Category Archives: News

Vintage Rock

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Vintage Rock magazine is one of those fascinating niche music monthlies which make choosing at Smiths so hard these days. They cover the 50s and 60s in detail, with plenty of emphasis on the UK scene back then and so when they heard about Brian Smith’s Blues photo book were keen to interview him and show some of his photographs.  The magazine is out now, Issue 25 (April / June) and well worth a look, although it tends to be stocked only by the bigger magazine outlets (though you can buy it direct from the publishers.)  Thanks to Rik and Jack at Vintage Rock for permission to reproduce a couple of pages from the article. The shot here is one of a series Brian took from the side of the stage during a Rolling Stones concert… what an experience!

Boom Boom Brian Smith photos

 

Graham Bonnet on tour

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We had a couple of meetings last week with Graham’s manager as the group are currently on tour in the UK, and finalised plans for the book editions. We will send out a newsletter next week to subscribers with all the details (you can get on the exclusive mailing list by visiting the book page on the site). I’ve never been to a rock show in Skegness before, and apparently it is 49 years since Graham last played there as a teenager!  We then took in a more regular concert in Leeds, and watched the band sound-checking beforehand, where this picture was taken. There is a review of the shows and more pictures on the Deep Purple site here.

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Graham Bonnet Band, soundcheck, Leeds, Feb 2016. Photo : Simon Robinson

Project updates 1

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Yes : Dialogues ST33 BooksOur large format titles are now in production, and fans of the progressive rock band Yes can now sign up for a newsletter.  This gives people progress reports via the newsletter, as well as pre-order information and any special offers.  You can read more and sign up on the ST33Books site or sign up right away using the button below (you can unsubscribe at any time).

The list gets longer…

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Work on the Boom Boom book of rare Blues photographs is nearing completion and the final stage is to sit down with Brian and get his personal recollections of taking the pictures, the shows, the clubs and of course meeting all these amazing musicians (and whether they took him at cards or not!). Most of the photo selection has now been made so we can come up with a more complete list of artists who Brian photographed in the early sixties and appear in the book (though new images are still turning up, so this may get even longer.) If you want to get the latest on this title do please join our mailing list, which is linked from the book’s news page on this site.
In the meantime here is another of Brian’s treasured signed personal photos (which he had to get a friend to take!) meeting Bo Diddley backstage.

Bo-Diddley-and-Brian-Smith, American Blues photographs

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM FEATURING : Johnny Guitar Watson, Big Joe Turner, Chuck Berry, Sunny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Screaming Jay Hawkins, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Jimmy Reed, Hubert Sumlin, Howlin Wolf, Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker, Carl Perkins, Fred Below, Gary US Bonds, Eddie Boyd, The Chants, Charlie and Inez Foxx, Clifton James, Rev. Gary Davis, Sugar Pie Desanto, Willie Dixon, Sleepy John Estes, Hammie Nixon, Lightning Hopkins, J B Lenoir, Jerry Lee Lewis, Larry Williams, Little Walter, Lonesome Jimmy Lee, Memphis Slim, Millie Small, Otis Span, Jimmy Reed, Doctor Ross, Joe Richardson, The Shirelles, Sunny Boy Williamson, Sunnyland Slim, Roosevelt Sykes, Eddie Playboy Taylor, Big Mamma Thornton, T-Bone Walker, Walter Horton, Muddy Waters. The Rolling Stones, Tony McPhee and The Groundhogs, Alex Harvey, Johnny Cash, Duane Eddy also feature and there is a special bonus section of images shot at Granada TV during musician’s rehearsals for the Scene At 6.30 news shows.

who needs selfies?

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Carl Perkins, Brian Smith, Sheffield City Hall May 14. 1964Not that the compiler of our upcoming book of vintage blues photographs Boom Boom Boom Boom needs to prove his bona fides, but we couldn’t resist showing these two great images which photographer Brian Smith sent us to go with his author profile on the Easy On The Eye Books site.  The first image was taken backstage in the dressing room at Sheffield City Hall in 1964, and shows Brian with one of his musical heroes Carl Perkins.  Brian went on to run Carl’s UK fan club for several years.
Brian was also the official photographer for Manchester based R & B Scene throughout the life of the magazine. But while he mostly took pictures, on this occasion the tables were turned for a publicity shot with Screaming Jay Hawkins – which the editor thought would make a great cover image!  This issue came out in 1965.

