A memoir by a member of the Incredible String Band that charts a journey from hippie utopia to post-Woodstock implosion.Between 1967 and 1971 Rose Simpson lived with the Incredible String Band (Mike Heron, Robin Williamson and Licorice McKechnie), morphing from English student to West Coast hippie and, finally, bassist in leathers. The band's image adorned psychedelic posters and its music was the theme song for an alternative lifestyle. Rose and partner Mike Heron believed in, and lived, a naive vision of utopia in Scotland. But they were also a band on tour, enjoying the thrills of that life. They were at the center of "Swinging London" and at the Chelsea Hotel with Andy Warhol's superstars. They shared stages with rock idols and played at Woodstock in 1969. Rose and fellow ISB member Licorice were hippie pin-ups, while Heron and Robin Williamson the seers and prophets of a new world. T hrough a haze of incense and marijuana, they played out their Arcadian dreams on stages brilliant with the colors of clothes, light-shows, rugs, cushions, and exotic instruments. Like most utopias, the ISB's imploded. Never seeing herself as a professional musician, Rose retained an outsider's detachment even while living the life of a hippie chick. Her memoir gives a voice to those flower-wreathed girls whose photographs have become symbols of the psychedelic sixties. --- Strange Attractor, 2021

Vienna in the 1880s. Paris in the 1920s. Memphis in the 1950s. These are the paradigm shifts of modern culture. Memphis then was like Seattle with grunge or Brooklyn with hip-hop―except the change was more than musical: Underground Memphis embraced African American culture when dominant society abhorred it. The effect rocked the world. We’re all familiar with the stars’ stories, but It Came From Memphis runs with the the kids in that first rock and roll audience, where they befriended the older blues artists, the travails of blazing a rock and roll career path where one had not existed (nor did society welcome it), and the adventures―sometimes drug-fueled, often accidental, always pushing the envelope―that epitomize the rock and roll experience. Stars pass through―Elvis, Aretha, Jerry Lee―but the emphasis is on the singular achievements of Alex Chilton, Jim Dickinson, Furry Lewis and wrestler Sputnik Monroe. This is a book about the weirdos, winos and midget wrestlers who forged the rock and roll spirit, unwittingly changing the fabric of America. Music liberated that Memphis audience, and the world followed.

A natural storyteller with a vision of his own, The Dark Lady, Akala's debut novel for teens will enthuse and entertain teenagers and young adults, showing that reading is a true super-power. A pickpocket with an exceptional gift. Henry is an orphan, an outsider, a thief. He is also a fifteen-year-old invested with magical powers ...This brilliant, at times brutal, first novel from the amazing imagination that is Akala, will glue you to your seat as you are hurled into a time when London stank and boys like Henry were forced to find their own route through the tangled streets and out the other side. --- Hachette Children's Group, 2021

