GONERFEST

RIP - Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown (link provided by MT)

From Barney Hoskyns...

"Hi there, Forgive the shameless advance (self-) promotion, but I wanted to let you know that my new book, HOTEL CALIFORNIA: SINGER-SONGWRITERS & COCAINE COWBOYS IN THE LA CANYONS 1967-1976, is being published in the UK in November by Fourth Estate. US publication by Wiley & Sons follows in the spring.

The book is about the Los Angeles music scene after the Monterey Pop festival and before punk, focusing on the relationships between the artists represented by managers/label-owners David Geffen and Elliot Roberts: Neil Young, Crosby Stills & Nash, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, JD Souther, the Eagles, Warren Zevon, Judee Sill and others. Simon Reynolds was kind enough to write the following:

"One of our finest pop historians reappraises a neglected and often maligned milieu, the soft-rock and singer-songwriter superstars of Southern California, that FM radio aristocracy who dominated almost the entirety of the 1970s. Barney Hoskyns deftly evokes not just the decadence but the sense of discovery, rooted in Sixties idealism and fostered by a gaggle of record industry mavericks who for a brief period managed to make art and business co-exist."

BMX BANDITS are at MONO in Glasgow tonight at 9pm and it costs exactly no money to enter those hallowed portals. And whilst we're on the subject of Bellshill... Davie Scott's excellent programme on TEENAGE FANCLUB's BANDWAGONESQUE is on Radio Scotland's LISTEN AGAIN feature for the whole of the coming week from today. Just click on the Classic Scottish Album feature and follow the wee audio (star) sign beside the title...