CBGB: Decades of Graffiti (2006); Paperback
64 pages - Introduction by Richard Hell, New
CBGB (the initials stand for Country Blue Grass Blues) is the officially designated birthplace of Punk Rock. It is a bar located in the Bowery of New York City described by author Christopher D. Salyers as 'No better place to drink in the wonderful nothingness of the 1970s Bowery and Lower East Side than at this bar. On the streets outside, crime soared, cracked-out bodies imitated corpses as anxious junkies scurrying like alley cats scratched around for their next fix'....'Cheap rent, cheap beer, cheap sex.' And inside CBGB the likes of Talking Heads, Ramones, Richard Hell (who writes a colorful Forward for this terrific little book), the Voidoids, and the Dead Boys introduced punk rock to the patrons. What this superb little book celebrates is the atmosphere in which all of this history took place, a club notoriously filthy, whose owners invited the patrons to graffiti the walls, the floors, and especially the bathrooms. Photographer John Putnam has supplied designer/writer Salyers with gritty photos of the stage and the seats, the green rooms (where artists prepared before performing), the bathrooms with some of the most wonderfully vile language and demonstrations of man's ability to deface public property are at a peak, and the bar. The colors are rich and ludicrously dirty and the words left behind are scribblings by minds toked on drugs and loud music.
A MAMMALS NOTEBOOK: Collected Writings of Erik Satie (1997); Paperback
Atlas Arkhive 208 pages, Used (ex-library)
This is the largest selection (in any language) of Erik Satie's writings yet to appear, and includes previously unpublished texts, drawings and photographs.
Dismissed as a bizarre eccentric by many, Erik Satie has come to be seen as a key influence on twentieth century music. His compositions include, among other pieces, the ubiquitous Gymnopedies, the 3 Pieces in the Form of a Pear, and the Dada opera Relache. In later life he gathered round him Les Six and the cream of the new generation of French composers. His influence has continued to widen; John Cage and the New York School composers hailed him as "indispensable," and more recently certain of his pieces have been seen as prefiguring both Minimalist and Ambient music. His poignant, sly and witty writings embody all his contradictions. Included here are his "autobiographical" Memoirs of an Amnesic, and wryly comic musical commentaries; the gnomic annotations to his musical scores ("For the SHRIVELLED and the DIMWITS, I have written a suitably ponderous chorale ... a kind of austere, unfrivolous introduction ... I dedicate this chorale to those who do not like me."); the publications of his private church; his absurdist play Medusa's Snare; advertising copy for his local suburban newspaper, and the mysterious, elaborately calligraphed, "private advertisements" found stuffed behind his piano after his death.
EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC: Audio Explorations in Australia (2008); Paperback
Gail Priest 192 pages, Used
Experimental music has been mostly unrecognised in Australia, but it is in this ‘underground’ area that the major innovations and creative developments in music occur. Through testing perceived boundaries, breaking rules and creating new forms, the artists in this field force us to question what, in fact, music is. Written by artists who have been actively engaged in the musical niches they are covering, this book explores the major innovations and creative developments in Australian experimental music from the 1970s to the present. Through testing perceived boundaries, breaking rules, and creating new forms, the artists presented question preconceived notions of what music is. Rare find these days....
MODERN ENGLISH: A Trendy Slang Dictionary (Signed); Paperback
J. Blowdryer 93 pages (1986), Used
Reading Modern English can be a life-changing event. Jennifer Blowdryer is a sharp tongued anthropologist in a secondhand dress--and this was back before shopping at the Salvation Army was something you saw on the Style Channel. Cholo, Goth, Drug, D/s, Hardcore, Art Wreck, and Punk are just a few of the subcultures examined in this essential language & cultural guide. Her riffs on lounge lizards ("they've given up, but then again, they haven't") and mindless jerks who pick on the ultra hip ("they should be taking a closer look at the clothes they'll be wearing in two years") are funny and smart. As a record of true punk rock of its time, "Modern English", by Jennifer Blowdryer really is something fun to read. The photos of REAL punks, in their home-made outfits make today's Hot Topic-buying kids look like fools with no creative spark whatsoever. Cult book, as rare as shit....Signed by J. Blowdryer!
THE BLACK LEATHER JACKET (2007); Paperback
Mick Farren 128 pages, Used
Ever since a leather-jacketed Marlon Brando slouched across the screen in The Wild One, the jacket’s mixture of animal magnetism, brooding menace, and sexual provocation has made it a must-have for hipsters, rebels, and fashionistas. This entertaining book chronicles the leather jacket from its roots among World War I flying aces to its present incarnation in high fashion. Along the way, it shows how every generation and subculture — including the Hell’s Angels, beats, punks, movie stars, counterculturists, and fetishists — has made the leather jacket its own.
WELCOME TO FOREST ISLAND Bwana Spoons (2009); Hardcover
144 Full Colour pages, Art Book, Used
Top Shelf presents Welcome to Forest Island, the very first art book by Bwana Spoons, a painter, designer, silkscreener, and zinester whose work has been featured on shoes, skateboards, t-shirts, baby strollers, and in gallery shows throughout the US, Tokyo, and Paris. All 144 full-color pages — including paintings, maps, sketches, short comics, and more — are dedicated to Forest Island, the outrageously colorful land of Bwana’s imagination! Our motley cast includes whale-gators, super-cicadas, wild killers and tapirs, arrow-shooting, basket-weaving love tribes, an ex-hobo mushroom farmer, and one wacky bat who plays drums in a metal band and would do anything for a jelly-filled bagel.
