Lost Joy collects the writing that first brought Camden Joy wide attention in the mid-90s, when he wheatpasted his manifestoes” around New York, excoriating the music industry and celebrating unsung geniuses of rock and roll. Joy’s voiceheartfelt, mocking, lyrical, razor-sharpearned comparisons to the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, and Nick Hornby. Rooted in DIY zine culture, his rants prefigure the unfettered public expression of personal views that would explode with the rise of the Internet, and enact in words what Banksy would later achieve in art. Joy’s groundbreaking early fiction, in which his characters often invoke musicians and songs, is also included here. These haunting stories explore the many ways in which we use music to communicate our feelings and make sense of our memories.

Lost Joy

Literature & Fiction

Joy, Camden

United States

Verse Chorus Press

Camden Joy's hero is writing a quickie bio of rock star Liz Phair, but increasingly finds himself recounting his own troubled life. His ex-girlfriend (possibly Brian Jones's illegitimate daughter); Liz Phair (whom he's never met); and a mystery girl in an old photo all start to blur together. Joy's novel is a witty and cogent meditation on celebrity and obsession.

The Last Rock Star Book: Or: Liz Phair, A Rant

Humor & Entertainment

The comic strips of Colin B. Morton and Chuck Death deliver an irreverent, heartfelt, and devastatingly funny history of rock and roll. Like Monty Python at its best, their version is surreal and ridiculous - yet somehow everything in it rings true. According to Morton and Death, the bass player in Led Zeppelin was Jean-Paul Sartre. And despite having been able to think up brilliant titles for their first three albums, Led Zeppelin were stuck for what to call the fourth one - so they put a load of prunes on the front. In strip after strip, Morton &amp; Death pinpoint the absurdities and oddities of rock history. In the process, they often come closer to its truth than conventional accounts do, as well as being far more entertaining. As for the drawings, their caricatures of rock stars from Mick Jagger to Frank Zappa, Johnny Rotten to Courtney Love, are in themselves worth the price of admission.

Great Pop Things: The Real History of Rock 'n' Roll from Elvis to Oasis

Morton, Colin B

Death, Chuck

Set in Los Angeles in the early 90s, the novel chronicles the early days of an indie band as they meet, practice, make their first record, and get their first break/big gig. It’s also the story of the the flowering love affair between John and Jenny, the two charming if troubled guitarists/singers in the band. John is by day a misanthropic substitute teacher in the zany, sometimes horrific LA Unified School District; Jenny is an mysterious recovering child prodigy. Along the way, the couple and their bandmates make momentous discoveries about themselves and the Hollywood milieu in which they struggle to succeed, a world peopled by narcissistic actors, wannabe screenwriters, pretentious musicians, weirdo fans, crazy neighbors -- and an emu. The King of Good Intentions was originally to have been published by Henry Rollins’s 2.13.61 press in 1999. When Rollins decided henceforth to publish only his own work, Fredrick set the novel aside to focus on his musical and teaching career. Now it will finally make its long overdue debut.

The King of Good Intentions

Fredrick, John Andrew

Literary

Booklist called Susan Compo smart, sassy, and tough,” while Publishers Weekly praised her witty, unflinching prose.” Following two highly regarded story collections, Susan Compo’s first novel takes a sharp-eyed look at LA's culture industry. Giselle Entwistle has her hands full with her roster of demanding show-business clients. There’s Adon, struggling to make the transition from teen idol to mature star with the aid of a goatee. There’s would-be rock impresario Hedda Hophead, aggressive as junk mail and just as relentless.” There’s country singer Len Tingle, whose career has as many ups and downs as his love affair with Giselle; and Tupperware demonstrator extraordinaire Troy Harder, a living legend in food storage,” who Giselle fears might want to plastic-wrap her. Not to mention child prodigy belter Frances Culligan, who seems to have disappeared. And then there’s Pandra, whose haunting memoir of growing up in suburban Orange County and coming of age in '70s glitter-era Los Angeles (platform boots, Rodney’s English Disco, The Real Don Steele Show, David Bowie clones) forms a book within this book. Giselle hopes to get Pandra’s story published, but it does bring up this little matter of a possible murder in Pandra’s past . . .