Broken Music is an essential compendium for records created by visual artists. The publication was edited by Ursula Block and Michael Glasmeier and originally published in 1989 by DAAD. Broken Music focuses on recordings, record-objects, artwork for records, and record installations made by thousands of artists between WWII and 1989. It also includes essays by both editors as well as Theodor W. Adorno, René Block, Jean Dubuffet, Milan Knizak, László Moholy-Nagy, Christiane Seiffert, and Hans Rudolf Zeller, as well as a flexi disc of the Arditti Quartet performing Knizak’s “Broken Music.” The centerpiece of the publication is a nearly 200-page bibliography of artists’ records. Works chosen for the publication revolved around four criteria: (1) record covers created as original work by visual artists; (2) record or sound-producing objects (multiples/editions/sculptures); (3) books and publications that contain a record or recorded-media object; and (4) records or recorded media that have sound by visual artists. Artists documented in the volume include Vito Acconci, albrecht/d., Laurie Anderson, Guillaume Apollinaire, Karel Appel, Arman, Hans Arp, Antonin Artaud, John Baldessari, Hugo Ball, Claus van Bebber, John Bender, Harry Bertoia, Jean-Pierre Bertrand, Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner, Claus Böhmler, Christian Boltanski, KP Brehmer, William Burroughs, John Cage, Henri Chopin, Henning Christiansen, Jean Cocteau, William Copley, Philip Corner, Merce Cunningham, Hanne Darboven, Jim Dine, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Fischli and Weiss, R. Buckminster Fuller, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass, Jack Goldstein, Peter Gordon, Hans Haacke, Richard Hamilton, Bernard Heidsieck, Holger Hiller, Richard Huelsenbeck, Isidore Isou, Marcel Janco, Servie Janssen, Jasper Johns, Joe Jones, Thomas Kapielski, Allan Kaprow, Martin Kippenberger, Per Kirkeby, Cheri Knight, Milan Knizak, Richard Kriesche, Christina Kubisch, Laibach, John Lennon, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Annea Lockwood, Paul McCarthy, Meredith Monk, Josef Felix Müller, Piotr Nathan, Hermann Nitsch, Albert Oehlen, Frank O’Hara, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Nam June Paik, Charlemagne Palestine, A.R. Penck, Tom Phillips, Robert Rauschenberg, The Red Crayola, Ursula Reuter Christiansen, Gerhard Richter, Jim Rosenquist, Dieter Roth, Gerhard Rühm, Robert Rutman, Sarkis, Thomas Schmit, Conrad Schnitzler, Kurt Schwitters, Selten Gehörte Musik, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Strafe für Rebellion, Jean Tinguely, Moniek Toebosch, Tristan Tzara, Ben Vautier, Yoshi Wada, Emmett Walsh, Andy Warhol, William Wegman, and Lawrence Weiner. Ursula Block is a curator living in Berlin, Germany. From 1981 until 2014, she ran gelbe Musik, a gallery and record shop in Berlin that featured work by artists at the crossroads between music and art. Michael Glasmeier is a professor, writer, and editor living in Berlin, Germany. Since the early 1980s, he has curated dozens of shows that explore the intersection between the visual arts, music, film, and language.

Featuring interviews with leading figures of the punk underground, Left of the Dial probes the legacy of punk. It touches on the movement's politics, DIY traditions, rupture of social norms, trans-generational and transnational appeal and much more. Rather than focus on discographies and rehashed gig memories, the interviews aim to unveil the secret history of punk and hardcore ideologies and values, as understood by the performers. Passionate and far-reaching, these conversations illuminate punk's history with candour and humour. --- PM Press, 2013

A survey of the work of Michael Gibbs whose activities included poetry, performance, film, and publishing, and his immersion in “a genuinely 'underground' culture... which owed nothing to the official art establishment". As well as visual poetry and texts, the book includes his major study of blank books 'All or Nothing', written in 2005, a selection of critical writing that originally appeared in Kontexts, and Artzien, journals that he edited and published, as well as articles from the photography journal Perspektief, and Art Monthly, for which he wrote a regular column. Examples of his visual and concrete poems, books, photography and films are reproduced, along with documentation of performances, edited by Gerrit Jan de Rook & Andrew Wilson, with --- 64 pages of black and white illustrations, critical commentaries about aspects of Michael Gibbs' work by: Gerrit Jan de Rook: concrete poetry and language art, Guy Schraenen: books and publishing, Marga Van Mechelen: performance works, John Held: mail art, Henriette Dingemans: the internet work, Rob Perree: the later photographic works, Bas Vroege. --- Uniform Books, 2016

From scouring flea markets and eBay to maxing out their credit cards, record collectors will do just about anything to score a long-sought-after album. In Vinyl Freak, music writer, curator, and collector John Corbett burrows deep inside the record fiend’s mind, documenting and reflecting on his decades-long love affair with vinyl. Discussing more than 200 rare and out-of-print LPs, Vinyl Freak is composed in part of Corbett's long-running DownBeat magazine column of the same name, which was devoted to records that had not appeared on CD. In other essays where he combines memoir and criticism, Corbett considers the current vinyl boom, explains why vinyl is his preferred medium, profiles collector subcultures, and recounts his adventures assembling the Alton Abraham Sun Ra Archive, an event so all-consuming that he claims it cured his record-collecting addiction. Perfect for vinyl newbies and veteran crate diggers alike, Vinyl Freak plumbs the motivations that drive Corbett and collectors everywhere.   About the Author:   John Corbett is a music critic, record producer, and curator. He is the author of Microgroove: Forays into Other Music and Extended Play: Sounding Off from John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein, both also published by Duke University Press, and A Listener’s Guide to Free Improvisation. His writing has appeared in DownBeat, Bomb, Nka, and numerous other publications. He is the co-owner of Corbett vs. Dempsey, an art gallery in Chicago.

