the original edition. Newly updated, revised, expanded and now in full colour, this hardback edition also broadens the range of genres under consideration to include country, hootenanny and skiffle with the result that 500 additional EPs are now lovingly catalogued for posterity. Author Roger Holegard establishes


four basic criteria for the inclusion of the 1500 or so EPs featured in the book. To paraphrase - the disc or sleeve should have been manufactured in a Swedish pressing plant or printers, one of the tracks on the EP should either be in English or an instrumental, the range of styles covered by the book will take in pop, rock ’n’ roll, teenbeat, country, skiffle, hootenanny, folk, blues and rock (but not jazz) and finally that all EPs must have had a bona fide commercial release –no test pressings, promos or acetates. All featured EPs come graded by a 1-10 star rating system based on rarity and collectablity and are all drawn from the period ’54-69 which coincides with the commercial lifespan of the EP as a musical format in Sweden. The top ranking half dozen are –


Eddie Cochran’s self-titled ’59 on London, the red sleeved version of The Beatles’ ’64 The Liverpool Sound on Odeon, The Big Bopper’s ’58 Chantilly Lace on Mercury, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ At Home With on Fontana, Bob Denton’s self titled ’59 EP on Dot and, at the top of the heap, The Kinks’ Tired Of Waiting For You on Pye which is valued at a cool 700 Euros. Grahame Bent


FROM THE HIP: PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHN “HOPPY” HOPKINS 1960-66 John Hopkins Damiani (Italy) www.hoppy.be


In Joe Boyd’s book White Bicycles he describes the so- called


underground scene as “the fruits of the energy of one man:


John Hopkins”. Those fruits most famously include the UFO Club, International Times, the early exposure of Pink Floyd, the London Free School, the 14-Hour Technicolor Dream and even helping to launch the Notting Hill Carnival. Not that he received much gratitude when sentenced to nine months imprisonment in 1967 for marijuana by a judge who called him “a pest to society”. That was all still to come. The first


half of the ’60s saw Hoppy working as a photographer and his work vividly captures the seeds for what would shortly blossom in that heady psychedelic period. All influences and interests of the counterculture are present and correct in over 180 pictures: sex (prostitutes and fetishists), drugs (joint rolling and scoring), rock ’n’ roll (Stones and Beatles), jazz (UK and US greats including Lee Morgan, the epitome of buttoned-down hipster cool playing the trumpet with a cigarette between his fingers), blues (dig John Lee Hooker playing the Alexandra Palace to a crowd of enthralled mods), the Beats (Burroughs, Corso and Ginsberg wearing only his pants... on his head), youth movements (bikers in the Ace Cafe), politics (CND marches), race (Martin Luther King


80


and Malcolm X), it goes on and on. Hardly any are posed so there’s a thrilling sense of freedom and verve to these pictures. It’s difficult to imagine many


people who not only saw the decade as clearly but played such an activate role from beginning to end. I asked Hoppy why the photographs stop in ’66. “That’s when I stopped taking pictures and found more interesting things to do”. And that’s worth a whole other book. Mark Raison


I HATE NEW MUSIC: THE CLASSIC ROCK MANIFESTO Dave Thompson, foreword by Richard Meltzer Backbeat Books www.backbeatbooks.com


Based on the premise that a golden age of classic rock existed roughly between the mid-60s and mid-70s, Thompson proceeds to lay waste to most of rock and pop’s sacred cows from


the past and present alike. It’s as much an exercise to indulge himself in nostalgia as it as an excuse to play devil’s advocate. Nothing is spared his barbed criticism. Except for the few notable songs


on it, the usually sacrosanct Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album is none too delicately put in its miserable faux-music hall/vaudevillian place, and is accused of inspiring a glut of similar, yet more awful, pastiches. Not even punk is immune from Thompson’s comments. After all, he argues, the stripped down back-to-basics ethos of mid-70s punk music was largely based on early-60s Who, Kinks and Small Faces anyway. Thompson seems to infer that all


rock music is now recycled, the implication being that it can’t really evolve any further, and as such this is the cause of a deep malaise it now finds itself in. In dismissing grunge – all recycled Boston and Neil Young riffs – Thompson says it only achieved popularity because there was no alternative at the time. Although he champions classic ’70s rock it ain’t spared his criticism if he thinks it warrants it. And, as for today’s crop ofMORrockers, he heaps opprobrium onto Coldplay, Travis, Muse and Stereophonics, who are roundly condemned as being merely interchangeable. Contradictory as I Hate New Music


is at times the point is not to take it too seriously, and a number of Nick Hornby style lists punctuate the book, adding further humour to the proceedings. Shamelessly subjective, Thompson would probably be the first to admit that his tongue was firmly in cheek when writing this book. That said, it’s an incisive manifesto nevertheless, and a thoroughly entertaining one at that–his scathing critique of Live Aid and the numerous other star-studded charity fund raisers it spawned is hilarious, ironically though, for all the wrong reasons probably, because he’s right! Whether you agree with


Thompson or not, there is still much to be


said for his treatise, and you will find yourself laughing out loud at times, and nodding in response to many of his arguments. I know I did. Rich Deakin


PLEASE PLEASE ME: SIXTIES BRITISH POP, INSIDE OUT Gordon Thompson Oxford University Press www.oup.co.uk


Pick up a book that has the words “Sixties British Pop” as part of its subtitle and you figure you’re about to be regaled with tales of The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, The Kinks et al during the swinging British


Invasion heyday. But while all of those acts and others (The Animals, Them, Donovan, Herman’s Hermits) are briefly covered here, the greater emphasis of Thompson’s book is on the behind the scenes people who didn’t get their faces plastered on magazine covers but who still had much to do with what was going down in British music of the time. Producers, engineers, non-performing songwriters, session musicians, and musical directors all get their moment, and the reader gains some insight into how important all of these often invisible people were in the processes of hit-making and star-making. Easily the most entertaining


chapter is the one that covers some of the some of the more significant British producers of the era: the personality portraits of people like Andrew Loog Oldham, Joe Meek, Mickie Most and Shel Talmy –as well as the insider’s look at how they interacted with the artists whose music came under their direction –is something that could have been expanded into a book on its own. That section aside, Please Please Me


is interesting if not wildly enjoyable. Thompson writes about these times and people in such a muted tone that you might think you were reading about the history of the umbrella, rather than a study of rock ’n’ roll in one of its headiest combinations of time and place. Brian Greene


REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL: THE LIFE AND WORK OF BARNEY BUBBLES Paul Gorman; Essay: Peter Saville; Foreword: Malcolm Garrett; Introduction: Billy Bragg Adelita www.adelita.co.uk


When Barney Bubbles, AKA Colin Fulcher, took his own life in November 1983, Britain was robbed of one of its most talented graphic artists of the modern era.


Although he didn’t quite catch the same wave that the likes of British psychedelic artists


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