Chris Morris – On the Hour

November 24 saw Warp Records release the first volume of On The Hour, the 90s spoof radio current affairs show by Chris Morris. And The Guardian ran this excellent exclusive free download, which also just happened to feature the first ever broadcast appearance by another near-legendary figure: Alan Partridge. Hear his arrival on the airwaves at www.guardian.co.uk/culture/audio/2008/nov/14/chris-morris-alan-partridge.

Jimmy Ramsay - Tower Blocks & Top Tens (Independent Music Press)

Any book that's 100% unofficial and with a low, 123-pages-to-£8.99 price ratio is never going to go in anything other than the cash-in category. Which is a shame because the story of Mike Skinner and The Streets is one that's well worth telling. In fact it was worth telling right from the moment Skinner started coming out with lyrics like “You say that everything sounds the same, then you go buy them. There's no excuses my friend, lets push things forward…”

Whether or not lines like that make him “the new Alan Bennett” (a claim dissected in this book) is another matter. But author Jimmy Ramsay tells Skinner’s story well, right from the moment he couldn’t believe his mum was singing along to Dry Your Eyes Mate via comparisons with Ken Loach and, really, Yes’ Tales From Topographic Oceans.

Of course it's never going to be the longest book because Skinner has only released two albums so far, 2002’s Original Pirate Material and last year’s A Grand Don’t Come For Free. But this is a world where Geri Halliwell and Robbie Williams are both on their second autobiographies, despite making about as much creative impact in their entire careers as Mike Skinner utters in a single outro.

Jennifer McKnight-Trontz - This Ain’t No Disco (Thames & Hudson)

Perfect coffee-table browsing, this 255-page encyclopaedia of sleeves from the post-punk era harks back to those classic The Album Cover Album books from that very period. If you’ve been reading Simon Reynold’s much talked about biog of the era, Rip It Up And Start Again lately then this is the perfect accompaniment, depicting the sleeves of most all of the records he examines.

It does have a slight US-bent, though but that’s not my only criticisms. My main gripe is the captions that accompany some of the sleeves. Firstly, only a small minority get captioned. If you’re going to tell a story why not tell it? Why the fragments? Also, the captions that are there offer little narrative, only recycling facts you’d probably already know.

So in a book celebrating the last great, golden era of the record sleeve, you don’t come away knowing anything about the people that made it happen –Peter Saville, XL, Accident, Keith Breeden, Town & Country Planning and the like all remain queuing up for good books to be written about them.

But you do come away with an instant coffee-table conversation piece. And an unputdownlable trip down memory lane.

Keith Topping - The Complete Clash (Reynolds & Hearn)

‘Rock The Casbah’. ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go’. Two reasons that justify the existence of this new book. To say nothing of the untimely death of Joe Strummer earlier this year, just as The Clash were set to reform – for fun, if not for world (re)domination…

I’ve always admired The Clash. Far more for the things they did wrong, did on a whim, or their ridiculous experiments than for something as timeless (and consequently a little less lovable) than ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go.’ Like the sprawling, 36-track double album (they ditched the third disc) ‘Sandinista!’… 1982’s ‘Combat Rock’ and the way it annoyed their die-hard punk fan base… Their enduring proto dance-rock fusion… Or the image of the band sailing up the Thames bashing out ‘London Calling’. That would make the ultimate home-page for rememberthedyingdaysoftheseventies.com.

Author Keith Topping first saw The Clash live in 1978. Twenty-five years later his passion for the band doesn’t seem to have diminished one iota. He loves detail. If there was a Clash museum, Keith Topping would curate it. ‘The Complete Clash’ contains a song-by-song analysis of everything from 'Armagideon (sic) Time' to 'White Riot' and an almanac of the band’s 600 live performances and TV and film appearances.

Just as the circle ended – when the band received Ivor Novello Awards in 2001 - it looked set to roll again, only to be stopped dead in its tracks with Joe Strummer’s passing. The Complete Clash is as much a celebration as a fitting finale.

Timothy Leary - Chaos And Cyber Culture (Ronin)

Timothy Leary, the 72-year old ex-Harvard professor who taught a generation to "turn on, tune in and drop out" now recognises the PC as the LSD of the 1990's and explains all in his new book. The book collects articles and lectures that Leary has given over the past few years in publications as diverse as underground zines and Sunday supplements and at events from rave parties to the Whole Life Expo.

Across almost 300 pages he travels through such subjects as Chaos Engineering, Counter Cultures, Info-Chemicals and De-Animation/Re-Animation. Just delving into the latter I learnt that Andy Warhol was cryogenically frozen on dying and will be re-animated when M.I.T.'s nanotechnology department has mastered the process so he can meet his idol Walt Disney, who also took the cryonic hibernation/re-animation option.

As if it needed it, the book is coloured in along the way with some hi-tech/hand made computer art and interviews with William Gibson, David Byrne, William S. Burroughs and Winona Ryder. Yes, *that* Winona Ryder. She's Leary's goddaughter, you see. Winona and Timothy chat about everything from The Mission soundtrack to the information age and it all makes for pretty interesting reading. This is an essential handbook for the unfolding decade. Just Say Know.


This review also published in: On magazine