Walk Through Walls: A Memoir - Marina Abramovic; Hardcover
384 pages, (2018), Used
“I had experienced absolute freedom—I had felt that my body was without boundaries, limitless; that pain didn’t matter, that nothing mattered at all—and it intoxicated me.”
In 2010, more than 750,000 people stood in line at Marina Abramović’s MoMA retrospective for the chance to sit across from her and communicate with her nonverbally in an unprecedented durational performance that lasted more than 700 hours. This celebration of nearly fifty years of groundbreaking performance art demonstrated once again that Marina Abramović is truly a force of nature. The child of Communist war-hero parents under Tito’s regime in postwar Yugoslavia, she was raised with a relentless work ethic. Even as she was beginning to build an international artistic career, Marina lived at home under her mother’s abusive control, strictly obeying a 10 p.m. curfew. But nothing could quell her insatiable curiosity, her desire to connect with people, or her distinctly Balkan sense of humor—all of which informs her art and her life. The beating heart of Walk Through Walls is an operatic love story—a twelve-year collaboration with fellow performance artist Ulay, much of which was spent penniless in a van traveling across Europe—a relationship that began to unravel and came to a dramatic end atop the Great Wall of China. Marina’s story, by turns moving, epic, and dryly funny, informs an incomparable artistic career that involves pushing her body past the limits of fear, pain, exhaustion, and danger in an uncompromising quest for emotional and spiritual transformation. A remarkable work of performance in its own right, Walk Through Walls is a vivid and powerful rendering of the unparalleled life of an extraordinary artist.
“Walk Through Walls is beautiful, panoramic, touching, deep. I really love and admire the way Marina confronts all the weird contradictions of myth mixing with daily life. She manages to say personal as well as self-critical things about herself while still making a self-portrait that is rich and full of real self-respect. What a life!” —Laurie Anderson
“In The Heart Sutra, Buddha says, ‘Our life on earth is like a morning star, a bubble on water, a drop of dew, lightning in the summer sky, a dream in this floating world.’ For Marina Abramović, there is no difference between art and life, life is a dream while it lasts, an absolute presence made in a vacuum.” —Alejandro Jodorowsky
BIKIES LUST (Peter Brand) 1974; Paperback
"Australian" cult biker fiction novel (thus the term "Bikie") - this is a rare Australian novel in the vein of the better known UK 'New English Library' series of pulp counterculture novels (Bikers, Skinheads etc). Cover and title is in the same style. (RARE)
SPEED FREAKS (New English Library) 1973; Paperback
Cult Biker novel on New English Library, Peter Cave, Used
Filming the Angel's life is different and more difficult than filming a pop festival. But Gerry Shipton manages to persuade his backers that his film will hit, but only as long as he includes other speeding thrills.
The speedway, the wall of death, open up new grounds for the Hell's Angels to show off their daredevil skills, prove their reckless courage. Dreams of stardom and the silver screen are new expeditions for them. So Gerry finds that things get out of control. Everything they touch turns sour; their mark is destruction.
BROOKLYN KINGS New York City's Black Bikers (2000); Hardcover
Martin Dixon 144 pages (Large Format), New
As an avid biker for over nine years, photographer Martin Dixon gained unprecedented access to the predominantly African-American motorcycle clubs in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Manhattan. Comprising a huge subculture of urban road warriors totally unknown to most New Yorkers and bike club enthusiasts, these black "biker gangs"—with names like the Jaguars, the Black Falcons, the Pythons, the Transit Wheelers, the Imperials, the Corpians, the Harlem Riders, the United Roadrunners, and the Uptown Riders—are really high-octane social clubs, whose members ride flashy ninja sport bikes. Through Dixon's spectacular insider perspective, we enter a world straddling the customs and trappings of traditional biker culture (the heavily embroidered leather jackets, the thick male camaraderie, the bike as manifestation of the ego), and the rituals and pastimes of the urban biker (the springtime bike blessings, the trophy parties, and the clubhouse socials). More importantly, thanks to Dixon, we witness, even participate in, a set of rituals the likes of which no outsider has ever documented: the block parades (complete with monster trucks!), the barbeque parties (replete with a southern club specialty, the "Mississippi Mud Slide"), the bikini bike wash, the Myrtle and Virginia Beach bike runs, the drag races, the raunchy fundraising parties, and, of course, the "biker chicks", urban flavor.
TIMOTHY LEARY The Fugitive Philosopher; Paperback
144 pages (2007), New
Busted for pot in 1965, Timothy Leary was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He escaped, and thus began an almost farcical odyssey: the former West Point student and Harvard professor was now an acid-tripping fugitive. In this delightfully irreverent account, Leary describes his time in Algeria; how he was sheltered by an arms dealer in Switzerland; his exploits with the Weathermen and Eldridge Cleaver, who tried to hold him hostage; and his eventual capture and return to the United States. The book includes black and white illustrations throughout.
JUNKY William S Burroughs (1977); Paperback
1st Edition, 1977, Used
Penguin Books, (1977). First Edition. First thus -- "the first complete and unexpurgated edition," according to the publisher -- and with an introduction by Allen Ginsberg.
