Books

304 page paperback autobiography

Review: Amy Winehouse's death made the news the world over, and despite her much publicised battle with drink and drugs her passing left the music world in a true state of shock. At just 27 years of age she sadly joined a list of musical greats who have all died before their time. With original interviews and revealing anecdotes this well-researched biography traces the turbulent life of the tattooed wonder from her childhood pranks, through stage school and her early music to the global legend she will be always remembered as.

312 page paperback book on The Velvet Underground

Review: Sporting shades and a feedback-heavy sounds, the Velvet Underground straddled art and rock, changing popular music forever, and sowing the seeds for punk, grunge and thousands of countercultural four-chord wonders.

The Rough Guide To The Velvet Underground explores:

The Velvet Story - How Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison, John Cale and the others emerged from the New York scene, their successes and excesses and what happened to each in their solo years.

Velvet Music - From their 1967 debut with Nico to their 1993 reunion with all the tales behind the tunes.

Velvet Universe - Everybody who was anybody in the Velvet's world, taking in Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, David Bowie, Delmore, Schwaretsz and Brian Eno.

Velvet Goldmine: The "Underground" on screen, the Velvets' New York, clubs, influences, covers, websites and more.

Breaking into the music business paperback 439 pages

Review: For musicians, songwriters, managers, producers - this is a must have guide, totally revised for the ninties. Top entertainment lawyer Alan h siegal arms you with everything you'll need to know: The economic realities of being a songwriter and recording artist, from launching a career to understanding a contract. Structures and features of various record and music publishing deals, with details on rights on royalties. Guidelines for establishing a good relationship with a manager and an entertainment lawyer. The language of the music industry - buzz words, acronyms, and jargan-simplified in a comprehensive glossary.

Throughout the book, interviews with music greats such as Marvin Hamlisch, Barbara Mandrell, Clive Davis (founder and president of Arista Records) and Ashford and Simpson give you the benefit of their experience "breaking in" to every aspect of the industy.

Sonic Youth with an indroduction by Lee Ranaldo

Review: For more than twenty-five years, the antimelodic "noise" of Sonic Youth has assaulted us, exhilarated us, inspired us. Why?

Katherine Dunn says it's because they operate in the foggy world between the real and the surreal. Mary Gaitskill says that Sonic Youth caught her, years ago, when she was falling. J. Robert Lennon says it's because Sonic Youth rip it apart. Emily Maguire was hooked because once she was in love with chaos.

Their sound is caustic, elemental, nihilisticiand quite unlike any other cult band ever to achieve rock godhood. In Noise, twenty-one great literary voices offer short fiction based on or inspired by songs from Sonic Youthia raucous coupling of music and literature featuring marrow-colored goo, severed hands and abandoned babies, Patty Hearst watching the apocalypse on TV, and other unruly images of the Zeitgeist.

paperback 397 pages

Review: With more than two thousand songs handpicked and organized by former Spin magazine writer and editor Sarah Lewitinn (aka Ultragrrrl), The Pocket DJ is the ultimate insider's reference guide for selecting music, downloading MP3s, and making all-purpose mixes for every occasion imaginable. Playlists include:

Essential genres: with crowd-pleasing dance mixes for indie rockers, headbangers, and hip-hop lovers alike

Essential artists: with the best songs by all the greats from the Beatles to Björk

Celebrity playlists: featuring Duran Duran, Smahing Pumpkins, Interpol, and Good Charlotte, among others

Other playlists: with tunes for working out, making out, or rocking out

Plus rock trivia, new music recommendations, DJing tips, Web resources, and more!

80 page book plus a free CD

Review: Produced with, and accreditied by Point Blank, this is the complete introduction to modern turntable techniques. A ten-lesson program demonstrates the best equipment, records, and the top ten DJs. Learn to beat-mix, drop-mix, switch tricks, fill tricks, spinback (rewind), back to back mix, and a capella mix for the coolest party sets. Get your wrists around the baby scratch, the scribble, and the chop. Mix with your CDs/MP3s, present a demo and get yourself out rocking parties before you know it. The CD is packed with demonstrations and examples of beats, skills, and tunes.

