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.
- Details
- By The Barman
- Hits: 1463
Don’t Let Go. A Memoir – Rob Griffiths (Swerve/Off The Hip)
He readily confesses to not being a household name but if fervent enthusiasm for rock and roll and a back catalogue of should-have-been-hits counts, Rob Griffiths should be.
Best-known as frontman for onetime Melbourne mod torchbearers Little Murders, Griffiths is one of the most underrated songwriters in the country, and now adds author to his c.v.
The autobiographical “Don’t Let Go” is a ripping ride that cranks up in Melbourne music’s underground of the mid’70s and continues well beyond - as told by an immigrant Pommy kid who jumped in at the deep end.
Griffiths’ first band The Fiction shared stages with Boys Next Door/Birthday Party, News and JAB in a short but noisy existence. Punk was only a starting point: the did wear suits (briefly, at the end) and it was a hint of things to come. Griffiths makes the point well that the lines between genres in Melbourne are, and always were, heavily blurred.
His ‘60s influenced Little Murders rose from The Fiction’s ashes, soaring in popularity on the back of the burgeoning mod movement of the early ‘80s. When both band and the “Quadrophenia” trend foundered, Griffiths became a club DJ, a small-time record label chief and band manager, often in tandem with a day-time career as a schoolteacher.
- Details
- By The Barman
- Hits: 1422
Retaliate First: How one band smashed the rules of Australian rock and roll
By Murray Engleheart
(Allen and Unwin)
What becomes a legend most
When the musicians have come and then leave her
What becomes a legend most
Besides being a legendary star
What Becomes A Legend Most” - Lou Reed (1984)
It’s finally here and it’s great. For the first time, the Radio Birdman story has been thoroughly told from start to dotage (if not the end) in print, and with a sense of perspective that puts contestable versions of the story in plain view.
For the first time? What about Vivien Johnston’s 1990 “Radio Birdman”? For many years it was the best (only) reference point. As invaluable as it was, it was ultimately a biography shoehorned into a university thesis, and the tenuous link it tried to make between the band and Australian indigenous culture was odd.
And there's “Radio Birdman: The Illustrated History” from George Munoz, an amazing visual record of the first life of the band but doesn’t try to be commentary.
Murray Engleheart’s “Retaliate First” is an effort to re-tell the story as it should be told and it’s an invaluable companion to Jonathan Sequeira’s brutally honest “Descent Into The Maelstrom” documentary.
- Details
- By The Barman
- Hits: 2837
The Dead and The Desperate By Dan Denton (Roadside Press)
Way back in the New Wave/Post punk era, one of my only friends was a kid with a very similar name to mine. He was really into Depeche Mode and Tubeway Army, and he had a real hardk nock life with a dead father, abusive brother and corrections officer mother,
We met at some troubled teen diversion program. He knew some Kung Fu and kinda became my protector, as I was a scrawny-ass make-up wearing Ramone who was always targeted by bully dumb-fuck Ohio males for wearing eyeliner and being like totally into Bowie and the NY Dolls.
I always tried to get the kid to work on his keyboards so he could join my dirty punk band, I thought that might give him a productive creative outlet and elevate our sorta stupidly primitive Ramones/Cramps sound. He dabbled with it for awhile, but would always get sorta distracted by girls. He saw the two of us as rivals, whereas, I saw us as more like brothers. I really loved the guy.
- Details
- By JD Monroe
- Hits: 2053
Another Tuneless Racket: Punk And New Wave In The Seventies, Volume One: Origins
Another Tuneless Racket: Punk And New Wave In The Seventies, Volume Two: Punk
Another Tuneless Racket: Punk and New Wave In The Seventies: Volume Three: UK New Wave
Another Tuneless Racket: Punk and New Wave In The Seventies, Volume Five: The American Beat – West
By Steve H Gardner (self published)
The best intentions are often derailed by practicality. After being gifted Volume One of “Another Tuneless Racket”, the plan was to acquire and read the other three back-to-back and then write a review. A fine goal but one that slipped after realising their combined volume came to almost 2,400 pages and life was getting in the way…
After delving deep into the series, it’s clear that the beauty of “Another Tuneless Racket” is that once you get your bearings, you can dive in almost anywhere, pick up on a thread and keep going. As you'll gather from the titles, each volume zeroes in on a time and place in the history of punk and new wave music, and then takes up the story of key acts. The series serves as a roadmap through the twists and turns of punk and new wave across most of the western world.
It’s meticulously researched but you’d expect that from author Steve Gardner, He’s a lanky Yank from San Diego who grew up on the US East Coast where he went to university before finding himself working in engineering. A music obsessive from an earl;y age, he'd been bitten by the punk rock bug by the time he blew out the candles on his 21st birthday cake.