R & B Scene cover issue 6 Screaming Jay Hawkins and Brian Smith

 

Wait (is over) For The Ricochet

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Our latest title, Deep Purple – Wait For The Ricochet, is out this week. Copies are shipping from Jan 27th onwards to people who pre-ordered.  It can still be ordered via the Easy On The Eye online shop, and will be available to order through bookshops (quoting the ISBN) in a couple of weeks.

Ricochet nearly there

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Wait for The Ricochet Deep Purple in Rock

UPDATE: Pre-ordered copies will by signed by both authors. The book has been extended with extra pages, text and photographs.

Wait For The Ricochet is nearly there. Last minute technical issues have abounded, not the least of which have been loss of any practical broadband for a few weeks (now happily back up to and beyond our previous speed thanks to the BT engineer). We are using a different print house to our last book, which delayed getting the colour profiles right, and then one of our monitors went into reverse! Easy On The Eye are all Mac based, and to help in the final stages of a book, use a split screen dual monitor set up to give a much bigger ‘desktop’.  We were half way through proofing when for some reason the second screen appeared in reverse one day when switched on!  Burrowing through the Mac helpdesk revealed that this is actually an option (though I struggle to see what use it might be) and could be triggered using a keyboard shortcut.  However, nothing covered the scenario of one screen reading correctly, but the second screen reversing out. Recalling happy hours watching The IT Crowd I did the ‘turn it off and on again’ a few times but it came back on with the same issue. After a couple of days messing about, trying to avoid expensive call out charges, I spoke to the company who normally sort things for me.  They suggested taking all the leads apart, hooking the ‘wrong’ monitor up to it’s original Mac and resetting it there, which I did. It worked fine, so it was then a case of dismantling that set-up and reattaching it to the split screen leads and powering everything up again. Bingo. So now it’s full steam ahead to catch up. The extra bonus of this delay is that our new printers have said we can add a few more pages to the layout so I have been able to squeeze in more pictures.  Thanks to everyone for being patient.

Rock book

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Our next completed title will be at the printers shortly. Mindful of the issues caused by announcing some of previous books too early and then hitting snags, we have waited until this one is almost there before making a firm announcement. This book covers an eighteen month period in the history of one of Britain’s biggest rock groups, Deep Purple. Having fired two of their founder members in mid-1969, and almost broke due to the collapse of their American record label, the band set about forging a new line-up, stage set and album.
When Deep Purple In Rock appeared almost exactly a year later, it exceeded all expectations, and stayed in the British album charts for over twelve months. Alongside Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, Deep Purple are one of the founding trio of British hard rock. This book helps explain why. You can see the cover and read more at the forthcoming page.
Easy On The Eye have tried to steer clear of the normal trade hardback approach to rock histories (which invariably squeeze a few pages of badly laid out photos in the middle of the text), and instead gone for a well designed, fully illustrated book with photos and memorabilia on almost every page. Publication is timely as 2013 sees the band’s 45th anniversary, with a new studio album (their first in eight years), glowing reviews and live shows due.

Deep Purple In Rock

Progress!

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Just a progress update on Easy On The Eye Books. Covered is continuing to get some great feedback, and orders have come from around the globe – from South America, The USA, all over Europe and Japan. Just as we were getting into our stride and not long after Covered was delivered, our print suppliers changed company name and then disappeared altogether a few weeks later, leaving just a moribund website (which one assumes will vanish when the next bill becomes due) and a few phone numbers which are never answered. This was a blow, though it seems some unlucky customers were left high and dry having parted with money for print when the company went under. So compared to them we had a lucky escape.
Since then we’ve been working hard to source a new printer for the books and have now done so. It was not easy as we prefer to print in Europe.
With this major headache out of the way final scanning work on the first of the Japanese Singles books could be completed and this book will go into production shortly. It’s certainly proving to be a visual sensory overload in many ways, page after page of great images. Each sleeve is annotated with the artist, track and record label information. Someone was looking at the material recently and wondered what the value of all the singles in the book would be today; I might find an old cigarette packet somewhere (we have some fifties ones somewhere for just this sort of task) and try to work out a rough estimate.
We will be putting some more sample pages up here soon but in the meantime enjoy another half dozen examples from bands including The Amboy Dukes, The Foundations and Fever Tree. Check our last progress report on this title here (with more examples).

japanese picture sleeve singles The Amboy Dukes, The Foundations, Fever Tree