360 page paperback book on the band Genesis

Review: This book is the first time in over 20 years that Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel and Mike Rutherford have collaborated creatively on a project, working together to create the complete history of Genesis. It is a story that spans 30 years and 30 albums selling a staggering 212 million copies worldwide. It embraces world tours that have played to 25 million people and it covers the high profile departure over the years of one vocalist, (Peter Gabriel), one highly influential guitarist (Steve Hackett) and their best-known drummer and vocalist (Phil Collins).

Key fellow members of the band, management, road crew and entourage have also been interviewed, including Jonathan King (their first manager, who got Genesis signed to Decca in 1967), long-time cohort and road manager Richard MacPhail, Anthony Phillips (guitarist, founder member to 1970), Tony Smith (manager since 1973), drummers Bill Bruford, Chris Stewart and John Silver, and Ray Wilson, the Genesis vocalist after Phil Collins.

The story of scott walker & the walker brothers paperback 352 pages

Review: The Walker Brothers were the US counter-strike to the British invasion of the mid-60s. While The Beatles, the Stones and many others were busy colonizing the US charts, three tall, handsome American men went into voluntary exile in a freezing London bedsit and launched their quest for pop stardom.
Not actually brothers, John (Maus), Gary (Leeds) and Scott (Engel) succeeded against the odds, becoming one of world's biggest bands of 1966/67. With that came hit records - including two British chart-toppers, 'Make It Easy On Yourself' and 'The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore' - and all that success entails: screaming girls, package tours, and intense interest in their private lives. The pressure of success eventually caused them to split, and the Walkers went their separate ways. Of the three, Scott is now the most prominent, having embarked on a mysterious solo career that has since become the stuff of myth, but Gary and John have recorded varied and interesting work, too. All three drifted into obscurity before reforming in 1976 and releasing the classic 'No Regrets' single.

The Impossible Dream is an in-depth biography that traces the career of one of the most successful bands in pop history. In addition to assessing and analysing the talent and appeal of the enigmatic Scott, the author also covers the history and contributions of the other 'brothers', John and Gary, and provides a thorough analysis of all three men's careers both as individual artists and as a group, from 1963 to 1978.

288 page hardback book on rock band The Doors

Review: The doors are rock royalty. Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, and John Densmore reinvented rock 'n' roll in the 60s, and their influence can be felt even today. Now, for the first time, the living members of the band are opening up their personal archives to their fans, telling their story in their own words. This book is filled with untold anecdotes and never before seen photos from their private collections. Fans can learn first hand what really went on in America's most enigmatic and mythical band.

Full colour illustrations throughout

Review: This epoch-making indie record of the early '90s 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. Indeed such was the perfectionism that went towards this record, studio costs almost bankrupted Alan McGee's Creation Records - only bailed out by the success of Oasis! Shields is now playing with Primal Scream. Includes the classics Loomer, Soon and To Here Knows When.

Review: The story behind the making of the album that signaled the descent of Sylvester Sly Stone Stewart into a haze of drug addiction and delirium is captivating enough for the cinema. In the spacious attic of a Beverly Hills mansion belonging to John and Michelle Phillips (of the Mamas and the Papas) during the fall of 1970, Sly Stone began recording his follow-up to 1969's Stand! the most popular album of his band's career.

Review: In contrast with many of their punk peers, Wire were enigmatic and cerebral, always keeping a distance from the crowd. Although Pink Flag appeared before the end of 1977, it was already a meta-commentary on the punk scene and was far more revolutionary musically than the rest of the competition. Few punk bands moved beyond pared-down rock 'n' roll and garage rock, football-terrace sing-alongs or shambolic pub rock and, if we're honest, only a handful of punk records hold up today as anything other than increasingly quaint period pieces. While the majority of their peers flogged one idea to death and paid only lip service to punk's Year Zero credo, Wire took a genuinely radical approach, deconstructing song conventions, exploring new possibilities and consistently reinventing their sound. THIS IS A CHORD. THIS IS ANOTHER. THIS IS A THIRD. NOW FORM A BAND, proclaimed the caption to the famous diagram in a UK fanzine in 1976 and countless punk acts embodied that do-it-yourself spirit. Wire, however, showed more interesting ways of doing it once you'd formed that band and they found more compelling uses for those three mythical chords.

