Bowie at 65: Bookshelf

Looking to read something a bit more substantial about Bowie? How about this:


This is Dave Thompson's To Major Tom, a made-up correspondence between a teenager and Bowie which sees the Dame's career twists reflecting the growing pains of a teenage boy. You can also get it for your Kindle, if you're into that sort of thing.

Angie Bowie has printed a couple of autobiographies, which focus on her time married to Dave. Because, after all, what else would she have to write about? The best one is the earlier, 1981's Free Spirt, which sees Ange claim the credit for mostly everything Bowie ever said or did, and for inventing bisexuality. Oh, and in a spectacular fail for the literature editing business, also makes room for some of Angie's poems.

If you'd like something a bit more considered,Low in the 33 and a third series is a lovely piece of writing about a brilliant album. That's also Kindle-ised.

[Part of Bowie at 65]

New start for The End

Somewhere up in the loft, I've got a copy of The End, the fanzine put together by The Farm. I can read the rest now, should I wish to, as there's a book gathering all 20 issues together. And there's bit and pieces from the title on that site, too.

Amazon are aware of the title, but don't have any right now.

Any chance of a perfect-bound collection of the run of Debris, do you think?

Neil McCormick: Did I mention that I know Bono?

You know what Neil McCormick really likes about his movie about how he knows Bono, based on his book about how he knows Bono? It's a great opportunity to go round places talking about how he knows Bono:

MCCormick tells U.K. TV show This Morning, "At a certain point, he was getting hard to know because I was in the Wembley Coach and Horses (pub) and he was in Miami doing duets with Frank Sinatra.

"He was telling me about all these things. I said, 'I don't wanna hear it. The problem with knowing you is you've lived my life.' He said, 'That's because I'm your doppelganger. If you want your life back you'll have to kill me.'

"In there, a little light bulb went off. Really it's a metaphor - it's about slaying your dragon. He was my dragon. He thought it was a great idea for a title, I was a little uncomfortable about it. He told me I should call it Killing Bono. He left a message on my answerphone one day, saying, 'Hey it's Bono, you have to kill me - it's for your own good.'"

It's a pity that Bono - who Neil McCormick knows, by the way - didn't come up with the idea early enough to prevent the book spending its early years as I Was Bono's Doppelganger.

Neil McCormick knows Bono.

Gordon in the morning: You can say anything about Courtney Love

Gordon picks up some claims from a bloke with a book to sell:

SINGER COURTNEY LOVE wanted to snort the ashes of husband KURT COBAIN, a new book claims.

Author NICK STRAUSS says Love had the idea shortly after the NIRVANA frontman was cremated following his shotgun suicide.

He alleges Love, 46, who has battled drugs, offered him a bag of ashes at her Los Angeles home and told him: "Say Hi to Kurt. Too bad you don't do coke, otherwise I'd suggest taking a straw to it."

Is it just me, or does this sound less like an actual invite to snort Kurt's ashes, and more like a slightly macabre joke?

The worst thing, though, is that even if it happened, this sounds like a bit of a weak anecdote to make the key plank of a book about Courtney Love. This is Courtney Love, dammit, who runs up and down the street naked save for a duck costume, and who seizes every new form of electronic communication to spread claims and libels. And the best you have is a weak joke about how ashes look like coke?

Savour flavours with Flava Flav

Never mind your celebrity Masterchef, this is your limelight-and-kitchen crossover:

Found and shared by the ever-excellent Awful Library Books, it's rappers. In the kitchen:

It includes such delectable culinary fare as, “Flava Flav’s Rice Pilaf.” Ingredients: A bag of rice and all your favorite sh*t.
Also, “Kid ‘n Play’s Beanie Weenies.” Ingredients: A can of beans, six hot dogs (cut in half) Directions: Heat and eat!

COOKING. DOESN'T COME. RAPPIER. THAN THIS.

The book what Lauren wrote

Lauren Laverne's Candypop book is out today. And there's a big, bold (1) in the title - if you can be bold in brackets - which suggests there are more to come.

This, people, is our generation's The Old Man of Lochnagar. Only not rubbish or inspired by The Goons.

Liam Gallagher denies plans to become movie moghul

After Liam Gallagher has done his work on turning that book about The Beatles into a film, he's quitting the film business:

Gallagher said the memoir had held "biblical" meaning for his former bandmates but he said he has no plans to carry on making films after the project, reports the Press Association.

