Showing results by publisher "White Rabbit" in Biographies & Memoirs

The story of two outsiders and obsessives whose collision prompted an evangelistic alliance on the furthest frontiers of underground music. Steve Davis first met Kavus Torabi - guitarist with Gong, Guapo, Cardiacs and Knifeworld - in the mid-2000s at a gig by French underground rock legends Magma. Over the next few years, this unlikely duo's shared affinity for visionary psychedelic music would become the foundation of not only a firm friendship, but also the most infectiously inclusive broadcasting style since the much-mourned death of John Peel.

At the height of his initial, turn-of-the-1990's infamy as the maraca-wielding dancer with 'Madchester' giants Happy Mondays, the pop-eyed Mark Berry, forever known to the world as Bez, was visibly a danger to society. He became the so-called Chemical Generation's bug-eyed pied piper, every weekend leading millions out to oblivion and beyond, as they adopted his E-gobbling party lifestyle.

Born the son of Scotland's last telescope-maker, Stuart Braithwaite was perhaps always destined for a life of psychedelic adventuring on the furthest frontiers of noise in MOGWAI, one of the best loved and most ground-breaking post-rock bands of the past three decades. Modestly delinquent at...

Born into a working-class Glaswegian family in the summer of 1961, TENEMENT KID begins in the district of Springburn, soon to be evacuated in Edward Heath's brutal slum clearances. Leaving school at 16 and going to work as a printers' apprentice, Bobby's rock n roll epiphany arrives like a bolt of lightning shining from Phil Lynott's mirrored pickguard at his first gig at the Apollo in Glasgow.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre are one of the great contemporary cult American rock and roll bands. At the peak of their anarchic reign in the San Francisco underground of the late '90s their psychedelic output was almost as prodigious and impressive as their narcotic intake. Joel Gion's memoir tells the story of the first ten years of the band from the Duke Seat. A righteous account of the hazards and pleasures of life on and off the road, Mr Tambourine Man takes use behind the scenes of the supposed behind the scenes film that cemented the band's legend.

'A revelation. Richard Norris lived the twentieth century and beyond like no one else . . . this is one of the truly great eyewitness accounts of the counterculture' DAVID KEENAN 'A dazzling psychedelic memoir' CAUGHT BY THE RIVER 'Makes you feel like getting up and doing something!' WENDY...

The story of Manic Street Preachers is unique in pop. Raging out of the stricken mining communities of south Wales in the late 80s, they were bonded by friendships, family ties and a self-styled 'geometry of contempt', whereby James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore would orchestrate the daring intellectual broadsides written by Richey Edwards and Nicky Wire.

Rave pioneers whose sound also encompassed hip hop, punk and rock, The Prodigy arguably had as much influence on contemporary pop culture as the Sex Pistols and these extraordinary images from Leeroy's personal archives capture the wild energy, ecstasy and abandon from the moment they dropped their first hit 'Charly' through the three albums which became the ubiquitous soundtrack to the decade: Experience, Music for the Jilted Generation and Fat of the Land.

For almost 30 years as label boss, producer and talent conductor at XL Recordings, Richard Russell has discovered, shaped and nurtured the artists who have rewritten the musical dictionary of the 21st century, artists like The Prodigy, The White Stripes, Adele, M.I.A., Dizzee Rascal and Giggs. Growing up in north London in thrall to the raw energy of 80's US hip hop, Russell emerged as one part of rave outfit Kicks Like a Mule in 1991 at a moment when new technology enabled a truly punk aesthetic on the fledgling free party scene.

From warm-up DJ at the birth of acid house to global main stage headline artist today, Carl Cox continues to inspire and influence audiences and artists. Carl has been everything from a recording artist and producer to label owner, radio DJ and broadcaster. He is still all these things and much more with his star shining brighter than ever. Oh Yes, Oh Yes! tells the story, in his own words, of the man known as 'The Three Deck Wizard' on the rave scene before evolving into 'The People's Choice' and the King of Ibiza.

As a member of Big in Japan, The Slits and, most famously, Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Creatures, 'Budgie' was an era-defining drummer in the much-mythologised post punk scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s. But before he was Budgie, Peter Clarke was a boy growing up in working class St...

A vivid eulogy for London of the late 1970s and early '80s - the last years prior to the rise of the digital city. An elliptical, wildly atmospheric remembrance of the sites and soundtrack, at once aggressively modern and strangely elegiac, that accompanied the twilight of one era and the dawn of another.

In 1968, Vashti Bunyan gave up everything and everybody she knew in London to take to the road with a horse, wagon, dog, guitar and her then partner. They made the long journey up to the Outer Hebrides in an odyssey of discovery and heartbreak, full of the joy of freedom and the trudge of everyday reality, sleeping in the woods, fighting freezing winters and homelessness. Along the way, Vashti wrote the songs that would lead to the recording of her 1970s album Just Another Diamond Day.

'Too often we treat popular music as wallpaper surrounding us as we live our lives. Jude Rogers shows the emotional and cerebral heft such music can have. It's a personal journey which becomes universal. Fascinating' Ian Rankin 'Moving and absorbing, The Sound of Being Human mixes memoir...

Paper Cuts is the inside story of the slow death of the British music press. But it's also a love letter to it, the tale of how music magazines saved one man's life. Ted Kessler left home and school around his 17th birthday, determined 'to be someone who listened to music professionally'. That dream appeared forlorn when he was later arrested for theft behind the counter of the record shop he managed during acid house's long hot summer of love.

Paused in Cosmic Reflection is the definitive story of The Chemical Brothers, told in the voices of Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons, with contributions from friends and collaborators.

Granny Takes A Trip was more than just a shop and a fashion brand; it was the original rock and roll clothes boutique, the template for all that followed. What started as an odd retail venture/art installation in a depressed part of London known as World's End became an international byword for glam decadence in Manhattan and Hollywood, combining flamboyant style and all manner of countercultural activity to attract everyone from Pattie Boyd, Marianne Faithfull and Anita Pallenberg to Elton John, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, the Beatles, and Lou Reed.

'David Katz's in-depth portrayal of his genius is to be commended and is an essential addition to any serious music fan's collection' David Rodigan MBE OD 'For the complete picture of this musical genius you can't get better than David Katz's People Funny Boy - if you're into Scratch, it's...

Electric Wizard have set the bar for heaviness. With their potent VHS-horror aesthetic, lyrics dripping with Lovecraftian horrors, and a monumental sound that provided a template for the myriad bands who followed - not to mention the fights, drugs and sex in the trail of destruction they've left behind them - this is the right time for the band's story to be told. Electric Wizard draw on myriad occult influences to create their own world: menacing, lurid, depraved.

Celebrated English folksinger Shirley Collins offers an affecting account of her year-long stint as assistant to legendary musical historian and folklorist Alan Lomax. Collins describes a journey both emotional and musical, as she and Lomax work tirelessly to uncover the traditional music of the American South. Together, they traveled to Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Georgia, encountering Mississippi Fred McDowell, Muddy Waters and many others, their diligent work uncovering the traditional music of America's heartland.