Book studies the origins of Television and their album Marquee Moon, traces the downtown scene's influences, public image and reputation via a range of print, film and audio recordings (240 pages, paperback, black & white)

Review: This is a thoroughly researched study of the origins of the New York City punk scene, focusing on Television and their extraordinary debut record. 2 kids in their early twenties walk down the Bowery on a spring afternoon, just as the proprietor of a club hangs a sign with the new name for his venue. The place will be called CBGB which, he tells them, stands for Country Bluegrass and Blues. That's exactly the sort of stuff they play, they lie, somehow managing to get a gig out of him. After the first show their band, Television, lands a regular string of Sundays. By the end of the summer a scene has developed that includes Tom Verlaine's new love interest, a poet-turned-rock chanteuse named Patti Smith. American punk rock is born.

Bryan Waterman peels back the layers of the origin myth and assembling a rich historical archive, situates Marquee Moon in a broader cultural history of SoHo and the East Village. As Waterman traces the downtown scene's influences, public image and reputation via a range of print, film and audio recordings, you come to recognize the real historical surprises that the documentary evidence still has to yield.

33 1/3 is a series of short books about a wide variety of albums, by artists ranging from James Brown to the Beastie Boys. Launched in September 2003, the series now contains over 60 titles and is acclaimed and loved by fans, musicians and scholars alike. It was only a matter of time before a clever publisher realized that there is an audience for whom Exile On Main Street or Electric Ladyland are as significant and worthy of study as The Catcher In The Rye or Middlemarch The series, which now comprises 29 titles with more in the works, is freewheeling and eclectic, ranging from minute rock-geek analysis to idiosyncratic personal celebration: The New York Times Book Review, 2006. This is a brilliant series, each one a word of real love NME (UK).

The musician's guide to recording, mixing and marketing music

Review: Do you play an instrument? Write songs? Got a band together? Played a few gigs? Ever wondered what comes next? If so, now is the time to get your music in front of a global audience by getting it on to the internet. This handy, portable guide will advise you on the best way to record real-life signers and instruments, and it will explain how you can shape your recording into an effective piece of music that can be shared on the internet. There is a thrill to a recorded performance that really "happened"; it affects the listener in a way that freeze-dried samples and loops never can. Written by experienced insiders, this book covers all the basic equipment and skills you will need to get the job done at home, without hiring a sound engineer, record producer or studio.

Review: An album which distilled a genre from the musical, cultural, and social ether, Portishead's Dummy was such a complete artistic achievement that its ubiquitous successes threatened to exhaust its own potential. RJ Wheaton offers an impressionistic investigation of Dummy that imitates the cumulative structure of the album itself, piecing together portraits and interviews, impressions of time and place, cultural criticism, and a thorough exploration of the music itself.

The approach focuses as much on the reception and response that Dummy engendered as it does on the original production of the album. How is it that so many people have, collectively, made a quintessential headphone album into a nightclub album? How have they made the product of a niche local scene into an international success? This is the story of how an innovative, experimental album became the iconic sound for the better part of a decade - and an aesthetic template for the experience of music in the digital age.

360 page hardback book of original, behind the scenes photographs by acclaimed photographer Terry Richardson

Review: During an almost year long global odyssey, renowned photographer Terry Richardson brilliantly captured the intimate, random and behind the scenes moments of Lady Gaga. This visual dialogue showcases more than 450 stunning, provocative colour and back & white photographs. Beginning with Lollapalooza in August 2010, to the final shows of her Monster Ball tour. This book captures Lady Gaga as never seen before.

