Too Much Too Young The 2 Tone Records Story Rude Boys Racism And The Soundtrack Of A Generation

The definitive and remarkable story of 2 Tone Records, featuring an introduction by Pauline Black —A Times/Sunday Times Book of the Year —An Uncut Book of the Year —Long-Listed for the Penderyn Music Book Prize —A Louder Than War Book of the Year —A Blitzed Magazine Book of the Year In 1979, 2 Tone Records exploded into the consciousness of music lovers in Britain, the US, and beyond, as albums by the Specials, the Selecter, Madness, the English Beat, and the Bodysnatchers burst onto the charts and a youth movement was born. 2 Tone was Black and white: a multiracial force of British and Caribbean musicians singing about social issues, racism, class, and gender struggles. It spoke of injustices in society and fought against rightwing extremism. It was exuberant and eclectic: white youths learning to dance to the infectious rhythm of ska and reggae, crossed with a punk attitude, to create an original hybrid. The idea of 2 Tone was born in Coventry, England, and masterminded by a middle-class art student, Jerry Dammers, who envisioned an English Motown. Dammers signed a slew of successful artists, and a number of successive hits propelled 2 Tone onto Top of the Pops and into the hearts and minds of a generation. However, infighting among the bands and the pressures of running a label caused 2 Tone to bow to the inevitable weight of expectation and recrimination. Over the following years, Dammers built the label back up again, entering a new phase full of fresh signings and a beautiful end-piece finale in the activist hit song “(Free) Nelson Mandela.” Told in three parts, Too Much Too Young is the definitive story of a label that for a brief, bright burning moment shaped British, American, and world culture.

*** This is the story of the great lost Beatles album. The end of the Beatles wasn't inevitable. It came through miscommunication, misunderstandings and missed opportunities to reconcile. But what if it didn't end? What if just one of those chances was taken, and the Beatles carried on? What if they made one last, great album? In Like Some Forgotten Dream, Daniel Rachel - winner of the prestigious Penderyn Music Book Prize - looks at what could have been. Drawing on impeccable research, Rachel examines the the Fab Four's untimely demise - and from the ashes compiles a track list for an imagined final album, pulling together unfinished demos, forgotten B-sides, hit solo songs, and arguing that together they form the basis of a lost Beatles masterpiece. Compelling and convincing, Like Some Forgotten Dream is a daring re-write of Beatles history, and a tantalising glimpse of what might have been. Praise for Daniel Rachel: Walls Come Tumbling Down: 'Superlative...brilliant' - Q Magazine 'Triumphant' - The Guardian 'Brilliant' - Mojo Isle of Noises: 'In depth, scholarly' - Q Magazine 'Fascinating' - The Guardian / NME 'Fantastic, insightful interviews' - Noel Gallagher Don't Look Back in Anger: 'A-grade, A-list' - The Sunday Times 'A rollicking read' - Mail on Sunday 'Remarkable' - Art Review 'Book of the Week' - The Guardian

1979. The dawn of Thatcher’s Britain. It’s a country crippled by strikes, joblessness and economic gloom, divided by race and class - and skanking to a new beat: 2-Tone. The unruly offspring of white boy punk and rude boy ska, the new music’s undeniable leaders were The Specials. Bursting out of Coventry’s concrete jungle, their lyrics spoke of failed marriages, petty violence, crowded dance floors, gangsters and race hate - but with a wit that outshone their angry punk forebears. On stage they were electric, and at the heart of this energy was the vocal chemistry of the ethereal Terry Hall and Jamaican rude boy Neville Staple. In 1961, aged only five, Neville was sent to England to live with his father – a man for whom discipline bordered on child abuse. Growing up black in the Midlands of the Sixties and Seventies wasn’t easy, but then Nev was hardly an angel. His youth was marked by scuffles with skins, compulsive womanising, and a life of crime that led from shoplifting to burglary and eventually borstal and Wormwood Scrubs. But throughout there was music, and now Nev tells how a very bad boy became part of the most important band of the Eighties. He remembers sound system battles; the legendary 2-Tone tour with The Selecter, Madness and Dexy’s – and their clashes with NF thugs. He recalls the band’s increasing tensions and eventual split; his subsequent foray into bubblegum pop with Fun Boy Three; and a new found fame in America, as godfather to bands like Gwen Stefani’s No Doubt. Finally he reflects on The Specials’ reunion and how even now, thirty years on, they can’t help tearing themselves apart.Raucous and charming Original Rude Boy is the story of a man who done too much, much too young. Neville Staple was a frontman with The Specials, a member of the hugely successful pop trio Fun Boy Three and now tours the world with own his own ska act The Neville Staple Band. Visit him at: www.nevillestaple.co.uk Tony McMahon is a journalist and TV producer living in south London.

In the summer of 1970, England was buzzing about the new football season. More than 30 million television viewers had watched the previous year's FA Cup final and the brilliant Brazilians had dazzled audiences during the Mexico World Cup. The new age of televised highlights meant that football's profile had never been greater, generating a new celebrity status for footballers and catapulting them into the limelight like never before. The 1970-71 season did not disappoint as Arsenal achieved the first Double of football's televised era amid controversy and drama. The Football League and FA Cup were won at the end of a campaign that included a street fight in Rome, the emergence of new young stars and unrest and unhappiness among some of the older players. Seventy-One Guns includes extensive interviews with the Arsenal players and coaches and, through their memories, ancedote and opinions, recreates the drama of that memorable season. Looking beyond Highbury's Marble Hall, the book also recounts some of the events that made 1970-71 a historic time in English football in general, including: the rise of Leeds under Don Revie; the demise of Manchester United and the problems of George Best; football's attempt to clamp down on the hard men; and troubled times for Alf Ramsey's England in the wake of the Mexico World Cup. Seventy-One Guns is a must for all Arsenal fans and all those who fondly recall the days of mutton-chop sideburns, white boots and mud-heap pitches.

Described as a publishing phenomenon, Lost London transports the reader back in time with amazing and evocative photographs. For this revised edition another 16 pages and approximately 50 previously unpublished photographs have been added

Black Bottom Stomp tells the compelling stories of the lives and times of nine seminal figures in American music history, including Scott Joplin, Louis Armstrong, and Jelly Roll Morton.

Walls Come Tumbling Down charts the pivotal period between 1976 and 1992 that saw politics and pop music come together for the first time in Britain's musical history; musicians and their fans suddenly became instigators of social change, and 'the political persuasion of musicians was as important as the songs they sang'. Through the voices of campaigners, musicians, artists and politicians, Daniel Rachel follows the rise and fall of three key movements of the time: Rock Against Racism, 2 Tone, and Red Wedge, revealing how they all shaped, and were shaped by, the music of a generation. Composed of interviews with over a hundred and fifty of the key players at the time, Walls Come Tumbling Down is a fascinating, polyphonic and authoritative account of those crucial sixteen years in Britain's history.