Search results for ""Author Mick Houghton""

AN UNCUT BOOK OF THE YEAR'A wild rock 'n' roll fairground ride of the damned.' OBSERVER'Excellent.'NEW STATESMAN'Entertaining . . . recalls twenty heady years at the centre of the British music business.'FINANCIAL TIMESA candid frontline account of an illustrious gonzo career as an independent music publicistduring the post-punk heyday of the 80s and 90s, featuring an introduction by Bill Drummond and a new foreword by Julian Cope. Mick Houghton worked with some of the greatest, most influential and downright dysfunctional cult groups of the post-punk era and beyond - Ramones, Talking Heads, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Undertones, Felt and Sonic Youth among them.But the three acts Mick is most closely identified with are Echo & the Bunnymen, Julian Cope, and the KLF. As confidant and co-conspirator, he navigated the minefield of rivalries and contrasting fortunes which make Fried & Justified such a candid, amusing and insightful picture of an exciting and inspirational period for music.

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Andrew Lauder is one of British record business's most significant and highly influential figures but outside the music industry few people will probably know his name. He's always retained a fan's perspective which, combined with an exceptional knowledge of music, meant he was at ease around musicians and never happier than spending time with them. During the later '60s and throughout the '70s in particular (working at the legendary United Artists), he had a knack of being one step ahead of the next trend. In hindsight it's easy to identify the changing eras in music but underground music, pub rock and punk in Britain, for example, evolved quite seamlessly and it was visionaries like Andrew who, instinctively, saw what was coming and helped bring about those transitions. He was ahead of the game in other ways too; pioneering a more creative way of marketing and promoting records and revolutionising the way catalogue was organised and presented. This is his story.

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Becoming Elektra tells the incredible true story of the pioneering Elektra Records label and its far-sighted founder, Jac Holzman, who built a small folk imprint into a home for some of the most groundbreaking, important, and enduring music of the rock era. Placing the Elektra label in a broader context, the book presents a gripping narrative of musical and cultural history that reads like an inventory of all that is exciting and innovative about the 60s and 70s: The Doors, Love s Forever Changes, Tim Buckley s Goodbye and Hello, The Stooges, The MC5 s Kick Out The Jams, Queen and Queen II, The Incredible String Band, Carly Simon s No Secrets, and many, many more. First published in 2010, Becoming Elektra was praised as 'eye-opening (Q) and a 'dazzling narrative (The Sun), and for 'perfectly encapsulating the enigmatic, unpredictable spirit of the label (Record Collector). This fully revised and expanded edition includes a brand new foreword by John Densmore of The Doors and draws on extensive new interviews with a wide range of Elektra alumni, including Tom Paley, Judy Henske, Johnny Echols, Jean Ritchie, and Bernie Krause, as well as further conversations with Holzman himself. It also adds two new chapters: a look at Elektra in Britain in the 60s and a reappraisal of the label s 70s output.

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