(360 pages, hardback, black & white / Colour)

The never-before-told stories of the most successful of the rap elite and, through extensive interviews, the advice flowing from the millionaires themselves.

Book exploring the Radiohead's album from philosophical and cultural interpretations of time (160 pages, paperback, black & white)

Review: This is a brilliant exploration of Radiohead's game-changing album, looking at its place in the career of The World's Best Band with ten years of hindsight.

The Radiohead's Kid A never had a chance on paper. Not only did the band have the unenviable task of following up the near-universally lauded OK Computer, but Kid A didn't even have an official single or video. Neither did it help that the band largely abandoned rock-pop conventions for a sound that traversed glitch, free-jazz, modern composition and krautrock.

Rather than simply reinforcing Kid A's canonical status, Marvin Lin situates the album in the temporal, examining it from various philosophical and cultural interpretations of time in order to arrive at its political and social stakes. Why do you care how time is expressed through its aesthetic components like repetition, sampling and hybridization? Where does the album subvert our sense of time with songs like Treefingers? In which ways does it attempt to transcend time and with what implications? Time is perhaps art's biggest enemy, all human creations will be erased eventually, but it's through these various articulations that you are able to uncover some of the most interesting insights about Kid A.

238 page paperback book showcasing street artist Banksy's work

Review: Artistic genius, political activist, painter and decorator, mythic legend or notorious graffiti artist? The work of Banksy is unmistakable, except maybe when it's squatting in the Tate or New York's Metropolitan Museum. Banksy is responsible for decorating the streets, walls, bridges and zoos of towns and cites throughout the world. Witty and subversive, his stencils show monkeys with weapons of mass destruction, policeman with smiley faces, rats with drills and umbrellas. If you look hard enough, you'll find your own. His statements, incitements, ironies and epigrams are by turns intelligent and cheeky comments on everything from the monarchy and capitalism to the war in Iraq and farm animals. His identity remains unknown, but his work is prolific. Here's the best of his work in a fully illustrated colour volume - including brand material.

Based on original interviews with DJs, b-boys, rappers, graffiti writers, activists, and gang members, with unforgettable portraits of many of hip-hop's forebears, founders, and mavericks, including DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Chuck D, and Ice Cube.

Book introduces 80000 listing of 7"45s, EPs and picture sleeves, with updated pricing, including 3 articles and bonus CD (780 pages, paperback, black&white)

Review: It's been 60 years since the little record with the big hole first arrived on the scene, changing the sound of music forever; and while these black gems have been around for a long time 45s are still red hot in the collecting market.

The Goldminer Price Guide to 45 RPM helps you stay in the loop and on the edge of the 45 RPM market with comprehensive coverage of the biggest little record ever made. In this one book you'll find updated pricing, a checklist format for easy inventorying and:

80,000 listings of 7" 45s, and EPs
Details on artists, labels, and variations
State-of-the-market report featuring an insider's look at hot trends
Three feature articles: 60 Years Of The 45: How It All Began, Why 45s Matter and The World's Rarest 45s
Bonus CD featuring: 20000 additional listings not included in the book, 1000 picture sleeves and label identification guide.

192 page paperback book + 7" single

Review: Yeti 13 is presented in a gatefold sleeve with artwork by Genevieve Castree and includes posters from Christchurch, NZ in the 1980s, oral history of the rock band Codeine, Gisele Prassinos, Ben Bush, Ilyas Ahmed, Sarah Meadows, David Moreno, Quentin Rowan, Josh Bayer, Mike Kelly tribute + 7" single (192 pages, paperback, colour).

Review: This is a groovy little guide to all things disco - a Japanese discography that focuses on key club records from a number of different generations. As you'd guess from the title, the core focus here is the seventies - and possibly the early eighties - represented by listings of a variety of albums and other releases. The book sets out a few artist-based sections for folks like Chic, Jellybean, Jocelyn Brown, Earth Wind & Fire, and others, and also features some DJ's Choice sections, and Essential Disc Guides throughout. There's plenty here to wet your appetite, including a full colour section of rarities at the beginning, plus lots of other text and interviews in Japanese.

