I'll Kick You In The Head With My Energy Legs depicts the coming of age, travels and traits of a group of skateboarders from London, who managed to escape the grips of a nine-to-five. Each character offers a different dynamic to the ongoing story; be it walking along the sludge covered beaches of the river Thames in search of an American visiting friend who happened to be taking an emergency shit' after accidentally drinking an entire bottle of laxative, or a journey to the hospital to fix a dislocated elbow, or playing with a dead pigeon.
Gary Mundy is the founding member of Ramleh, and ran the legendary label Broken Flag. In this frank memoir, Mundy examines themes of alienation, depression, artistic practice and what it means to be alive.
Amphetamine Sulphate - Paperback Book (New)
With appeal to more than just punk history obsessives, Orstralia offers an unprecedented snapshot of an underacknowledged segment of Australian life and history.
Far from punk’s more modish North Atlantic core in the late 1970s, discontented youth in Australia were enacting similar musical and cultural reckonings. Yet in spite of Australia's purported “laid-back” national demeanour, punks there were routinely met with insult, fist, or the police baton.
More subterranean than the national scandal that was punk back in “homeland” Britain, Australia’s own bands nonetheless came to be heralded internationally. Orstralia represents the first definitive account of the country’s initial years, from progenitors the Saints and Radio Birdman in the mid-70s, through the emergence of hardcore in the 1980s, to the stylistic diffusion that accompanied transition to the 1990s.
Based on over 130 interviews, Orstralia documents the most renowned to the most fleeting and obscure acts the nation produced. Included are equally engrossing and shocking personal narratives befitting such a passionate and intemperate cultural form, as well as punk’s placement within broader Australian society at the time.
“Australia has some claim to being a punk founder nation, most obviously through the influence of the Saints and Radio Birdman. In Orstralia, Tristan Clark explores the wider terrain to recover a vibrant prepunk, punk, and postpunk history that captures the vibrancy and excitement of a culture brimming with ingenuity and teenage verve. A brilliant book and essential reading for all those interested in punk's cultural past.”
—Matthew Worley, author of No Future: Punk Politics and British Youth Culture, 1976–84
“If your knowledge of Australian punk grinds to a halt at the Saints, Radio Birdman, the Hard-Ons, and Vicious Circle, Orstralia is a deep dive into that country’s turbulent alternative underground of the late 1970s and ’80s, when rebellious youths clashed with the police (not to mention the church, the government, the media . . . authority in general), rival subcultures, their parents and even themselves. Proving that an oppressive police state is no match for subversive creativity in the long run, Australian punk evolved and thrived in the face of such adversity—very much its own beast given its isolation from London and New York—and this forensically researched tome is its story, written in such detail and with such fascinating insight, you can relive it all vicariously without having your nose broken and discover a treasure trove of passionate noise into the bargain. This is an important and entertaining piece of work.”
—Ian Glasper, author of Burning Britain: The History of UK Punk 1980–1984 and The Day the Country Died: A History of Anarcho Punk 1980 to 1984
Rat Scabies And The Holy Grail is a 2005 book written by Christopher Dawes, published by Sceptre Books in the UK and Thunder's Mouth Press in the US. It is a gonzo-esque quest to find the Holy Grail by punk rock legend Rat Scabies, the one-time drummer of The Damned, with whom Dawes strikes up a friendship when the two become neighbours in the London suburb of Brentford.[1][2][3][4]
"The book, which has been described as "The Da Vinci Code gets the punk rock treatment" (The Bookseller), begins with Scabies introducing Dawes to the alleged mystery of Rennes-le-Château, a remote French village associated with all manner of esotericconspiracy theories. Scabies and Dawes make several trips to Rennes-le-Château and also visit other places said to be linked to the Holy Grail, including Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland. The book is an often hilarious account of the pair’s adventures - they even manage to wangle themselves an invitation to a Knights Templar initiation ceremony - and its supporting cast of characters includes Henry Lincoln (the author of Holy Blood, Holy Grail) and a CIA operative, plus assorted treasure hunters, occultists, alien channelers, reincarnated medieval heretics, and numerous members of secret societies." Wikipedia
SNAP sketches the timeline of a lost Australian sub-culture, the teenage Sharpie gangs. Tough and stylish, the Sharpies created their own diverse family, where mateship and defiance were valued over race, colour or authority. SNAP is loaded with photos, snippets from the internet and first-hand recollections from former Sharpies and observers.
Each generation of Sharpies, the 60s, early 70s, mid 70s, late 70s and the 1980s are fiercely protective of their own style of hair, clothing, footwear, music, dance and mannerisms. Their voices are strong as they argue through the pages as each group believes the sharpies that followed are dickheads and imposters!