"I'm not going into films, this is the last thing for me," he said yesterday (May 14) alongside collaborator Andrew Eaton of Revolution Films: "I mean I'm not going to get sucked into that. I'm going to do this one thing because I like it, and I've got the opportunity to do it, and Andrew's going to make it happen, and that's it."

That might change, of course, if Liam should ever read a second book.

Cruel headlines: Peter Andre

ContactMusic with a headline that's all punchline:

Peter Andre Planning Picture Book

The rest writes itself.

The book of the club

Rock music and comic strips - not always comfortable together, no matter how hard Look-In tried to turn Nick Heyward and Haircut One Hundred into comic heroes.

So the idea of a comic book series based on CBGBS doesn't immediately lead you to think of clearing some space on the shelf.

However, Every Day Is Like Wednesday has details which suggest this might be worth investigating:

The image above is the cover of the first issue, by Jaime Hernandez (obviously), and the creative roster includes comics people Kieron Gillen, Rob G., Chuck BB, Kelly Sue DeConnick and newcomers to the field like Ana Matronic (of the band Scissor Sisters), Sam Humphries of MySpace and Kim Krizan (screenwriter of Before Sunset and Before Sunrise).

And here's a preview page which should swing you firmly behind the project.

Gennaro Castaldo Watch: By the book

If there's one thing that Gennaro Castaldo knows about, it's... uh, pop-up book stores at interior design shows. Apparently:

The Ideal Home Show Book Club will take place during the whole 17-day event, in Earls Court, at which some 250,000 visitors are expected. The Club is being organised by former Cassell publisher Mathew Clayton on behalf of the show's organiser's Media Ten, and run in conjunction with HMV.
[...]
HMV spokesperson Gennaro Castaldo said: "The pop-up shops we opened around the country for Christmas attracted a great deal of interest, but we have also been trailing smaller entertainment-based formats that are more suited to exhibition events, and we are very pleased to bring our entertainment offer to the Ideal Home Show."

It's not entirely clear why HMV are doing this under the HMV badge, when you'd have thought their Waterstones brand would have been a better fit. Perhaps they've got the HMV signage sitting round and don't want to lash out for Waterstones signs too?

Morrissey is the greatest

It's always wise to approach any claims that X is the greatest at Y with extreme caution, especially when the 'X' in question is the subject of the a book by the person making the claims.

Still, you can at least see why Dr Gavin Hopps is coming from:

The launch of Dr Hopps' book, "Morrissey: The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart", will take place in Manchester.

The event will be held on Saturday at Blackwell's University bookshop in the city's Oxford Road.

Dr Hopps believes Morrissey's work is comparable not only to great writers but also to comedy greats such as Frankie Howerd and George Formby.

The book explores all the major subjects in the singer's writing - such as love, melancholy, monstrosity and alienation.

If you're starting to make grand claims, calling George Formby a comedy great is going to start to undermine you from the get-go. It's like suggesting that William Hague is every bit as witty as James Corden.

And the rather than one of the greatest? Jarvis Cocker might have a thing to say about that...

Tinariwen: Getting booked

Some ideas you can never quite classify as being audacious or just economy-brand terrible. So it is with plans for a book about Tinariwen, written by their manager Andrew Morgan:

Andy describes his book as "a full length work of documentary 'faction', told either from the first person point of view, with plenty of my own experiences of meeting the band and traveling to the desert, or more from the point of the view of the band members and the other 'companions' who have been on their incredible journey with them. I haven't decided yet. Its ambition is to be the most in-depth piece of writing about Tinariwen, modern Touareg history and the whole ishumar generation in the English language."

Hmm. If it comes off - and it could, in a Julian Cope sort-of fashion - that's going to be an incredible book.

If it doesn't, we might have to look the other way and whistle.

Meanwhile, the band are lined up to play Tamanrasset, the unofficial capital of the Touareg people. This is going to be a homecoming show - Tinariwen haven't played there since the 1980s. Their people are pitching it as the "sub-Saharan music event of the decade", which is the sort of bombast you'd expect from PR people but does have something of the ring of truth.