A crackup at the race riots paperback 172 pages

Review: The original Ritalin kid, Harmony Korine burst on the scene with Kids, a film so gritty and unsettling in its depiction of teen life that it was slapped with an NC-17 rating and banned in some theaters across the country. In some ways, the media frenzy over the rating overshadowed the harrowing portrait of teenagers destroying their lives and the then twenty-one-year-old screenwriter who created them. "Whether you see the movie as a masterpiece or as sensationalism," wrote Lynn Hirshberg, "the movie is relentless and brilliant and extremely disturbing. It's powerful-both steel-eyed and sexy; horrifying and captivating."

Now, in this first book of fictional set pieces, Korine captures the fragmented moments of a life observed through the demented lens of media, TV, and teen obsession. Korine reinvents the novel in this highly experimental montage of scenes that seem both real and surreal at the same time. With a filmmaker's eye and a prankster's glee, this bizarre collection of jokes, half-remembered scenes, dialogue fragments, movie ideas, and suicide notes is an episodic, epigrammatic lovesong to the world of images. Korine is the voice of his media-savvy generation and A Crack-Up at the Race Riots is the satiric lovechild of his dark imagination.

Book including information text, sample contracts, advertisement, brochure and resource information (238 pages, paperback, black & white)

Review: The Mobile DJ Handbook (second edition) continues to be an excellent guide for novice and experienced DJs looking to build a successful career as the owner-operator of a mobile disc jockey service. Complete with practical tips, expert advice and creative strategies, this book serves as the perfect guide on how to market and sell your services as well as develop and expand your business.

This book contains information on becoming a professional, securing booking, buying equipment and music and running party dances, contests and games. Included within the text are sample contracts, an advertisement and brochure, and resource information. The Mobile DJ Handbook is an essential reference guide which offers readers all the knowledge and inspiration needed to run a profitable enterprise.

Wax Poetics presents Album Cover Art, featuring 240 classic, obscure and weird record covers.

Whether you're a DJ, engineer, producer or aspiring remixer, this comprehensive collection of dance music tips and interviews from Keyboard magazine in packed with production secrets you can use.

Paperback book history of US indie rock band Galaxie 500 including rare photographs, posters and other ephemera

Review: Galaxie 500's artistic vision, visceral and emotional yet also elegant and understated, extended from their incomparable recordings to bassist Naomi Yang's design aesthetic album covers, posters, photography. Temperature's Rising offers both an oral history of this celebrated act and a lush tour of their personal archives. It weaves together interviews with the band members Naomi Yang, Dean Wareham and Damon Krukowski and their music scene peers, infamous producer Kramer, and many collaborators, accompanied by a stunning array of rare and never-before-seen photographs, artwork, and ephemera. Yeti is proud to publish this book in association with the members.

Behind-the-scenes story of Casablanca Records. From the daring first signing of KISS, through the discovery and superstardom of Donna Summer, the Village People, and funk master George Clinton and his circus of freaks, Parliament Funkadelic.

All the technical know-how needed as well as advice on how to create your own DJing style and how to make DJing work for you. Softback, Black & White, 398 pages.

Hard bound lyric book containing the full scope of Sheff's vision for Okkervil River's album I Am Very Far (36 pages, hardback, black & white)

Review: Will Sheff of Okkervil River has long been recognized for his writing: a contributor to McSweeney's, Sheff was nominated for a Grammy for his liner notes for Roky Erickson's 2010 album True Love Cast Out All Evil, The New York Times declared that, Sheff writes like a novelist.

The I Am Very Far: The Lyrics is a hard bound lyric book containing the full scope of Sheff's vision for his latest and most refined album to date, Okkervil River's I Am Very Far. The I Am Very Far: The Lyrics is meant to function as a distinct entrance point into the content of the music. More than a complement to the albums themselves, Sheff's prose weaves tales both subtle and dynamic and enriches the content of his songs. Including the lyrics for Mermaid and other songs recorded during the I Am Very Far sessions, the book is a complete work in its own right.