Pretty Things

Compo, Susan

Contemporary

Hello Cruel World contains the lyrics to 125 Mekons songs, many of them illustrated by the band in stunning fashion. Also included are numerous handwritten drafts of songs (often very different from the final versions) and a portfolio of candid pictures of the band on the road by photographer Anne L. Lehman. Gleeful and despairing, withering and poetic, sexy and poignant, rollicking and grim, the Mekons’ expressive lyrics and art offer rich insights into the band’s collective creative alchemy, fierce humor, and caustic world view.

Hello Cruel World: Selected Lyrics

Arts & Photography

Mekons

Music

The Go-Betweens recorded six albums that are among the finest work of the 1980s, earning them a reputation as the ultimate cult band and the lasting esteem of their peers, from R.E.M. to Sleater-Kinney. In 2000 they returned to making records--and received the best reviews of their career. David Nichols relates their story with wit and verve, and since the Go-Betweens had personalities as well as talent, their biography is compelling reading, not just for committed fans but for anyone interested in the current music scene. I loved this book, raved Jonathan Lethem. How elegant that the dark-horse band lavished with obsessive and loving attention by David Nichols should be the one whose weird and lovely depths can truly sustain and reward it the life-altering Go-Betweens.

The Go-Betweens

Biographies & Memoirs

Nichols, David

Arts & Literature

The bands that spearheaded the late 1970s punk scene in Australia-the Saints, Birthday Party, Radio Birdman, and the Go-Betweens-are among the most important of their time. Inner City Sound is the classic account of the explosive development of that scene. Original articles from fanzines and newspapers, together with almost 300 photographs, vividly portray the creative ferment of the period and the dozens of bands that sprang up in the wake of the pioneers. First published in late 1981, Inner City Sound soon fell out of print. It became a lost classic, so sought after that it has been bootlegged like the rare singles listed in its discography. This new edition contains 32 extra pages of articles, photos, and discographic data, which take the story through to 1985, when Nick Cave, the Go-Betweens, the Triffids, and others began to break through internationally.

Inner City Sound: Punk and Post-Punk in Australia, 1976-1985

Beyond his work as a musician, Jon Langford has attracted attention as a visual artist in recent years. Nashville Radio is the first collection of his art. It reproduces 215 paintings, as well as song lyrics and autobiographical writings. The book includes a CD of Langford performing 18 of the printed songs. Langford’s song-paintings” fuse portraiture with imagery derived from folk art, Dutch still life, classic Western wear, and the cold, cold warall instilled with his trademark sardonic wit. He applies this distinctive style to the depiction of American musical icons like Bob Wills, Hank Williams, and Johnny Cash, but also to more ghostly, marginal figuresblindfolded cowboys, astronauts, and dancerswho are jerked around by success and exploitation, fame and neglect. Underlying his work is a deep love of musical lore, twinned with fierce opposition to the death-dealing tendencies in the culture of his adopted homeland, from the killing off of authentic popular music by mass-marketed drivel to the embrace of capital punishment as a response to social ills. Langford’s work offers an alternative perspective, recalling a time when great visionaries and pioneers thrived at the heart of the mainstreamand the lid wasn’t on so tight.”

Nashville Radio: Art, Words, and Music

Jon Langford

Individual Artists

For almost thirty years, the Church have crafted music that blends a rich variety of styles in a beautiful, multi-layered sound. They have encompassed pop, psychedelic, progressive, and straight-ahead rock, yet always remain distinctive, thanks to the inimitable vocals and lyrics of front man Steve Kilbey. Based on extensive interviews and featuring over 70 rare photographs, No Certainty Attached is the first comprehensive biography of Kilbey and his band. It charts their personal and musical ups and downs: the commercial heights of The Unguarded Moment and Under the Milky Way, the creative breakthroughs of the Priest = Aura album and Kilbey s underappreciated solo work, followed by the band s struggle to survive in the wake of bad business decisions and their singer s drug indulgences. One obsessive American fan attempts to get to the heart of the story, abetted by Kilbey himself, his family, band members, and friends and foes alike. What emerges is a compelling portrait of an artist and a band clinging steadfastly to their muse in the face of external and internal obstacles and the transformative power of the music they have created.

No Certainty Attached: Steve Kilbey and The Church

Lurie, Robert Dean

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