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Music is intended and designed for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions. Jacques Barzun

Selected Titles:
Top of the Pops 1964-2002


Top of the Pops 1964-2002
Jeff Simpson
BBC 1st 2002

On New Year’s day 1964, the first ever Top of the Pops was broadcast live from Manchester on BBC 1 – 38 y ears later, it is celebrating its 2000th
This IS the story behind the stars, the fans and the changing faces of the UK’s favourite music show.
For nearly four decades, the greatest stars In music have been queuing up to appear on Top of the Pops - from the youthful Rolling Stones, through the outrageous antics of The Who and sexy divas like Madonna, Janet Jackson and Britne y , the show has seen It all .Here, Jeff Simpson opens the lid on the controversy that surrounded Top of the Pops from the very beginning and Includes hundreds of quotes from musicians ond programme--makers. We hear about all those acts that ruffled feathers at the BBC, from Jimi Hendrix through to Marilyn Manson, how the pop show coped with punk.,the wrangles over miming or singing live, and of course, the creation of Britain's most famous dancing girls, Pan's People - the Spice Girls of their day.Each decade features Its own Hall of Fame, a stunning collection of pictures taken backstage or during live performances on Top of the Pops, many of which had been lost for decades. And there are exclusive essays from the likes of Noel Gallagher, Keith Richards and Holly Johnson, reflecting on their own experiences on the show.
With lavish pictures of the world’s greatest music performers from the sixties through to the present day, and fascinating first-hand accounts throughout, Top of the Pops: 1964 - 2002 tells the real history of this enduring pop show.

4to paperback 128 pages. Fine. 500 gms £45.00

The Edwardian Song Book - Drawing Room Ballads 1900 - 1914 
Michael R Turner & Antony Miall (selected and introduced by)
Methuen 1st 1982

Lift the lid of your great-aunt's piano-stool and you will be sure to find a few
drawing-room ballads. Here is a selection of the best of them from
the Edwardian era. They brought pleasure and inspiration to millions of people, both in their own day and in the years since then. You will half-know many, for they were the hits of their time and are in the repertoires of famous singers even
today: "Land of Hope and Glory", "Drake's Drum", "Glorious Devon", "I Hear you Calling Me", "Macushla", "Kashmiri Song". They strike a mingled chord of pride and nostalgia, for they were as much part of the fabric of Edwardian Britain as the musichall songs that are so well known. Drawing-room ballads were, in fact, the folk art of the middle-classes.

Here is a delicious voyage of discovery back in time. The songs in this collection were originally introduced at Ballad Concerts run by the publishing house of Boosey by such celebrated artistes as Dame Clara Butt and John McCormack. The ones that met popular acclaim were rolled off the presses, despatched to all corners of the English-speaking world, rendered in smart drawing rooms, suburban parlours and colonial cabins, and recorded for the new Phonographs, Graphophones and Gramophones and eventually settled to rest beneath the seats of those innumerable piano-stools.

4to. Very minor creasing to dustwrapper edges, dustwrapper price-clipped, otherwise VG++ in a VG++ wrapper. 845 gms £24.00 		The Edwardian Song Book - Drawing Room Ballads 1900 - 1914 

The Illustrated Victorian Songbook 
The Illustrated Victorian Songbook 
Aline Waites & Robin Hunter
Michael Joseph 1st 1984

There are some songs which just ask to be sung. "Daisy, Daisy, Give me your answer, do!" is an irresistibly catchy chorus. Almost everyone can join in "After the ball is over" or swing to the lilting melody of "She is my Lily of Laguna". Most people recognize such heroines of the popular stage as Pretty Polly Perkins of Padding ton Green or Oh! Susanna, and know heroes like The Man That Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo. And surely everyone can summon up a folk memory or two With those stalwarts ofland and sea, Good-bye Dolly Gray and Rule Britannia. All these songs were written a century or more ago, and yet they are still as bright and compulsively singable as they were at the height of the Victorian era.

This unique and delightful songbook brings together the most popular of the old favourites, songs that sent a whole generation of men and women flocking to the music halls and entertained them at home round the family piano. The book, compiled and presented by modern music hall artistes, is meant to be used. Each song is reproduced from original Victorian songsheets, with piano accompaniment and words large enough to be read by a fair-sized gathering behind the piano stool; each page is illustrated and decorated in the elaborate graphic style so beloved of the Victorians; and the whole collection of 60 songs, beautifully printed and finished with a register ribbon, is sewn and bound so that it will stay open in use and last through many a raucous sing-song.