Limited to only 50 copies for the UK and Eire.

Book introduces soundtracks and spotlights the work of precursors James Brown and Isaac Hayes, Donna Summer, the women of Labelle and Sylvester (338 pages, hardback, black & white/colour)

Review: Disco thumps back to life in this pulsating exploration of the culture and politics of the glitterball world.

In the 1970s, as the disco tsunami engulfed America, the once-innocent question, Do you wanna dance? became divisive, even explosive. What was it about this much-maligned music that made it such hot stuff? In this incisive history, Alice Echols captures the felt experience of the Disco Yearsion dance floors both fabulous and tacky, at the movies, in the streets, and beneath the sheets.

Disco may have presented itself as shallow and disposableithe platforms, polyester, and plastic vibe of it allibut Echols shows that it was inseparable from the emergence of gay macho, a rising black middle class and a growing, if equivocal, openness about female sexuality. The disco scene carved out a haven for gay men who reclaimed their sexuality on dance floors where they had once been surveilled and harassed; it thrust black women onto center stage as some of the genre's most prominent stars; and it paved the way for the opening of Studio 54 and the viral popularity of the shoestring-budget Saturday Night Fever, a movie that challenged traditional notions of masculinity, even for heterosexuals.

As it provides a window onto the cultural milieu of the times, the Hot Stuff never loses sight of the era's defining soundtrack, which propelled popular music into new sonic territory, influencing everything from rap and rock to techno and trance. Throughout, Echols spotlights the work of precursors James Brown and Isaac Hayes, dazzling divas Donna Summer and the women of Labelle and some of disco's lesser known but no less illustrious performers such as Sylvester. After turning the final page of this fascinating account of the music, you thought you hated but can't stop dancing to, you can rest assured that you'll never say disco sucks again.

500 page flexibound Reggae 45 soundsystem book

Review: Reggae Soundsystem 45! is a new stunning deluxe 500 page flexibound book that features over 1000 full size record label 45 rpm single designs that span the history of reggae music.

The book is compiled by the renowned author and reggae expert Steve Barrow (Rough Guide to Reggae/Blood and Fire Records) and Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz Records). Text by Steve Barrow and Noel Hawks.
As well as the stunning full-size 45 designs, this book is ram-jam filled with text on many of the records, artists, producers and record companies featured in the book.

The 45rpm 7" single is at the heart of reggae music, the main tool in which reggae music has been communicated to the public by the deejays in the dancehalls of Kingston, through to its dissemination worldwide, over the last 50+years.
These unique label designs give us a hidden history of design that is raw, innovative and hip. Ever since the birth of the Jamaican music industry through to the present day, these idiosyncratic label designs have helped illustrate, signify and energise the music that they accompany.

Reggae 45 Soundsystem is released to coincide with the publication of a second large format hardback 12x12" book, Reggae Soundsystem which features original album cover art of reggae, also published by Soul Jazz Books.

Deluxe 200 page hard-back 12 x12 book

Review: Reggae Soundsystem is a new deluxe 200 page hard-back 12 x12 book featuring hundreds of stunning full size record cover designs that span the history of reggae music.

The book is compiled by the celebrated author and reggae expert Steve Barrow (Rough Guide to Reggae/Blood and Fire Records) and Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz Records).

Beginning in the 1950s, Jamaican music developed into one of the most important and influential music industries in the world. From its early Mento (Jamaican Calypso) beginnings through to the invention of Ska, Rocksteady, Roots, Dub and Dancehall, Jamaican music is also one of the richest and innovative veins in popular music.

This stunning hardback deluxe book looks at the endless visually creativity of reggae record cover designs, iconic, classic, rare and unique artwork spanning sixty years of Jamaican sounds.

