Well, this will be interesting… As someone who has absolutely no social media presence (save for contributing here and very occasionally to a couple of other music forums), I have just launched a campaign on a platform designed for people with vast Facebook followings.
So I need help from my AW pals. If you like the look of this, do please pass the Kickstarter link on through your social media or email any friends that might be particularly keen. The funding target is modest, but it will help – I’ve absorbed a lot of research costs thus far so £1000 toward printing will help (effectively, pre-selling around 70 of the planned 200 copies).
This project is more about locking down knowledge in a physical format – with copies to be sent to the British Library, National Jazz Archive, etc – than a commercial proposition. If there’s genuine demand for more than 200 copies, I can get another 50 or 100 printed, or whatever – but it will be increments like that. So there’s only likely to be a few hundred of these in the world. And, if I say so myself, I’m rather pleased with it! Full info on contents on the Kickstarter pages.
This is the kind of glorious arcana to be found within the book: the only surviving co-write between Ian Samwell (writer of British rock’s first classic, ‘Move It’) and his mid-60s neighbour John McLaughlin, Linda Lewis B-side ‘Do You Believe?’
Check out the 12-string guitar turnaround from 1:20 to 1:28. I wonder who that could be…
Actually, looks like the Kickstarter link didn’t work in the OP. Here it is:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2121905920/echoes-from-then-glimpses-of-john-mclaughlin-1959
Good luck Mr Aitch, but you could have gone with these titles:
Can’t Stand Your R’n’B
Between the A1 and Eternity
‘Appen We Knew Him When He Had Nobbut the One Neck, Thy Knows
Uncannily, Moose, those were all short-listed ideas that were narrowly beaten to it by Echoes From Then. Amazing – it’s as if you were actually there, at the crunch editorial meeting with me and, er… well, me…
Crikey you’ll be using Skype next!
Steady on!!!
Brilliant!
Autumn is looking like a belting time of year for me. What with the Bowie box set and this! 😀
Is that a note of sarcasm I detect? 😀
I see I have my first backer – a kind soul indeed. A good feeling.
Thanks. I’ve always aspired to be a sarcastic kind of soul.
Don’t forget the new Sparks album!
Wha…?
This autumn…. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hippopotamus-Sparks/dp/B06XT31PNW/ref=tmm_acd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1499885408&sr=8-1
Nice cover. I’ve bought a few Sparks albums over the years. Kimono My House is the only one I go back to.
Happy to support this, Colin. As you know, the MO aren’t quite up my alley but I like that you do this stuff and you’re a great writer who deserves to be able to write more.
That’s very kind of you indeed Bob – it’s really a matter of getting a load of research locked into print. It lasts. I think some of the chapters are fun to a casual reader, though – 20,000 odd words on Big Pete Deuchar and Tony Meehan, heavily expanded/rvised from previous e-book versions of those chapters.
I came across a terrific quote from Humphrey Lyttelton in 1960, from his Melody Maker column, which is on page one:
‘Every week now, a new jazz book arrives on my desk. Biography, autobiography, discography, miscellany, anthology and fiction – they come streaming off the presses… Now, such is the spate of commentary and research, there will soon be nothing left to write about.’ 😀
Humphrey Lyttelton, 1960
I hope we’ll see you at a future Word In Your Ear gig talking about the book (sorry to everyone who thinks that is a Londoncentric comment).
I have a feeling my sort of books aren’t David Hepworth’s sort of thing, but I would fly in from non-Londoncentric Belfast if I was asked. 🙂
feck it, make him come here! Not everyone that bought (& loved) (The) Word came from that London.
Colin, I am looking forward to the section on J M’s influence on 80’s electronic pop when I receive my copy. Good luck I hope you reach your target.
How does this fit in with ‘Bathed In Lightning’, Colin? Is it a sequel or a companion volume or something entirely different?
It’s a companion volume, Barge. Essentially, I’ve revised/enhanced (often extensively) the 100,000 wds of ‘Bathed In Lightning’ e-book extra chapters and sessionographies, discopraphies, concertographies etc and added 60,000 wds of new work, including licensed in classic pieces from Richard Williams, Charles Shaar Murray, Andrew Means and Jerry Gilbert. Plus loads of new images and period gig adverts etc. there’s lots of detail on the KS page. To be clear: it covers the same period as BIL but looks at stuff that was sometimes passed over in a couple of paragraphs. For instance, there’s a 10,000 word chapter on Big Pete Deuchar’s Professors of Ragtime, with extensive new research and interviews. The print edition of BIL had about two paragraphs on the band and the e-book edition had an 1,800 wd short chapter or thereabouts (you’ll find that version reprinted on the AW).
This was also going to be my question, now answered….and pledge duly made. All the best, Colin – I’m sure you’ll get the necessary interest.
Thank you Fitter – and anyone else who’s pledged, or just said a kind word! 🙂
Amazing, everyone – 12 days in and my target is nearly reached. A huge thank you to the coterie of Afterworders who have pledged! 🙂
Let’s have John playing the ‘title track’, earlier this year in Paris. I see it’s one of the numbers on his forthcoming (September) ‘Live At Ronnie Scott’s’ album, from the same tour:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgypBDyVKPE&t=452s
Your total should now be reached. Good luck sir!
Wow, thank you Bart – I wasn’t meaning ‘someone stump up 6 quid’, but you are a kind soul! A few magazines and bloggers have put the word out and the pledging seems to be coming from many different directions. Perhaos a few more pre-sales to interested parties around the world may happen over the remaining 23 days. It all helps!
Ha! Small token of gratitude for your help (via BiL) with my own project.
