CAN: Tago Mago (33 1/3); Paperback
151 pages (2014), Used
A brilliant exploration of the German rock band Can's 1971 album Tago Mago. This hugely unique and influential album deserves close analysis from a fan, rather than a musicologist. Novelist Alan Warner details the concrete music we hear on the album, how it was composed, executed and recorded--including the history of the album in terms of its release, promotion and art work. This tale of Tago Mago is also the tale of a young man obsessed with record collecting in the dark and mysterious period of pop music before Google. Warner includes a backtracking of the history of the band up to that point and also some description of Can's unique recording approach taking into account their home studio set up. Interviews with the two surviving members: drummer Jaki Liebezeit, keyboardist Irmin Schmidt and bassist Holger Czukay make this a hilariously personal and illuminating picture of Can.
SUPER 7: International Toy Pirates (2007), Hardcover
Brian Flynn, 288 pages, Used
The term mook has long been used to describe printed material that is neither a book, nor a magazine, but the ultimate fusion of the two. Super 7 has elevated this form to the highest possible pinnacle with the new redesign of their magazine as a deluxe twice a year release. Elegant to the extreme in a slip cased black and silver Flexi-bound, this beautifully designed and immaculately photographed title is a museum quality catalogue for collectors, aficionados or self proclaimed toy geeks . Super 7 International Toy Pirates takes you on a nostalgic journey to the endless days of youth and summers spent watching Godzilla, Mothra and Rodan battle for world supremacy. Contains features and interviews of the quality we have come to expect from the editors of Super 7.
THE BOOK OF GRASS An Anthology Of Indian Hemp; Paperback
60's counterculture - 242 pages (1968), Used
Indian hemp and its products, marihuana and hashish - variously known as pot, weed, reefer, boo, tea, mezzo, hash, or the 'grass' of the title - is a much discussed and - perhaps - a greatly maligned herb.
This volume (revised and up-dated for Penguin Books) offers a wide range of writings about this ancient plant, its remarkable products, and its long and varied history. Among the authors represented are Rabelais, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Aldous Huxley, Gerard de Nerval, Allen Ginsberg, C. G. Jung, Henry Miller, Hermann Hesse, Alan Watts, Lewis Carroll, William James, Anthony Storr, William Burroughs, and Paul Bowles. Extraordinary, illuminating, fascinating essays by many great minds on this plant. There's even an entry from George Washington's diary notes of 1765 saying he sowed Hemp by a Swamp and that he was rather too late separating the Male from the Female hemp. (Book cover may be different than picture shown)
Disinformation: The Interviews Richard Metzger; Paperback
176 pages (2002), Used
The best and most revealing interviews from the prococative TV series/DVD of the same name.
Richard Metzger presents the most compelling interviews from the hit TV series Disinformation, revealing mindblowing thoughts from modern culture's most radical thinkers:
Paul Laffoley on how to build a working time machine and a house made of vegetables
Douglas Rushkoff explains "media viruses"
Lucifer Principle author Howard Bloom on the coming biological apocalypse
Genesis POrridge on what it's like to be the leader of your own cult
Joe Coleman's collection of weird stuff
Robert Anton Wilson on The Illuminati and Aleister Crowley
Kembra Pfahler on The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black
Duncan Laurie on the forbidden science of radionics
Comic book author Grant Morrison (The Invisibles, JLA, XMen) on sex magick
Hollywood's interest in underground culture and the best alien abduction story you'll ever hear!
Plus, many more modern revolutionaries (including philosopher Peter Russell, futurist Mark Pesce, and Apocalypse Culture's Adam Parfrey) expressing their thoughts, fears, enthusiasms, and predictions.
EDGYCUTE: From Neo-Pop to Low Brow and Back Again; Hardcover
176 pages (2009)
The resurgence in the popularity of illustrative art can be attributed to an array of factors. Although the acceptance of graphic novels as something more than 'just comic books' has been established for quite some time, when McSweeney's released its all comics issue in 2004, the mainstream media's reaction elevated the medium, its words and images, to something beyond genre. As a result, such drawings and illustrations have found their ways into marketing campaigns, ads and galleries. While the work of individual artists varies greatly, much of it strikes an irresistible pose, whether viewers are staring at enlarged heads on distorted bodies or a shot-dead bird, its killer and a birdhouse both crying. The work is at once disturbing but oddly attractive. this has been dubbed this quality "EdgyCute."