Visual guide to the history of modern music and discovery of the stories of the people behind, with archive photographs, rare artwork and newspaper clippings (190 pages, paperback, black & white/colour)

Review: Now the world's foremost blues, rockabilly, soul and rock n roll reissue label, Ace Records has been responsible for unearthing lost classics and neglected pioneers for over three decades and provided some of the finest and most influential records of the post-war era. The first comprehensive history of this fascinating label, Ace Records takes in some of the finest and most enduring modern music, rock n roll, soul, funk, blues, jazz, R&B, garage rock and punk.

To read the Ace Records: Labels Unlimited is to explore the history of modern music and to discover the stories of the people that made it. The book chronicles this fascinating label and profiles a diverse range of artists including BB King, John Fahey, Lee Hazlewood and Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, Riff Raff, Johnny & the Self Abusers, Drug Addix and Rocky Sharpe & The Replays. Illustrated with many unseen archive photographs dating back to the 1920s, rare artwork and newspaper clippings and written by established music journalist and author David Stubbs, the Ace Records: Labels Unlimited is a highly entertaining and visually stunning guide to a pioneering alternative to the mainstream UK music scene.

Book telling the history of the Rough Trade and the story of British independent music, with archive images, iterviews and unseen photographs and artefacts (190 pages, paperback, black & white/colour)

Review: The Rough Trade: Labels Unlimited tells the engrossing story of one of England's most groundbreaking record labels. It is 30 years since the Rough Trade Shop first opened its doors in Notting Hill, London. Disco and soft-rock ruled the airwaves, The Clash had just signed to CBS and Geoff Travis set up the company with some friends as a communistic, DIY alternative to the increasingly stale mainstream. Over the ensuing years the Rough Trade Shop, Rough Trade Records and Rough Trade Distribution profoundly altered the landscape of modern music.

The Rough Trade looks back on 3 fascinating decades of innovation, noise and change, taking in ups and downs, twists and turns and some of the best music ever committed to vinyl. The label released many of the most important records of the late 1970s and 80s by artists including: The Smiths, Scritti Politti, Mazzy Star, The Go-Betweens, Aztec Camera, Robert Wyatt, The Fall, Arthur Russell and Linton Kwesi Johnson. The Rough Trade profiles these artists and much more, as both the history of the Rough Trade and by proxy the story of British independent music over the last 30 years are engagingly chronicled. Visually stunning, the Rough Trade is filled with archive images, interviews and previously unseen photographs and artefacts.

A 76 page color catalog focused on the music of Destroy All Monsters, featuring essays from Byron Coley & Burnanivdeorns iWty. Joseph, an illustrated discography with personla notes compiled by cary Loran

Review: A 76 page color catalog focused on the music of Destroy All Monsters. Features essays from Byron Coley & Burnanivdeorns iWty. Joseph, an illustrated discography with
personal notes compiled by Cary Loran. Flyers, posters, journals, & photographs. Includes a 30 track, 47 minute CD of previously unreleased DAM music. 76pp.
6" x 9". Ltd to 1000

200 page hardback book featuring legendary covert art from Studio One Records, including famous sleeves from Bob Marley And The Wailers, The Heptones, Burning Spear, rare cover designs, an introductory essay by Steve Barrow and much more

Review: · This deluxe 200 page hardback 12”x12”book
features hundreds of stunning full size record
cover designs from the legendary Studio One
Records.
· Described by Chris Blackwell as The University Of
Reggae, Studio One is by far the most important
record label in the history of Reggae music, an A-Z
of Jamaican music as iconic as Motown was to
soul, or Blue Note for Jazz.
· The book features classic artwork from Bob Marley
And The Wailers, Horace Andy, Alton Ellis, Freddie
McGregor, The Skatalites, Marcia Griffiths, Burning
Spear, The Heptones, Toots and the Maytals and
many more artists all of whom launched their
careers at Studio One.
· As well as many classic sleeves there are
numerous rare designs, including a collector’s
section featuring many alternate, silkscreen and
rarely seen designs.
· As Jamaica approaches the 50th anniversary of
independence, this stunning deluxe book is a
timely look at Reggae music’s legendary record
label and the artists and musicians that it made
famous.
· The book also features an introductory essay by
Steve Barrow (author of ‘Rough Guide To Reggae’)
and is edited by Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz Records).

