Who Cares Anyway? Post-Punk San Francisco And The End Of The Analog Age 
By Will York (Headpress) 

Will York has done such an exemplary job here, in that it is a deeply entertaining read even if you aren't already intimately familiar with bands like Caroliner, Flipper, Tuxedomoon, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Toiling Midgets, or Pop-O-Pies.

This thoroughly researched and frequently tragic tome is sure to appeal to any music fans who still long for the pre-gentrification era, when creatives could still afford to pay the prohibitively astronomical rent for warehouses and rehearsal spaces in big cities before unscrupulous landlords with big tech money killed off urban Bohemia in this country, with Judge Dredd "stop and frisk" class patrols and a nearly universal lack of accessible egalitarian neighborhoods for working class artists.

York delves deep into the avant garde, Flipper-informed history of Faith No More and Mr Bungle - way back when metal deedler Jim Martin was still partying with high school dude-metal stoner buds Cliff Burton and all through Courtney Love's inflammatory stint as vocalist. This pre-dates the Chuck Mosely era, when "We Care A Lot" crossed over into college radio and MTV airplay, long before when Mike Patton joined the group and they went supernova mainstream in the hyper-polished commercial whiteboy funk era of the band and their defiantly unpop experimental endeavors that followed. 

I find the startlingly dangerous, death taunting, law scorning, ledge dwelling excesses of the Sleepers’ Ricky Williams and Michael Belfer of particular interest, but the heavy book is spilling over with twisted tales of debauchery, comedy, community and collaboration in the post-punk era. Recommended.

 Buy it 

Proby And Me. A Howling Tale of a Falling Star – MJ Cornwall (BookPOD)

The label doesn’t lie. “Proby And Me” is a runaway train of a story, a rollicking saga of a disastrous “tour” down under by the trouser-splitting, UK-exiled Texan-born ‘60s pop star who was, briefly, as big as the Beatles.

The context: Ex-publican Brett Stevens (aka Brett Eldorado) and former Hoodoo Guru Clyde Bramley had lured the man to Sydney - and he barely made it past the front door of the Hopetoun Hotel.

By 1990, Proby’s currency as anything but a cult item had well and truly faded. He was plucked from a housing estate in the north of England where his performing stocks were low, his live appearances limited to a circuit of scrappy workingman’s clubs and seaside summer resorts.

Proby’s would-be promoters flew him to Sydney, put him up in a Bondi hotel and paid his considerable bar tabs. At least his food bill would have been minimal. PJ sounds like a graduate from the Eating Is Cheating School.

Attempts to match Proby with a backing band were fraught - his preference was a full orchestra - musicians who “read” - and his promotional appearances in media were sporadic and booze-sodden. A warm-up gig in Newcastle and an inner-city stand at Paddington RSL that sparked a mini riot were the only shows.

Author Mark Cornwall tells the story through the eyes of Eldorado - or should that be ears as Proby never shuts up. It’s 321 pages of staccato chatter and patois - delivered like machine gun fire in the style of James Ellroy.

It’s a story that’s exceedingly well told, with grim humour and massive swathes of colour.

Proby namechecks everybody from Jimi Hendrix to The Doors, Marc Almond to Elvis and Kim Fowley to Jimmy Page, in recounting a storied life mostly spent clutching defeat from the jaws of victory. What’s more, the yarns have all been verified to be true, and their common denominator is that when it turned to shit, it was always somebody else’s fault.

No Fixed Address by Donald Robertson (Hybrid Publishers)

“No Fixed Address” is a magnificent achievement. It's also readable, interesting, engaging and fucking disgusting.

We'll get to the latter comment in a bit.

As you know, one of the few benefits of lockdown was that some great work has emerged - but we're damn lucky it's Donald Robertson who decided to write about No Fixed Address. He was there at the time, was an aware chap, and wrote extensively about the scene he was so much a part of in Roadrunner magazine. Also, Robertson's approach resembles that of a historian approaching The Rolling Stones. 

Why? Well, while you may not have seen them, or even heard of No Fixed Address, the band's importance in Australian Aboriginal history is bloody enormous. Robertson gets this so well that, in the opening chapter, we discover that NFA would not have existed but for the determination of a number of significant people to encourage, enthuse and integrate Aboriginal people into the Adelaide arts culture, long before the band had learned to play.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, this was fairly unheard of; so it is, in a way, no surprise that names like Leila Rankine, Catherine Ellis, Ted Strehlow and Veronica Brodie all turn up as incidental characters. 

