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Category Archives: Now Reading
You Must Get Them All | Steve Pringle
Now Reading: Comprehensively immortalised in print by author Steve Pringle, You Must Get Them All is the first book to cover the entire catalogue of Britain’s post-punk colossus The Fall. The Fall produced a huge volume of high-quality work between … Continue reading
Posted in Fall, The, Now Reading
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The Unstable Boys | Nick Kent
Now Reading: legendary rock journalist Nick Kent pens his first novel The Unstable Boys, a darkly comic caper about the strange afterlife of a briefly famous 60s rock group of the same name. Author of two of the best rock … Continue reading
Posted in David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Now Reading
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Beeswing | Richard Thompson
Now Reading: Beeswing | Losing My Way and Finding My Voice: 1967-1975, written by the great Richard Thompson with Scott Timberg, published in 2021. This long awaited memoir by master British guitarist and songwriter Richard Thompson is compelling and regularly … Continue reading
Posted in Now Reading, Richard Thompson
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The Big Midweek | Life Inside The Fall
Written by former bassist of seminal post-punk group The Fall, Steve Hanley (& his partner Olivia Piekarski) and published in 2014 to widespread critical acclaim for its intelligent, engaging, conversational style, revealing insights, and dry, stoical humour, The Big Midweek … Continue reading
Posted in Fall, The, Now Reading
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Phil Collins’ Mystery Session
Opportunity knocked for a nineteen year old pre-Genesis Phil Collins in May 1970. At this point in his stop-start, still embryonic music career, he was getting ready to have a bath and watch Top of the Pops on telly with … Continue reading
The Doors: Madison Square Garden – 24 January 1969
New York, January 23, 1969 The day before Madison Square Garden. It would be our first really big concert in New York. Sal Bonafette, our manager, had described our career as a big wave about … Continue reading
Posted in Doors, The, Gigs, Now Reading
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Revolution in the Head: The Beatles Records and the Sixties
Author: Ian Macdonald (1994) A book to keep you company for the rest of your life. Even if you don’t always agree with the late great Ian MacDonald’s (The People’s Music) assessments of the Beatles’ songs (I thought paperbak classic When … Continue reading
Posted in Beatles, The, Now Reading
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All the Songs
Author: Philippe Margotin, Jean-Michel Guesdon, Preface by Patti Smith (2013) Every album and every song ever released by the Beatles—from “Please Please Me” (U.S. 1963) to “The Long and Winding Road” (U.S. 1970)—is dissected, discussed, and analyzed by two music historians in this … Continue reading
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Inherent Vice
Author: Thomas Pynchon (2009) Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon- private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with … Continue reading
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The Republic of Wine
Author: Mo Yan (1992) When special investigator Ding Gou’er hears persistent rumors that there is cannibalism in the province called the Republic of Wine, he goes to learn the truth. Beginning at the Mount Luo Coal Mine, he meets Diamond … Continue reading
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Sound Man
Author: Glyn Johns (2014) A memoir of a remarkable rock-and-roll career from Glyn Johns, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame producer and sound engineer whose resumé includes work with the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Who, the … Continue reading
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Abbey Road to Ziggy Stardust
Author: Ken Scott (2012) Abbey Road to Ziggy Stardust shares the intimate memories of Ken Scott’s days working as engineer and producer with some of the most important artists of the 20th century. Ken’s work has left an indelible mark on rock … Continue reading
Posted in Beatles, The, David Bowie, Now Reading, Producers
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The Last Child
Author: John Hart (2009) Thirteen year-old Johnny Merrimon had the perfect life: a warm home and loving parents; a twin sister, Alyssa, with whom he shared an irreplaceable bond. He knew nothing of loss, until the day Alyssa vanished from … Continue reading
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Man on the Run: Paul McCartney in the 1970s
Author: Tom Doyle (2013) The most famous living rock musician on the planet, Paul McCartney is now regarded as a slightly cosy figure, an (inter)national treasure. Back in the 1970s, however, McCartney cut a very different figure. He was, literally, … Continue reading
Posted in Now Reading, Paul McCartney
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The Double
Author: Jose Saramago (2005) Tertuliano Maximo Afonso is a divorced, depressed history teacher. To lift his spirits, a colleague suggests he rent a certain video. Tertuliano watches the film, unimpressed. But during the night, when his is awakened by a noise, he goes … Continue reading
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Across the Great Divide – The Band and America
Author: Barney Hoskyns (2003) The most rewarding music biographies are always those which express a passionate interest in the subject matter. Barney Hoskyns’s portrait of the original alt-country pioneers the Band is one such. When all their contemporaries were heading … Continue reading
Posted in Band, The, Now Reading
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Kafka On the Shore
Author: Haruki Murakami (2005) Kafka on the Shore, a tour de force of metaphysical reality, is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for … Continue reading
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Red Dust
Author: Ma Jian (2001) From Beijing to the wide plains of China’s far west, from sacred mountains to primeval forests, from ruined oasis towns to the teeming cities of the southern coast, Ma Jian spent three years on the road … Continue reading
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Sabbath’s Theater
Author: Philip Roth (1995) Classic. Sick. Disgusting. Brilliant. Roth at his best. Sabbath’s Theater is a comic creation of epic proportions, and Mickey Sabbath is its gargantuan hero. Once a scandalously inventive puppeteer, Sabbath at sixty-four is still defiantly antagonistic and … Continue reading
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The Keep
Author: Jennifer Egan (2006) Same author of the very great Goon Squad. This is a highly entertaining read too. Two cousins, irreversibly damaged by a childhood prank, reunite twenty years later to renovate a medieval castle in Eastern Europe. In … Continue reading
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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Author: Haruki Murakami (1997) This book established Murakami as a major figure in world literature and deals with some heavy subjects delivered in a very readable, straight-ahead, first person narrative, enveloped in an almost supernatural/dreamlike ambiance: the transitory nature of romantic … Continue reading
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I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp – An Autobiography
Author: Richard Hell (2013) A rock icon. Ex-Television, Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, and Richard Hell and Voidoids. Released an album called Blank Generation in 1977 – one of the great albums. First Edition. The punk rock innovator and a … Continue reading
Posted in Now Reading, Richard Hell
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