- Details
- By The Barman
- Hits: 4595
Punk Under The Sun: Punk & New Wave in South Florida
By Joey Seeman and Chris Potash
Hozac Books
I was never really drawn to Florida like so many of my ex-friends and former peers, I always called it "Ohio South" cause you know it's all the same insufferable tv brainwashed right wingers from Ohio who seem to migrate there.
Never liked Marilyn Manson or Disneyland all that much, or even Jimmy Buffet yeehaw beach culture, but weirdly a lot of musicians from all my favorite Murkkkan bands have Floridian roots.
Probably my fave band besides Generation X,Pretenders, and Beasts Of Bourbon was basically born there before relocating to Hollywood: a band called the Coma-Tones, who were, according to my famous old amigo the Sleazegrinder: "Like Jim Morrison singing for Guns N Roses". The vocalist Gio was approximately as excellent as Texacala Jones or early Tex Perkins, the guitar player Jimmy James went on to play for Junkyard and the Hangmen, and he's featured in the book.
- Details
- By JD Monroe
- Hits: 3959
The Truth Is In The Sound We Make
by Carlton Sandercock and Per Nilsen
Wintergarden Books
It is The Last Word in illustrated Stooges books.
Big statement, and the competition has been stiff.
Change my mind.
First there was 2009’s lavish “Stooges: The Authorized and Illustrated Story” by Robert Matheu (R.I.P.) and Jeffrey Morgan that chronicled the band’s two careers in pictures and essays.
Ten years later, photographer Ed Caraeff’s “Iggy & the Stooges: One Night at the Whisky” was a beautiful visual document of a 1970 Los Angeles show during the recording. of “Fun House”. It was limited in scope but evocative in execution.
A few years later, “Iggy & The Stooges: Raw Power” by the late Mick Rock followed. Rock not only captured the memorable image on the cover of “Raw Power”, taken at the Stooges’ only UK show, but a slew of images of the boys during downtime.
“Total Chaos” by Iggy and Jeff Gold contained rare documents and handbills, but was mainly text and most of the live photos were familiar.
So Wintergarden Books (publishing arm of Easy Action Records), has scooped the pool with this 300-page, hard cover behemoth.
- Details
- By The Barman
- Hits: 3225
Shake Some Action: My Life in Music (and other stuff)
By Stuart Coupe
Penguin Books
“You’re talking to Stuart Coupe?” remarked my wife excitedly, after I told her I’d catching up with Stuart at the tail end of an impending work trip to Sydney. “Tell him I used to read his column in ‘Dolly’ all the time! We all did!”
To thousands of teenagers – especially teenage girls – in the 1980s, Stuart Coupe was the guy who wrote that column in Dolly, championing music he liked, dissing commercial dross he didn’t, and offering various observations and advice on various non-music topics, including kissing and the art of romance.
Not being a reader of the magazine, I wasn’t familiar with Coupe’s work with “Dolly”, though his by-line did appear in regular dispatches in music magazines and newspapers. Decades later I interviewed Coupe for my Spencer P Jones biography; one thing led to another, and he became instrumental – in fact, was the critical force – in my obtaining a publishing deal. So, full disclosure, I consider Stuart Coupe a friend and sincere supporter of all the best things in music.
“Shake Some Action” tells Coupe’s story, from his childhood in Launceston, to his formative years in Adelaide as a music writer, to syndicated columns (and "Dolly"!), the chaotic world of band management, the heady, drug and alcohol fuelled world of music industry largesse and the harsh economic reality of tour promotion and label ownership.
- Details
- By Patrick Emery
- Hits: 3954
Half Deaf, Completely Mad: The Chaotic Genius of Australia’s Most Legendary Producer
By Tony Cohen with John Olson
(Black Ink)
“Unputdownable” is a word and it officially entered the English lexicon in 1947. That’s a full decade before Tony Cohen came into the world, but the descriptor could have been custom-built for “Half Deaf, Completely Mad”, his posthumous autobiography.
This is a tale of hyper-energy and off-the-wall sonic experimentation cleverly disguised as a 230-page paperback. It’s a weaving, sometimes wobbling story told through Cohen’s often bloodshot or pinned eyes, with dry wit and self-deprecation.
People who worked with the man and saw his excesses first-hand might question his ability to recall fine detail, but in the same manner that Tony would feverishly splice three-inch tape to insert a crucial edit, his co-writer John Olson stitched the bits together.
Not familiar with Tony Cohen’s work? The music he produced was the soundtrack of the life of anyone into Australian underground music in the 1980s and ‘90s. The Boys Next Door, the Birthday Party, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Michael Hutchence, The Johnnys, Beasts of Bourbon, Go-Betweens, Hunters and Collectors, Kim Salmon, Laughing Clowns, The Cruel Sea, The Saints, X, TISM…the list goes on. Flick through your own record collection and get back to me.
- Details
- By The Barman
- Hits: 2783
More Articles …
Page 1 of 10