Beastly, man

Last week, I displayed a Beatnik book; this week we go to the Hippies. Sorta. This book mentions Hippies, but the tone of this tome is very much reminiscent of the Beats. Furthermore, the cover is not the strongest feature of the book. Rather it is the back blurb. Wow. Check it out. I feel breathless having read it.

Like, Cool, Man.

I’m watching Mad Men season 4 on DVD at then moment. I find the show incredibly engrossing and I pity those people who watch the show on TV week to week. How could I wait a week for another fix of this show? With the complete series on DVD I just cue up the next episode and before you know it is past midnight. My co-workers are probably wondering why I have been coming to work recently feeling tired.

Confessions

So, what book that I bought only for the cover, will I have on display this week in Lost Library Thing?

live fast, die young

and leave a beautiful corpse; I think that is the saying.

Here is a book cover dedicated to that concept.

wink wink ‘you know what’ sells

Last week we had sex in the air featured on the cover of the lost library thing entry. This week, sex in the office. And since every ad man knows that sex sells, it kind of makes sense to sell a book about ad girls and sex.

Beverage?

What a great title, but I wonder just how much of this was fantasy and just how much was real?

Living the Music Dream

Ah, yes, the seedy underside of the Music Life. I wonder, does music sound better topless?

Back to the books

Hey, talk about neglecting the blog – I haven’t done a book cover in ages.

It’s just all part of the game

Went record hunting yesterday at the Belmont swap meet and came away with the debut album by the Specials (why was Elvis Costello chosen to produce that album? Never really thought of him as being a ska man Was it because his first album cover featured a two tone like design? Just a thought), as well as an album by Basil Brush with music by George Martin (could it be that George Martin?). Almost brought home a soundtrack to the Black Hole, but in another case of misplaced records this sleeve (complete with a booklet of photos from the film) contained the Supremes’ Christmas album. Now how did someone get those two mixed up?

Friday song with a twist

I learned today of the passing of Gladys Horton. Who was she, you are probably asking. Gladys was a founding member of The Marvelettes, whose Please Mr Postman I am sure you must have heard somewhere, sometime.

I recently gained a new appreciation for girl groups having over the Christmas break read the book Girl Groups: The Story of a Sound by Alan Betrock, which is something of a classic of it’s type, which I picked up years ago at a Save The Children book sale.

There was a whole chapter devoted to The Marvelettes, who were an early success story for Motown. So impressed was I with their story that I soon after bought a collection of their hits, that had just about everything that was noted in the chapter, such as the early hits (Please Mr Postman, Beachwood 4–5789) as well as the later Smokey Robinson penned stuff (Hunter Gets Captured By The Game and Don’t Mess With Bill).

So the Friday song goes out today in memory of Gladys. I have chosen to go with an early song and one that is perhaps less well known. The group had had a number 1 hit with Please Mr Postman, so naturally a follow up was called for, and since what worked once might work again, and further, as there was this crazy thing called the Twist doing big business, why not put the two together? I give you Twistin’ Postman.