I missed, by the way, the release a couple of weeks back of Imidiwan: Companions. I'd make more of a fuss about it, but I see from Twitter that the X Factor is on so we're apparently all pretending we want music dead.

Smart Weekend: Vegas

No Lady Love Your Countryside video, so we skip a track on Sleeper's debut to Vegas. A few years post-Sleeper, and Louise Wener would return, via novel form, to the idea of Vegas as a life-changing place.



[Part of the Smart week]

Beatles industry reports sighting of some fools still with money; plots separation operation

As if the disappointing sales of the CDs and the underwhelming performance of the computer game wasn't enough, the Beatles industry intends to carry on churning out overwrought, unnecessary stuff:

The Beatles Box Of Vision® is the deluxe companion to the newly re-mastered Beatles CDs, and will be available as the ultimate Beatles gift in the UK and Europe this Christmas from www.[a website].com and www.[a website].com, plus select retailers.

"Select retailers" - I suspect self-selecting, as most, surely, would have declined this package:

Officially licensed by The Beatles’ Apple Corps Ltd., the stunning collection, previously only available in North America, includes the following Beatles’ collectible content: The first book in the box is the LP Sized Album Artwork Book includes 200 pages of the Beatles’ LP artwork – the first time all the Beatles’ UK and US album artwork has been collected together in one LP sized book. The Album Artwork book includes front and back covers, gatefolds, inserts and the complete LP booklets from Magical Mystery Tour and many more.

The second book, ‘The Catalography’, is an extensive, all-new, full-colour guide jam-packed with photos, text and track-listings providing the first-ever side-by-side presentation of the U.K. albums and their U.S. counterparts.

The third book is entitled the ‘The Box of Vision Storage Book’ – a highly collectible, unique and stylish way for Beatles fans to organize and display all 32 discs of The Beatles’ core catalog. Beatles fans will have the opportunity to insert CDs and booklets from their existing Beatles collections or the recently released digitally re-mastered versions.

So, it's a book you put the CDs in (or, rather, "have the opportunity" to put the CDs in), and then stick the booklets and artwork in, alongside another book which collects all the artwork and booklets in it.

Ideal for fans, collectors and Christmas gift giving, all three Beatles books are housed in an elegant black, linen-covered box with silver embossed Beatles logos and faux Beatles LP spines.

I love the way "Christmas gift giving" implies that this box is the sort of thing you could give to someone who falls neither into 'fans' or 'collectors' nevertheless.

Peter Andre reaches the stage of sitting by the door looking sad

Obviously, there is no real dignity to be lost in the affair of Peter Andre and Jordan, but dignity-like substance that Andre has been clinging to - you know, the one where he screamed at the mother of his children through the medium of Star magazine; that substance - seems to have evaporated:

Peter Andre is releasing a cookery book of "meals for one".

Rumours that his next single will feature the sound of a fork popping through cellophane and the lonely ting of a microwave announcing the slight overcooking of a reclaimed chicken product in some sort of sauce are almost certainly going to prove to be true.

Michael Jackson: The Daily Telegraph doesn't get out much

The once mighty Daily Telegraph is over-excited by the news it has to share this morning:

A rare new biography of Michael Jackson by publishers Opus that the star hoped would be the "definitive book about his life" is to go ahead following a legal battle.

Rare? A rare biography?

I suppose it is going to be taking a place on a nearly empty shelf - after all, there's only Michael Jackson - Legend, Hero, Icon: A Tribute to the King of Pop by James Aldis. And Michael Jackson: The Magic and the Madness by J.Randy Taraborrelli. Oh, and Michael Jackson: Life of a Legend by Michael Heatley. Unmasked: The Final Years of Michael Jackson by Ian Halperin, Michael Jackson Conspiracy by Aphrodite Jones, Michael Jackson: Legend 1958-2009 by Chas Newkey-Burden and Michael Jackson: The Unauthorised Biography by Michael Heatley, too, of course. And, perhaps, The Michael Jackson Treasures: Celebrating the King of Pop in Photos and Memorabilia by Jason King, Michael Jackson - King of Pop: 1958 - 2009 by Emily Herbert, In the Studio with Michael Jackson by Bruce Swedien, Michael Jackson: The Visual Documentary by Adrian Grant, Michael Jackson, King of Pop by Wey-Yuih Loh, Michael Jackson: Before He Was King by Todd Gray, The Trials of Michael Jackson by Lynton Guest, Michael Jackson: For The Record by Chris Cadman and Craig Halstead and Michael Jackson: The Man Behind the Mask: An Insider's Story of the King of Pop by Bob Jones and Stacey Brown aside, there's hardly even been a work considering the man's life. I wonder why it's taken so long.