Odetta channeled her anger and despair into some of the most powerful folk music the world has ever heard. Through her lyrics and iconic persona, Odetta made lasting political, social, and cultural change. A leader of the 1960s folk revival, Odetta is one of the most important singers of the last hundred years. Her music has influenced a huge number of artists over many decades, including Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, the Kinks, Jewel, and, more recently, Rhiannon Giddens and Miley Cyrus. But Odetta's importance extends far beyond music. Journalist Ian Zack follows Odetta from her beginnings in deeply segregated Birmingham, Alabama, to stardom in San Francisco and New York. Odetta used her fame to bring attention to the civil rights movement, working alongside Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, and other artists. Her opera-trained voice echoed at the 1963 March on Washington and the Selma to Montgomery march, and she arranged a tour throughout the deeply segregated South. Her "Freedom Trilogy" songs became rallying cries for protesters everywhere. Through interviews with Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, Judy Collins, Carly Simon, and many others, Zack brings Odetta back into the spotlight, reminding the world of the folk music that powered the civil rights movement and continues to influence generations of musicians today.

Put together by Alan Rider, Adventures in Reality, was a fanzine from Coventry in the early 1980s that both fitted snugly inside the post-punk landscape of the time and did its utmost to avoid many of the tropes most fanzines were given to. Like most of them, however, each edition was produced with a youthful energy and passion itself manacled to an attitude only really emboldened by this cultural shift. In between diatribes and a salubrious dash of humour, Adventures in Reality proved itself to be amongst the vanguard, running countless reviews, putdowns of the apathy dominating the city, and interviews with all from Attrition and Human Cabbages to Wah! and SPK. Somewhere along the way an excerpt taken from the lyrics of The Jam’s poignant ‘That’s Entertainment’ also appear, as indeed do cartoons, various lists and suchlike. Everything adds up to an intoxicating mix absolutely perfect for the time that spawned it. Over the course of its 13 issues, plus a few other related titles originally published anonymously and designed to upset rival fanzine editors and their own supporters, Adventures in Reality proved itself to stand above its immediate competition so well it made a formidable impression not only nationally, but also internationally. This compendium gathers all 13 issues in their entirety, as well as the other titles and additional ephemera, alongside insightful introductions to each of them, an interview with Alan Rider, a foreword by Matthew Worley, blurb by Nicholas Bullen (himself inspired by AiR enough to start his own ‘zine), and several other bonuses. Collected in an A4 book similar in size to the Grim Humour one also published by Fourth Dimension, this makes for a perfect return trip to a time long gone still of interest to either those informed by it or those who wish to navigate their way to why it was so unique in the first place. As Alan himself says, "Fanzines were never intended to form a part of mainstream pop culture.They were underground, counter culture, an alternative that existed to shine a light on new music in a way that commercial publications could not and would not. Wilfully obtuse, Adventures in Reality sought to seize that ground, breaking the mould of what a post-punk fanzine was expected to be and by doing so, adding an extra dose of subversive originality to the pool of UK underground alternative music culture "

Dirty Ear Report #3 documents a collective workshop by sound artists and researchers working in the fields of experimental dramaturgy, sonic social engagement, and voice studies.   ---   Representing the sixth in the series of the Dirty Ear Forum held in Lisbon in 2016, the Report brings together essays, text pieces, and documents from the participants. In particular, questions of affect and urban experience are considered, posing sound as a vehicle for generating performative cartographies. Dirty Ear Forum is an experimental forum for sonic research. Occurring in different locations and settings, it is based on the coming together of a selected group of practitioners and thinkers to exchange research on sound and listening, and to collectively work through a range of common concerns. At the center of the Forum is a desire to gather individual viewpoints and practices into a shared activity, embracing sound as a conceptual and material platform that provides creative opportunities for collaborative expressions.   ---   Contributions by:   Maria Andueza Rui Costa Deborah Kapchan Brandon LaBelle Ana Pais Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec   ---   Errant Bodies, 2020