Those Were the Days When I Used to Drive Around with a Horse's Head on; Hardcover
Espen R Krukhaug 64 pages (2014) Photobook, Hardcover
The title refers to a period in the artist’s life when he toured with several punk and metal bands, traveling through Europe, China, and America…rock’n’roll style. Going for days without sufficient sleep, his only real rest came late late at night, when the musicians themselves were sleeping; and he never knew what the next day would bring…only that there would be a new town, a new show, a new party, and possibly a fight. Everyone knows what bands do when they are on stage, but these images are from behind the scenes, from the traveling and the partying, They document the world through the windows of a van, as these modern-day nomads rush from one city to the next, through unknown landscapes, with never enough time to really stop. Though unable to explore these cities the way a typical tourist might, Krukhaug manages to capture his images from a unique point of view, seeing things that a normal visitor just might miss. The result is a provocative series of photographs about the life of the tour, the perpetual motion, the late night parties, as well as the quiet moments of endless waiting; waiting for the next city to appear on the horizon, waiting for a definitive photographic moment, and waiting for the next show to finally begin.
GIVE MY REGARDS TO EIGHTH STREET : Collected Writings of Morton Feldman; Paperback
(2004) 256 pages, Used
Composer Morton Feldman (1926-87) was a crucial figure in the post-war New York art world, using elements of chance composition to construct exquisite, quietly powerful scores that produce wonderfully varied interpretations. In Give My Regards to Eighth Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman, Feldman reflects on his own work and ideas, as well as on those of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank O'Hara, John Cage and many others. If "Silence is my substitute for counterpoint," these occasional articulations give us a way into it.
"There are people who say, "If music's that easy to write, I could do it." Of course they could, but they don't. I find Feldman's own statement more affirmative. We were driving back from some place in New England where a concert had been given. He is a large man and falls asleep easily. Out of a sound sleep, he awoke to say, "Now that things are so simple, there's so much to do." And then he went back to sleep." - John Cage
ELECTRONIC AND EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC: Foundations of New Music and New Listening; Paperback
(2002) 336 pages, Used
Electronic and Experimental Music is a second edition of a well-known text on the history of electronic music. Holmes' original book, first published in 1985, was a beginner's introduction both to the theories of sound and sound production and to the history of some of the earliest experiments in instrument building and composition. In this new edition, the author thoroughly updates and enlarges the theoretical and historical sections. He also presents new material on using home computers and the many software and Internet resources available.
JRNLS 80S Lee Ranaldo; Paperback
186 pages (2001), Used
Sonic Youth spent most of the 80s sleeping on floors, driving used vans, touring across a neurotic America and the globe beyond. Before they became part of the national bloodstream, they created an underground swell, encouraging adventurous listeners to jack into their matrix of pantonality, feedback, and chiming scree. All the while, Lee Ranaldo was drinking in the landscape, the clubs, the people; recording a journal of this wild ride. Very cool indeed.....
200 LETTERS TO PARIS Paris Welch; Paperback
(2009) 228 pages, Used
Set from 1983 through 1986, 200 Letters to Paris follows an all-American, Italian boy from Maspeth, Queens as he squats his way through England and West Berlin. Having "worked for the mob" making subs and mopping floors in his teens, he knows the value of a buck and becomes a 'capitalist anarchist.' In Brixton, Paris starts a squat and builds the desperate city's first anarchist bar. Eventually growing tired of English accents, being damp and making grubby punkers egg sandwiches for 10 pence, he leaves for West Berlin. Through collected letters from family and friends, Paris faces life's universal hypocrisies with whipping wit, compassion and the charm of a spoiled brat in a leather jacket and pink mohawk. Forward by Stu Spasm of Lubricated Goat.
STOCKHAUSEN ON MUSIC; Paperback
(2000) 220 pages, Used
A collection of essays by Karlheinz Stockhausen on his early life, composing methods, and the structure of his modern music, compiled by Robin Maconie. 'The leading German composer of electronic music presents his theories of composition and performance...Penetrating philosophical and spiritual observations...the book includes a chronological list of Stockhausen's works and a discography.' -Publisher's Weekly
GANGS AND THEIR TATTOOS: Identifying Gangbangers on the Street & in Prison; Paperback
(2000) 176 pages, Used
In this book, Bill Valentine, author of Gang Intelligence Manual, shares the latest intelligence on the predominant street and prison gangs and other disruptive groups, with particular emphasis on their identifying tattoos. Supplementing the text are scores of detailed illustrations by Correctional Officer Robert Schober that replicate some of the most common tattoos worn by members of each of the groups discussed. This groundbreaking work makes a substantial amount of previously classified information available to the general public for the first time. In addition to presenting the latest intel on white, black, Hispanic and Asian gangs, it also includes new information on groups such as the White Afrikaner Resistance Movement and the Russian Mafia, which add to the mounting challenge faced by those laboring to hold the line against the menace posed by gangs, hate groups and organized crime.