1,000 songs everyone else says you should listen to

Have you ever wondered how someone goes about putting together something like 1000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die (which would be a bloody long last request in itself, wouldn't it?)

Phawker spoke to the author Tom Moon:

The beginning phase was just a lot of list making. I made lists of everything I could think of, I consulted a lot of different lists that were already out there — every Mojo Best-Of list that was ever done, Q, all the British magazines — they do so many of them.

Aha. Looking ay everyone else's lists of the best songs ever. Funny thing, though, you might think that would tend to lead to every one of these exercises churning out pretty much the same songs over and over and over and over again.

The music industry and their part in their own downfall

Robert Sandall turns in a wonderful review for the Sunday Times of Appetite for Self-Destruction. This is Steve Knopper's careful tracking of how the music industry has been consistently getting it wrong for nearly three decades:

When the recession of 1979-82 reversed a 20-year boom that had seen record sales steadily quadruple in value, opposition to the introduction of the compact disc was rife. The tech guru at CBS demanded to know “what the hell we can expect to happen here with CDs”. His boss, ­Walter Yetnikoff, a rambunctious mogul of the old school, rejected it as an invitation to make pirated copies of albums on cassette tape, and refused to invest in new manufacturing plants. “I have no idea what they’re talking about,” Yetnikoff told his underlings.

Of course, they did finally catch on to these CD things, belatedly and in a way that screwed both artists and customers. Just in time to get it wrong all over again:

One record company bigwig who met several dotcom pioneers described the encounters as “tiresome”. The head of Liquid Audio, a company that specialised in the transmission of encrypted MP3s, was told in 1999 by a Sony honcho: “My job is to keep you down, we don’t ever want you to succeed.” As CD sales climbed to an all-time peak of 932m in 2000, nothing seriously disturbed the received wisdom in the record business that selling shiny and expensive pieces of plastic was the way forward.

There's some stuff on just how big a botch the closedown of Napster was, too:

Knopper does some impressive maths to show that, had a more equitable deal been struck offering legal downloads via Napster for $1 a track, the record industry could have benefited to the tune of $16 billion a year.

So, when the RIAA is sobbing about the millions it "loses" to unlicensed downloads, it turns out that is nothing to the money it threw away. Oh, and a legal Napster might have also headed off the take-up of bittorrent and perhaps even have stayed the inexorable rise of iTunes. As music industry mistakes go, that makes 'that guy from Decca who turned down the Beatles' look like forgetting to take an umbrella on a day when you're wearing a hat.

Dee Dee book pushed towards court

Dee Dee Ramone's wife Vera Davie has hit a snag in getting her story of life with a Ramone published. The estate has objected, with executor Ira Herzog claiming Davie had reneged on a pledge to allow him to "review and revise" anything that she wrote about her ex-husband.

It's not entirely clear why Herzog would imagine that he has a right of veto over Davie's own life story - if Dee Dee was still alive, he might have an expectation of fair treatment, but that would come after publication. And he's not alive, otherwise he wouldn't have an executor. Well, I suppose he could be incredibly lazy and faked his own death in order to get someone to take day-to-day responsibility for his financers, but I'm pretty sure we would have heard. Or maybe not, as Herzog might have stopped publication of a book revealing that, too.

Let's assume Dee Dee is dead, for now, and just ponder what grounds Herzog will offer to stop the book.

Gary Kemp: Please don't call it True. Please don't call it True. Please don't call it True.

Unusually for a 'pop star signs up to write autobiography' story, the person signing on this time has actually lived enough of a life to make it worthwhile. Gary Kemp has probably timed his deal with Harper Collins right in terms of generating the largest payday, but I can't help wishing he'd been producing his book before the not-entirely-convincing 'we're a big happy family' Spandau reunion.

Let's hope that cheese anecdote makes the final volume.

And it's not going to be called True, either. That would have been obvious and...

John Elliot, popular culture editor at Fourth Estate, acquired world all-language rights to I Know This Much

...oh.