Foreground Music is the result of a lifetime’s passion for gig-going by one of British television’s most individual writers.  From a Cliff Richard gospel concert at the age of 10, to his first rock show aged 14, where The Jam play so loudly he blacks out, to a Joy Division gig which erupts into a full-scale riot. Vivid, insightful and very funny, each chapter covers a different gig, including Primal Scream headlining Glastonbury at the height of Screamadelica, and the troubled reformation of The Velvet Underground. Taking in the first UK headline gig by The Strokes in a room above a pub, and the final arena tour by David Bowie. Along the way Duff experiences pub-crawls with Mark E. Smith of The Fall, convinces Paul Weller to undertake his first acting role and attempts to interview Genesis P. Orridge of Throbbing Gristle whilst tripping on LSD. Foreground Music captures the power of life-changing gigs, whilst tracing the evolution of 40 years of musical movements and subcultures. But more than that, it’s an honest, touching and witty story of friendship, love, creativity and mortality, and a testimony to music’s ability to inspire and heal. Introduction by Mark Gatiss --- Graham Duff is a British TV comedy and drama scriptwriter whose credits include Ideal and The Nightmare Worlds of H.G. Wells. As an actor he has appeared in, among other things, two Harry Potter films, Alan Partridge, and Dr. Who. --- Strange Attractor Press, 2019

 TALKER is a self published interview zine about performance by musician, artist & writer Giles Bailey --- The first issue of talker is a conversation with artist, writer and curator of film, Ian White. The interview took place in 2012 and focuses on Ian's live work - from early experimental collaborations to his landmark solo triology Ibiza Black Flags Democracy and hybrid curatorial projects. --- Ian White (1971-2013) was an artist, working mainly in performance.Since 2007 he was the Facilitator of the LUX Associate Artists Programme and from 2001-11 was Adjunct Film Curator for the Whitechapel Gallery, London. Independent curatorial projects include Kinomuseum, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, 2007; The Secret Public (Associate Curator; Kunstverein Munich & touring, 2006/7), The Artists Cinema (Coordinator; Frieze Art Fair, London, 2005/6) and Emily Wardill at De Appel (2010), with a co-authored publication, We Are Behind (De Appel/Bookworks, 2010). His artistic practice includes collaborations with Jimmy Robert (Art Now, Tate Britain, 2004; STUK, Leuven & De Appel Amsterdam & touring, 2007 on) and Emily Roysdon (Chisenhale Gallery, London, 2010), a performance of Yvonne Rainer's Trio A at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2009) and a solo show Ibiza Black Flags Democracy, daadgalerie, Berlin (2010) with a publication of the same title.

TALKER is a self published interview zine about performance by musician, artist & writer Giles Bailey --- Issue 3 of Talker features a conversation with the director and playwright Richard Maxwell. Since 1999 he has worked with his company New York City Players producing theatre work for the stage, for galleries and moving image. His plays are set in the everyday environments of lobbies, living rooms, karaoke bars and highway intersections. Often non-professionals, his actors portray American archetypes through spare, stylised dialogue and occasionally sing. Recent productions include Queens Row at ICA London, Paradiso at Greene Naftali Gallery and Good Samaritans at Abrons Arts Centre

TALKER is a self published interview zine about performance by musician, artist & writer Giles Bailey --- Issue #9 of Talker is a conversation with artist Clifford Owens. He is based in Jersey City, New Jersey, and his work focuses on the body in relation to the power dynamics of race, masculinity, class and the fragility of social structures. It also closely examines the significance of photography in performance making and its histories. His project Anthology responds to the absence of a performance history that includes Black artists by soliciting and performing scores from Black artists working today. In Photographs with an Audience those attending the performance are invited to respond to prompts and questions by making a commitment to the moment and history by standing before the camera and having their picture taken. ---

