bizarre, extreme and unlikely to exist in the pages of fiction, The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise could only exist in the pages of a memoir.

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                        Cover of So This Is Permanence: Joy Division Lyrics And Notebooks by Ian Curtis.

                        Ian Curtis

                        So This Is Permanence: Joy Division Lyrics And Notebooks

                        Faber & Faber

                          So this is permanence, edited by Jon Savage with a foreword by Deborah Curtis, presents the intensely personal writings of one of the most enigmatic and influential songwriters and performers of the late twentieth century, Joy Division's Ian Curtis.

                          The songs of Joy Division, infused with the energy of punk but steeped in a resigned longing, were born of Manchester in the late seventies - a once flourishing industrial city in decline. They were the songs too of Ian Curtis's inner tragedies, as he battled depression, epilepsy and debilitating stage fright. Ian Curtis committed suicide in 1980, on the eve of the band's first American tour.

                          Interspersed with the lyrics are previously unpublished facsimile pages of Ian's notebooks, which throw his highly emotive lyrics into fascinating relief and cast light on the creative process of this singularly poetic songwriter.

                          STAFF COMMENTS

                          says: Beautiful words which are all the more haunting written in Curtis' own hand

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                          Cover of Good Night And Good Riddance: How Thirty-Five Years Of John Peel Helped To Shape Modern Life by David Cavanagh.

                          David Cavanagh

                          Good Night And Good Riddance: How Thirty-Five Years Of John Peel Helped To Shape Modern Life

                          Faber & Faber

                            Goodnight and Good Riddance: How Thirty-Five Years of John Peel Helped to Shape Modern Britain is a social history, a diary of a nation's changing culture, and an in-depth appraisal of one of our greatest broadcasters, a man who can legitimately be called the most influential figure in post-war British popular music.

                            Without the support of John Peel, it's unlikely that innumerable artists - from David Bowie to Dizzee Rascal, Jethro Tull to Joy Division - would have received national radio exposure. But Peel's influence goes much deeper than this. Whether he was championing punk, reggae, jungle or grime, he had a unique relationship with his audience that was part taste-maker, part trusted friend.

                            The book focuses on some 300 shows between 1967 and 2004, giving a thorough overview of Peel's broadcasting career and placing it in its cultural and social contexts. Peel comes alive for the reader, as do the key developments that kept him at the cutting edge - the changes in his tastes; the changes in his thinking. Just like a Peel show, Goodnight and Good Riddance is warm, informative and insightful, and wears its enthusiasm proudly.

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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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