Now that spring has officially sprung — and we’re all slowly but surely being sprung from quarantine to boot — reading might not be at the top of your to-do list. So it’s probably no wonder the new releases have slowed to a trickle for the moment. But I did find a couple of goodies — including the new Cowboy Junkies bio below, which arrives this week on Kindle, months ahead of the hardcover version. Read all about it:
Music is the Drug: The Authorised Biography of The Cowboy Junkies
By Dave Bowler
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Cowboy Junkies came to the attention of the world in 1988 when the beguiling sound of The Trinity Session found its way into more than two million homes. Drawing on the work of the 20th century’s greatest songwriters in order to find their own voice, the band have gone on to produce one of the most consistent bodies of work in rock music, their own varied take on the Great American Songbook, with plenty more to come. The story of three Timmins and an Anton — Mike, Margo, Pete and Alan — is one of following the sounds and the stories in their heads wherever they lead, of taking the songs to the people, of staying true to the substance, not the surface. In this authorised biography of the band, Dave Bowler shows how, after 35 years, several hundred songs, 200 (thousand and) more miles down the road, the music is still the drug.”
Lydia Lunch | The War Is Never Over: A Companion To The Film By Beth B
By Nick Soulsby
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Before #MeToo, before Riot Grrl, there was Lydia Lunch. A central figure in the No Wave scene of the ’70s — as founder of the seminal Teenage Jesus & The Jerks — Lunch has pursued a four-decade-long career turning the substance of her life into unapologetic, stark, and beautiful art. From the ’80s onward, Lunch became a lone voice publicly calling out the patriarchal aggression and day-to-day violence enacted by the powerful — and never gave a good goddamn whether you wanted to hear it or not. Refusing to be silenced, she took to stages the world over, fearlessly speaking the truth, whether of her own life with its legacy of parental abuse, her wild times owning the streets of New York City, or the world she saw around her. Seeing no boundaries between creative mediums, Lydia has enacted her vision through music, spoken word, film, theatre, and more. Released as an accompaniment to Beth B’s new documentary The War Is Never Over, this book is the first comprehensive overview of Lunch’s creative campaign of resistance, a celebration of pleasure as the ultimate act of rebellion. Across these pages, Lunch and her numerous collaborators — including Thurston Moore, Jim Sclavunos, Kid Congo Powers, Bob Bert, Richard Kern, Nick Zedd, and Vivienne Dick — recount life at the front line of the musical extremes of the ’70s and ’80s underground, the wild times, the disciplined productivity, life lived as a defender of the voiceless, and an unapologetic force of righteous fury.”