With more than 250 photographs, engravings, paintings and other period illustrations and a full accompanying text, THE ILLUSTRATED VICTORIAN SONGBOOK also paints in the social background, the pubs, the seamy song and supper rooms, the society drawing rooms, the gaslit music halls and the rival temperance coffee houses where the songs were sung, introduces star artistes like Marie Lloyd, Albert Chevalier and the Christy Minstrels and revives in all its charm and vitality the first great age of popular entertainment.

Large 4to. Very, very minor bumps to the boards; very, very minor creasing + chips to the dustwrapper, otherwise VG++ in a VG++ wrapper 1550 gms £30.00


Liverpool Explodes! - The Teardrop Explodes Echo and the Bunnymen
Mark Cooper
Sidgwick & Jackson 1st 1982

The Teardrop Explodes and Echo and the Bunnymen changed the face of rock music when they rose to prominence in 1979. Both bands emerged from a thriving and incestuous Liverpool punk scene that revolved around the club Eric's. The frontmen of the two groups, Julian Cope and Ian 'Mac' McCulloch, had played together in 1978 in the prophetically named Crucial Three, formed by the equally vociferous Pete Wylie of Wah!

Liverpool Explodes! charts the rise of the Teardrops and the Bunnymen and the new spirit they introduced when punk had run its course. Both bands are managed by Bill Drummond, an inspirational force with experience in theatre and a brief career in rock with Big in Japan. Along with a corpus of workers recruited from outside the rock world, Drummond formed a label named Zoo and released the first singles by both bands.
Drummond ensured that both bands soon had contracts with major record labels and began to tour. Julian and Mac talked about pop stardom with enthusiasm, a change in tack after the determinedly anti-star stance of punk. The year 1981 found Julian Cope rapidly becoming a teenage heartthrob after Top Ten success with 'Reward,' while the Bunnymen toured the world and extended their large cult following.

With the aid of exclusive interviews and photographs, Liverpool Explodes! traces the history and context of the new Liverpool sound as represented by these two bands. This is the inside story of their development and no fan of postpunk rock should be without it.

4to paperback 96 pages. Wear + creasing to the edges of the covers, otherwise VG+. 225 gms £30.00

 Liverpool Explodes! - The Teardrop Explodes Echo and the Bunnymen

Song and Dance Man - the art of Bob Dylan Song and Dance Man - the art of Bob Dylan
Michael Gray
Hart-Davis, MacGibbon 1st 1972

Since the early sixties, when Dylan's first records appeared, there have been wild and conflicting claims about his talent, his poetry, his uniqueness and his significance.

Song and Dance Man is the first study in depth of Bob Dylan the artist. It starts with Dylan's musical roots in folk, the blues, country music and rock'n'roll, then analyses the influence on him of writers such as Blake, Browning and T.S.Eliot.

Song and Dance Man has much to say about Dylan's special use of language, his indebtedness to LSD, and some of the more extravagant theories experts have attached to his lyrics. There is abundant quotation from Dylan songs, and a selection of photographs of Dylan since 1963.

Song and Dance Man is an intelligent and passionately written book - a brilliant insight into one of the most spectacular artists of our time.

8vo. Very, very minor shelfwear to the boards, inscription to the front free endpaper, very minor creasing + dulling to the dustwrapper, otherwise VG++ in a VG+ wrapper. 495 gms £20.00

Hairs on a G String
Mark Beard Calligraphy by Lavender Groves
Mark Beard/Self Publishing Association 1st 1988

HAIRS ON A G STRING is an auto-biography that will evoke a nostalgia in the breasts of many mature readers; a longing for a time that is past, a time when the band played on the Promenade, on the Bandstand in the Park, at coffee mornings, Tea Dances ... An age when the Viennese Waltz and the William Tell Overture were in the 'top ten' of the day ...

The first part of the book has connotations of Just William, with tales of mischief high~ lighted by delightfully witty illustrations. We gambol through the deliciousness of a boy's sexual awakening in the capable hands of the housemaid, Nelly, into the world of the Silent Movie with its musical accompaniment: memories of "Saturday pictures", the advent of the "talkies" and the need for thousands of musicians to find other avenues for their talents.

Mark's stories of the famous names in the musical world, Sir Edward Elgar, Sir Thomas Beecham and Sir Adrian Boult, will charm and delight the reader - and these, together with a feast of recipes and memories of gourmet meals are guaranteed to enliven and rejuvenate the jaded palate ...

8vo. Tan boards with gold titling to spine, signed by the author and Lavender Groves, extra drawing by author applied to front free endpaper verso, impact damage to bottom edge affecting 1st 28 pages, otherwise VG++ in a VG++ wrapper. 745 gms £55.00
 Hairs on a G String

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