Selection of rare strange and bizarre record covers, exploring an element of music culture behind (268 pages, paperback, 262 4-colour plates)

Review: A team of obsessive collectors has gathered together a unique and worldly selection of rare album covers that spins bizarre and mind-boggling narratives. Wax Poetics are not deciphering mysteries, only adding to their mythos. Every album cover tells a story and here Wax Poetics enter the world of the odd, obscure and outrageous. Some hint at the profound, via spiritual, supernatural, or chemical explorations, or speak of the prosaic wolrds of war, sex and comedy. And some are by far more interesting than the music itself.

The Cover Story Volume Two: Odd, Obscure, and Outrageous Album Art, the second installment in the Cover Story series from Wax Poetics Books, continues a graphic narration of the vibrant subculture of record collecting through the art of the album cover. This volume focuses specifically on strange and bizarre record covers, selected by the staff of Wax Poetics and major collectors of music's avant-garde.

The Cover Story series vividly explores an element of music culture that has withered with the advent of MP3 and digital downloading. Vinyl records tell their stories visually as much as they do aurally and the record cover, the eye candy for the music lover, speaks a language rooted in the environment and era of the music itself. The Cover Story Volume Two: Odd, Obscure, and Outrageous Album Art celebrates the products of music's most eclectic and eccentric figures, those whose artistic visions were so absurd and grandiose, they often extended beyond the boundaries of the recording and onto the album covers themselves.

Review: 'Record Map Book of Japan 2009/2010' is a detailed book listing the best record /CD shops you should be digging through in Japan. This book includes detailed info on shops & the types of music they stock.

Deluxe 200 page (24x30cm) flexibound book featuring photographs from New York's house ballroom drag scene between 1989-1992

Review: This deluxe 200 page 24x30cm flexibound book features hundreds of
stunning photographs from the hidden world of New York's house
ballroom drag scene out of which came 'Voguing', the dance made
famous by Madonna.
Introductory text is by Tim Lawrence, author of two seminal music
books: 'Love Saves The Day: A History Of American Dance Music
Culture, 1970-79' and 'Hold On To Your Dreams: Arthur Russell And
The Downtown Music Scene, 1973-92'.
To coincide with the book, Soul Jazz Records will be releasing an
album of the same name in 2012, featuring Masters At Work, MFSB,
Junior Vasquez, Diana Ross, Armand Van Helden, Loose Joints, First
Choice and many more.
Photographer Chantal Regnault lived in New York between 1989-92,
photographing the scene at its height the dancers Willi Ninja, Jose
and Luis Xtravaganza (who all worked with Madonna) as well as
the legendary 'mothers' of the gay and transgender world - Avis
Pendavis, Peppa LaBeija, Carmen Xtravaganza, Dorian Corey, Paris
Dupree and more.
Voguing came out of the extraordinary house ballroom scene that
emerged in Harlem, New York in the 1980s where men competed
against one another for their dancing skills, the realness of their drag
and their ability to walk on a catwalk runway like a model.
Voguing erupted into the mainstream in 1990 when Madonna's song
'Vogue' became Number One in over 30 countries. The year before
Malcolm McClaren first brought voguing into the mainstream with his
song 'Deep In Vogue' featuring dancer Willi Ninja. In 1990 Jennie
Livingstone's film 'Paris Is Burning' documented the house ballroom
scene in its ascendant, the film a runaway success grossing over
$4,000,000.
As voguing entered into the mainstream the house ballrooms of
Harlem came downtown mixing with the downtown fashion crowd of
Manhattan, before the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic ravaged the
ballroom community.
These wild years of voguing and the house ballroom scene are vividly
captured at its height in hundreds of amazing, previously unpublished
photographs. A visual riot of fashion, gender, polysexuality and
subversive style, 'Voguing And The House Ballroom Scene Of New
York 1989-92' is also a fascinating document on sexuality and race.