Well, I certainly hope BiL is sparking some ideas or filling in some gaps…
I’ve just completed the research I originally planned so it’s BiL next. Looking forward to it.
Dive deep! If it flags anywhere, look up the index and seek sanctuary in the names you know!
Good idea. Not that I expect it to flag of course!
Congratulations, Colin!
Thought I’d update the massive… The text of the new book was locked down on Monday and pushed out the door to Tom Seabrook, maestro of the typesetting arts. It comes not to the 160,000 words I’d roughly anticipated but to 176,000 words, and includes a late addition chapter – a nice coda to the Mahavishnu era – from a couple of young musicians who followed John McL into the Sri Chinmoy path and ended up have a couple of fascinating cloak and dagger interactions with the great man. I won’t give too much away but it’s a lovely way to end the main prose section and is entitled ‘Dreams Second Hand: Edgar Mills and the Way of the Pilgrim’. It gives a sense of how powerful John’s influence and charisma was on the youth of America back in the day.
Maestro Tom tells me that he can make the text work within around 350 pages (spec: 234mm x 156mm) and tomorrow night I’ll be starting the process of assembling pages of images (both stock paper and glossy photo-section pages) with Mark Case, the award-winning God of Font (responsible for most of Jawbone Press’ cover designs) and connoisseur of Scotch. It’ll be quite a task but I’m looking forward to seeing evocative pages full of press ads for the Graham Bond Quartet, Pete Brown Poetry Band, Gordon Beck Quartet, Mike Carr Trio et al – with the rich period detail of shared bills and events on the same night elsewhere – and glossy sections with rare and unpublished photos, licensed in or donated.
In case anyone interested missed it, I posted a short sample chapter here a week or so back:
The target has been reached, but there’s 14 days left to run on the Kickstarter – if anyone has a friend that might be interested, let them know.
A final shout out to anyone else who may be interested – last 48 hours. Thanks to the AW regulars for your patience – in the absense of having any Facebook etc I’ve relied on the AW and Steve Hoffman’s forum. Seems to have got the message out!
I’m currently (re-re-)proofing the now typeset pages and captioning nearly 100 pages of images (16 glossy insert pages and the rest montages of period adverts and further photos on standard book paper).
Colin, I really would recommend that as an author you get at least a Twitter account. After an AW-er tagged in the author of the Vinyl Detective books in a tweet about my book review, the author ‘liked’ it. I had a look at his feed, and he’s very chatty with his readers, keeping them updated with works in progress, thanking them for their kind words etc., which can only be good for sales and general goodwill.
It couldn’t be easier to set up and use.
I’ve spread the word via some music-world friends who have social media accounts, Mini. I might look at it in due course, certainly if/when I produce another self-published work (one on Big Pete Deuchar is planned – which will sell about six copies, but needs doing), but it’s not a world I would want to get involved with for any other reason than promoting/spreading awareness of commercially released products I’m involved with (be it as a compiler of archive CDs on various labels or much less frequent things under my own name).
And I’m a bit uncomfortable about that, for some reason. I feel that if I got involved in the ‘Facebook community’ I would surely have to – out of courtesy, getting into the spirit of the thing – spend time in getting involved in the worlds of other people, liking other people’s things, looking at photos of their lunches/children/holidays… And that’s not for me. I just don’t have the time. I enjoying ‘wasting’ a bit of time on the AW and occasionally look into a couple of other music type places (Hoffman, SuperdeluxeEdition, TheBlueMoment), but between making a living and stealing time for largely labour-of-love type books and other projects I just wouldn’t have time to get properly involved in social media even if I wanted to – and, aside from the promotional tool aspect (which seems a bit cynical, a bit ‘taking’ without ‘giving’), I don’t want to.
For all those here who ordered copies… the first tranche of finished copies (all the UK/Europe ones) have been posted out, and the US/Australia ones will be posted on Monday. Hurrah! 😀
I’m very happy with the end result. And, in this clip at least (a rare example of the maestro playing chords ordinary mortals can recognise), John McLaughlin is ‘Happy’ too!
Thanks. I’m really looking forward to it. The weather’s getting cold and I need a doorstop. 😽
Very good! (Did you actually order one…?!)
Of course. I bought the first one. (They are numbered, aren’t they?)
Amazing… I’m SURE I didn’t notice a Mr Tiggerlion among the pledgers! 🙂
Tell you what, though – if you need a doorstopper, the Irish piping tome is the one to go for…
Can I exchange if I’m not satisfied?
Absolutely…. not! It’s all about acceptance, as the Maha said:
I have previous experience of your tomes, Colin. They are all more than adequate door stops. I’m sure I’ll be a very happy customer.
Mine arrived yesterday.
I’ve had no time for more than a brief glance, but it looks a handsome work and I’ll look forward to settling down with it sometime.
Well done and thanks.
No, thank *you* Carl. Hope it meets expectations! I must say, I was very pleased with the quality of the short-run printing process.
Yay! It’s here too! I’m saving this tome for the Christfest break, and asking Santa for some new cans so I can immerse in MO and JM even while the other half is watching Gardeners World. More sherry please!
PS Colin; having watched that improv video above, I can’t subsequently find any reference to Emily Johnson material on the dodgers website – do you have any idea why she’s so invisible?
Well, other than that she’s south of France based, I know nothing about her. I think she’s the Nice-area equivalent of one or two of the bar band musicians on the AW.
Here she is with said bar band playing pop-reggae… with a certain fusion God joining on lead guitar (and suit)…
And here’s the great man backing another pop person a hundred years earlier…
Mine arrived this week. Those two free CDs that came with it are bloody marvellous.
Thank you, Tigs! 🙂