Don't recognise the names? Go to the “Australian Dictionary of Biography” (aka the ADB online); you don't get an entry in there for sitting on yer bum watching “Drone and Away”, “Australia's Got Alkies”, “These Kitchen Fools” or “Married at First Fart”. (ED: You left out “The Farmer Wants a Root”.)

Speek Evil: Illustrated Rock and Roll Periodical (The Art of Fox)

Reviewing what’s a visual feast served on paper pages is a challenge at the best of times but who doesn’t love a test? “Speek Evil” is neither a zine or a comic – call it a zomic if it makes you happy - because it combines the best of both, and it’s chock full of dark imagery and rock and roll attitude.

Which should come as no surprise, as it’s the product of the mind and pen of Mike Foxall, late of Nancy Vandal and more lately guitarist in The Neptune Power Federation. Foxall is one of the pre-eminent rock and roll graphic artists of the Sydney underground scene.

He’s a member of a club that boasts Ben Brown, Ray Ahn and Glenno Smith, and his imagery adorns the covers of his current band’s albums, plus posters and T-shirts for Crapulos Geegaw, King Parrot, Frenhal Rhomb and The Australian Beef Week Show. He’s also an animator.

“Speek Evil” is a lavish, full-colour 80-page production printed on high-quality matt paper and is produced quarterly. It plumbs similar cultural depths as “Unbelievably Bad” used to, but with Foxall’s own punk rock pre-occupations and peers in evidence. It’s up to five editions.

Red White and Blue
By Bob Short

The Barman would have me squawk about “full disclosure”. Don't you get arrested for that? 

Oh, not if you're a politician? Mysterious donors suddenly appear with suitcases of cash for your defence team? What if you're a priest? Oh, you get transferred to a 'virgin' happy hunting ground?

Uh-huh. Anyway, I know Bob Short. He knows me. I know where he lives - and if you own either of these books, you know where he lives, too.

Man on the edge.

Okay, so this is the second part in a series. Do you need to own part one? 

Well, strictly speaking, no. However, to fully grasp what's going on, yes, you do. Allow me to recap, just slightly.

So, we have a flash comic book, with artwork which is deliberately awkward and muckily-presented (in best punk d-i-y style). Never mind the photoshops, Bob works with what looks like printouts from the internet, white-out, textas and possibly water-colour. 

There is a plot, but it's muddied (or clarified, perhaps) by a multitude of composite characters purposely designed to keep us away from the plot as such, so as to focus on Bob's main drag, which is social commentary.

Faith and Practice in Bedlam
By Chris Masuak
(High Voltage)

The rock and roll biography, usually ghost written within an inch of near life, seldom rises above the squalor of tabloids in terms of literary merit. A chronological narrative structure occasionally framed as a flashback is as good as it gets.

Think of sports biographies with guitars.

Unsurprisingly, reviews of Chris Masuak's new book have been thin on the ground. Firstly, because the book will probably upset his old band mates and their wrath has become legendary.

Secondly, I suspect, because - like its author - this book is quite the odd duck.

When confronted by the unusual, most pundits wait for someone else's opinion before voicing their own. Especially when they don't want to miss out on the chance of potential support slots.

Jumpin' Jack Flash. David Litvinoff and the Rock'n'Roll Underworld
by Kieron Pim (Penguin Books)

Who? Exactly. Except, here's a character who knew (to his cost) the Kray brothers (and many of their associates), introduced a very stoned Richard Clapton to The Queen Mum, and pretty much was the writer/inspiration for that enigmatic, brutal film “Performance” (starring Mick Jagger - he was in with the Stones as well).

Oh, and he had a very nasty spat with artist Lucian Freud too, which appears to have been the cause of his facial scars - on either side of his mouth, like Hugo's “The Man Who Laughed”.

David Litvinoff. Half-brother of Emanuel Litvinoff (who famously read a poem calling out Eliot's pre-WW2 anti-semite poetry - at a gathering at which Eliot was present), thief, shoplifter, gangster, thug, procurer, fantasist, culture influencer, prankster and fascinator par excellence.

Keiron Pim has gone tumbling down and impossible historical rabbit-hole, “where wet lamplight glistened on the wet pavement as snowflakes met their swirling shadows ... unnoticed when I slipped cross-current through a crowd, they rhythm of footsteps inculcating the notion that I was floating”.