Night Comes Down
By Bob Short
(Earth Island Books)

Who could trust time when reason was lost?

I got pretty lucky. I did all the dumb things and I'm still here.

First, it's such a delight to read that I've snorked coffee over it several times in my usual cafe, as well as other unpleasant substances on the bus. So, if it's a horror story, it's one where you spray coffee over it, your table, pants and some lady's nice white frock. 

Perhaps you could instead think of “Night Comes Down” as an amusing memoir with layers of horror? No, that won't work, there's just too much real horror. 

Even the unreal can still feel like it is real. That hunk of meat in our heads is a totally unreliable narrator. We make excuses for things and pretend things never happened and yet weirdness is always nipping at our heels. Is anything true?

Perhaps you'll read it and think it's all made up. Strangely enough, Bob Short is (as usual) one step ahead of us.

Craic As It Happened
By John Foy
(Past Present Future/Skull Printworks)

Tis the season for confessional show-and-tell Australian music books. Journalist Stuart Coupe had a shot with the entertaining “Shake Some Action”, and then underground label head-turned- mainstream industry publishing chief, Roger Grierson, gave us the rollicking “Lowbrow”. Now it’s John Foy’s turn.

Foy spent many years as a behind-the-scenes operative in the febrile underbelly of the Australian underground music scene. He kicked off in retail, made a mark as a poster designer and then became the driving force behind the Redeye and Blackeye record labels.

Like his mate Roger Grierson, he’s never been a household name, but if you bought or heard a record by Beasts of Bourbon, The Clouds, Deniz Tek, The Crystal Set, The Cruel Sea, Kim Salmon and The Surrealists and even Radio Birdman in the mid ‘80s or early ‘90s, you entered his orbit. Redeye gave the bands wide distribution via a hook-up with the multi-national Polygram/Phonogram major label operation.

Blues Portrait: A Profile of The Australian Blues Scene Volume 5
By Pauline Bailey (Pauline Baileyu Art)

You could call Melbourne visual artist and author Pauline Bailey a “blues preacher” but James Blood Ulmer got there first with an album title. “Blues evangelist” works better anyway.

Pauline’s been self-publishing this series of soft cover “Blues Portrait” books since 2019 but the title is a misnomer. “Blues” is a tag in such broad use that it’s slipped its shackles almost to the point of redundancy. It means many things to most people.

The Blues were born into impoverished and downtrodden circumstances but are better characterised as a feeling than a school of academic thought. As the author points out, there’s traditional blues and there’s music that’s been influenced by the blues, Her books span both.

Travel In Peace. Word and Image
by Jeremy Gluck
(Incunabula)

You remember the 1970s and 1980s. Band appears with different, infectious single. Then a few more. Then ... they develop, they change direction ... and finally splinter off. Some maintain their creative imperative, releasing occasional (often astonishing) items which don't make the hit parade but... often resonate far more satisfyingly than those callow original singles. 

It's as if the relentless click-clack-clatter of their internal engine just cannot be stopped, and they jump tracks in search of a different destination, another way home...

Now, to change the subject completely...

MC5 – An Oral Biography of Rock’s Most Revolutionary Band
By Brad Tolinksi, Jann Uhelszki and Ben Edmonds
(Hachette Books)

The MC5 finally made it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2024. Or Hall of Lame, as we like to call it around here. As an institution, it really is a clusterfuck of inconsistency and the Five deserved to be there an eon ago.

You might argue that the band’s history, for the most part, was a contradiction of missed, ignored or mis-handled opportunities – and you’d be right. This much-anticipated tome is proof positive – if it were needed – of that.

Decent books about the Five are hard to find. The late Wayne Kramer had a go and succeeded to a degree (although parts smelt of revisionism). Bass player Michael Davis released his own equally harrowing autobiography, posthumously, that filled some gaps. Both books were single viewpoints, however. “MC5 – An Oral Biography…” is a shot at the big picture and fills a vacuum.

Iggy and The Stooges. The Authorized Biography
By Jeffrey Morgan
(New Haven Publishing)

Did we need another Stooges book? Rhetorical question but slap yourself if you answered in the negative. This is a pared-down and re-cut variant of the coffee table format “The Stooges: The Authorized and Illustrated History” published by Abrams in 2009 under the authorship of Jeffrey Morgan and Robert Matheu. 

This version is prominently attributed to Morgan although Matheu is acknowledged on the cover and at length throughout.

“Iggy and The Stooges. The Authorised Biography” is still in hardcover and runs to 140 pages as opposed to the original 180-odd. It’s illustrated by the photos of  Matheu, John Catto and Jeff Magnum (yes, the onetime Dead Boys bassist) and others, although the reformatting has resulted in much of the original imagery beinbg deleted or replaced.

John Catto’s and Robert Sikora’s 1974 Toronto shots of Iggy and the Stooges are amazing additions but so were Craig Petty’s St Louis photos.  

The original book was the brainchild of Morgan and Mattheu after both had been co-opted by Italian uber fan and magazine editor Rosano Ciccarelli to contribute to his own Fun House publication in 2005. They tossed the idea around over some beers, let it slide and revived it a year later with Matheu in the driving seat.