From Morrissey and Nick Cave to The Streets and Kanye West, this is the book that explores the links between hip-hop and rock. Reynolds has focused on two strands: white alternative rock and black street music. He's identified the strange dance of white bohemian rock and black culture, how they come together at various points and then go their own way. Through interviews he has carried out as a top music journalist for the last twenty years Reynolds is here able to tell a story of musical rivalry which no-one has told before. The approach is similar to Rip It Up and Start Again: a cultural history told through the music we love and the stars and movements that have shaped the world we live in.

We arrived in a fleet of white stretch limos at a clearing in a wood near Woking. Here the K Foundation was exhibiting a million pounds in cash, while Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty circled the perimeter in two orange Saracen armoured vehicles, blasting out Abba's 'Money Money Money' . The list of bands and artists Mick Houghton worked with in an illustrious career in the music business reads like a Who's Who of some of the greatest, most influential and downright dysfunctional cult groups of the post-punk era and beyond - Ramones, Talking Heads, The Undertones, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Felt, Sonic Youth, The Wedding Present, Spiritualized and Elastica among them. Often judiciously (or unintentionally) sidestepping the major trends in music - baggy, grunge and Britpop - his reputation for attracting outsiders led to him working with artists as disparate as Sun Ra, Andrew Oldham, Ken Kesey, Bert Jansch, Stereolab, Mercury Rev and Gorky's Zygotic Mynci.But the three acts Mick is most closely identified with are Echo & the Bunnymen, Julian Cope (and the Teardrop Explodes) and the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu/KLF in all their guises. Between them, these three played a significant role in shaping the musical landscape of the eighties and nineties, and - as confidant and co-conspirator - Mick was with their chorus along the way, carefully navigating the minefield of rivalries and contrasting fortunes. It is Mick's indefatigable belief that it was always the music that came first, and it is his knack of attracting so-called difficult and troubled artists that makes Fried & Justified such an amusing, honest and insightful tale.

‘Dude, you wrote an essay!’ he told me, ‘how do you expect us to sell it in one sentence if you can’t even describe it in one page?’ I was horrified, embarrassed, immediately offered to write a new one and send it. ‘No,’ he explained, ‘you’re being taught a lesson. Do better with the next release.’ I was too surprised to be angry. I also didn’t learn my lesson, and they didn’t carry the next record we put out either. The lesson I did learn, maybe not for a long time, is that I only really care about the records that take pages to describe. The Grass is Green in the Fields for You is overjoyed to present a project which has been in the making—and mind—for some time: Fix The Mirrors by Ethan Swan. This collection, which starts itself in the year of 2000, collects writings on music and DIY activity from Swan’s back-catalogue. Musically it is broad, we begin with Meltdown moving to Shudder To Think; singular considerations on tracks by Tracey Thorn, Unrest and Jane’s Addiction. Further focuses on Saturday Looks Good to Me, Roy Harper, Panax, Slick Rick. There are documentary works and interviews covering Felix Kubin, The Homosexuals, Graham Lambkin & Spencer C. Yeah, Cass McCombs, and Bridget Cross. An expansive amount of ground is covered in this single collection, and this isn't the start of the wealth Swan has created. The writing is immediate, thoughtful, touching and honest—just like Ethan. Meticulously crafted, the painstaking layout is accompanied by photographs by Lisa Anne Auerbach documenting 1980’s Chicago punk shows.

This is the first English monograph of legendary French musique-concrete pioneer Luc Ferrari (1929-2005). Founding member of Groupe de Recherches (GRM) with Pierre Schaeffer-the group and studio were dedicated to the electronic medium that changed composition forever. This sumptuous volume includes facsimiles of Ferrari's original compositions, notebooks, and the first English translations of his writings, including poetry and fictional works and correspondence, as well as a special full-colour section that includes the composer's own collage artwork. Ecstatic Peace Library. 406 pages