Midnight Oil are one of the most 'Australian' rock bands this country has produced.
Born from the Australian pub rock scene that gave us AC/DC, Cold Chisel and INXS, the Oils were able to break out of that scene without compromising themselves in any way. Indeed, their breakthrough overseas record was the most Australian album they made.
But it wasn't just the subject matter that made them fiercely Australian; it was their stubborn independence, and their refusal to play the rock'n'roll game and respect its rules and masters. But more than any of this is the adrenaline rush of an Oils show. Performances so intense that witnesses swore they had seen the greatest Oils gig ever! Such was the belief that something so powerful could surely not take place regularly.
When they took this overseas, audiences could often not understand a word they were saying, but musically they recognised a common language: powerful, unadulterated live performances.
There is no band whose live shows are spoken of with the same awe as the Oils.
Author: Paul Drummond
Before the hippies, before the punks, there were the 13th Floor Elevators: an unlikely crew of outcast weirdo geniuses who changed musical culture. Through a rich and diverse array of primary materials – including previously unseen band photographs, rare artwork, items from family scrapbooks and diaries, new and archival interviews, dozens of press accounts, (and many Austin Police Department records!) – this impressive volume tells the complete and unvarnished story of the band. Born out of a union of club bands on the burgeoning Austin bohemian scene and a pronounced taste for hallucinogens, the 13th Floor Elevators were formed in late 1965 when lyricist Tommy Hallasked a local singer named Roky Erickson to join up with his new rock outfit. Four years, three official albums, and countless acid trips later, it was over: the Elevators’ pioneering first run ended in a dizzying jumble of professional mismanagement, internal arguments, drug busts, and forced psychiatric imprisonments. In their short existence, however, the group succeeded in blowing the lid off the budding musical underground, logging early salvos in the countercultural struggle against state authorities, and turning their deeply hallucinatory take on jug-band garage rock into a new American institution called psychedelic music.
Gainsbourg, French, Jazz, Pop, Playboy; Paperback Book - VG Used condition (Light creasing in covers)
In this, the first English biography to capture Gainsbourg in all his contradiction and gleeful outrageousness, Simmons tells the fascinating story of the Gallic star. Drawing on hours of new interviews with his intimates-among them Jane Birkin, Sly & Robbie, Marianne Faithfull, and celebrated producer Philippe Lerichomme-Simmons describes in crackling prose the scope of Gainsbourg's achievement while doing full justice to his complicated emotional life. Simmons's work will stand as the definitive take on a dizzying genius.
Mondo, Shockumentary, Mixtape, Gore, Real Footage, Disturbing; Zine + 3 DVD-R set - New
Mondo Mysterium is a monthly published U.S. zine showcasing marginalized mondo films (and the occasional shockumentary or other fellow traveler) that been somewhat neglected (which will mean they have never had a DVD release, or at least not the particular version) and are deserving of recognition for their contribution to the genre. Each month, the zine comes with three curated DVD-R's of obscure and unreleased mondo films from the Mondo Mysterium collection archive, complete with essays about the selected films.
The three DVD-R titles included with in Mondo Mysterium Vol 2 are the esoteric mondo film 'Il piacere e il mistero' (1964); one of the more obscure US shockumentaries, 'The Underbelly of America' (1998); and finally something extra special: 'Death Fest' (ca. 1996), a '90s homebrewed gore mixtape.
Sun Ra, Afro-futurism, Jazz, Free Jazz, Psychedelic, Historic, Documentary, Avant-garde; Paperback Book (314 pages) 2020 - New
Sun Ra (1914–93) was one of the most wildly prolific and unfailingly eccentric figures in the history of music. Renowned for extravagant performances in which his Arkestra appeared in neo-Egyptian garb, the keyboardist and bandleader also espoused an interstellar cosmology that claimed the planet Saturn as his true home. In Sun Ra’s Chicago, William Sites brings this visionary musician back to earth—specifically to the city’s South Side, where from 1946 to 1961 he lived and relaunched his career. The postwar South Side was a hotbed of unorthodox religious and cultural activism: Afrocentric philosophies flourished, storefront prophets sold “dream-book bibles,” and Elijah Muhammad was building the Nation of Islam. It was also an unruly musical crossroads where the man then known as Sonny Blount drew from an array of intellectual and musical sources—from radical nationalism, revisionist Christianity, and science fiction to jazz, blues, Latin dance music, and pop exotica—to construct a philosophy and performance style that imagined a new identity and future for African Americans. Sun Ra’s Chicago shows that late twentieth-century Afrofuturism emerged from a deep, utopian engagement with the city—and that by excavating the postwar black experience of Sun Ra’s South Side milieu, we can come to see the possibilities of urban life in new ways.
