… Montreux. We were doing some sorting out of folders recently and turned up this shot, which shows author Simon Robinson swopping tips on sandals with Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover. Simon’s book Fire In The Sky on the band’s seminal album Machine Head is finally back on the drawing board after having to take a back seat while he wrapped up two other books. The location here is the famous Grand Hotel in Montreux when a special get together was arranged to visit the corridor where the album was recorded in late 1971. The space is the hotel foyer which guitarist Ritchie Blackmore used to get a nice gentle echo on a couple of his solos. The photo was taken by Mike Wiklund. I know I’ll never forget!
Easy On The Eye Books were pushed into updating our main Macbook a couple of months ago as some of our main software was reaching the stage where updates would not run on vintage operating systems! I guess ten years from a laptop is not too bad these days, and it still works fine in all other respects so has gone on to more routine office work. But it also means our Easy Instagram page has suddenly became operative once more after being blocked for some months (without a word of explanation from Meta needless to say!), so there are new links to both that and our Easy Facebook page on the side of our home page. If you’re fans of these socials you will know what to do! However this website is our main internet presence and will remain so. Subscribe to get all the updates.
We appreciate the extra costs and customs restrictions imposed on all books by the ludicrous decision to leave the EU has caused serious problems for customers outside the UK (and for UK customers wanting to order from Europe). So we are pleased we now have TWO stockists in Germany for our Boom Boom Boom Boom Blues Photographs of Brian Smith book, and people across the wider EU can order from them. Details of Copasetic Records in Hamburg (well worth a visit, we have been there!) and Bear Family Records mail order outlets are given on our STOCKISTS page.
Photo : Brian Smith and Carl Perkins, backstage at Sheffield City Hall.
“This is an extraordinary undertaking. Easy On The Eye deserves serious praise for the book’s superb design and the detailed annotations, but most of all for finally making this stunning cache of images widely available.”
Our thanks to Shindig Magazine’s Grahame Bent for a wonderful five start review of Boom Boom Boom Boom, The Blues Photographs of Brian Smith. It is always nice when people get what we’re all about. Our designer will be asking for the afternoon off when he sees this! Though to be honest just about all the reviews for this title have been glowing. Anyhow, we will attempt to get them online over the next week or so but needless to say the Shindig Review is already up there!
In the meantime here is a nice photograph of two blues musicians who had just taken delivery of a copy of the book. That’s Paul Jones on the right and Oli MacDonald. Paul did the foreword for the book and Mark Stratford was able to present him with a copy at the recent UK Blues Awards evening. Proudly showing off the BACK cover!!
Singer Paul Jones and blues artist Oli MacDonald at the UK Blues Awards 2025. Paul Jones holding copy of Boom Boom Blues Photo book. Photo Mark Stratford
Well sadly, Luis won’t be there, but hundreds of equally strange and awful record covers will be as Steve Goldman’s archive of the Worst Record Sleeves has gone on show at Northampton art gallery and museum until June 22nd. It is open every day except Monday and not far off the M1 below Birmingham and Leicester. The tie-in book The Art Of The Bizarre Vinyl Sleeve will be on sale via the gift shop for the duration as well, and it’s great to see a few of our galleries taking on more popular culture themed shows (Northampton did a big Star Wars toy display a few years ago too).
As for El Bigote, Luis’ heavy Latin Funk LP, this came out in 1975. I did go looking for the cover online and the first page I went to said simply “something went wrong”. Well yes, the cover! We can only assume Luis was riffing on the stereotype of all Cuban’s growing Dali like moustaches (el bigote is Spanish for moustache), so at least he had a sense of humour. Dusty Grooves adds “Plenty of moustaches on the cover — and some pretty hairy grooves within.”
Well yes I was… quite a lot during my college days in the mid-1970s!
Were You There – Popular Music at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall 1951 – 1996 (to give this book it’s full title) sets out to document all the pop and rock concerts at this famous venue in detail. I missed the book at the time but author Richard Lyons, who has been helping us with publicising Brian Smith’s new book (Boom Boom Boom Boom, The Blues Photographs of Brian Smith), kindly sent us a review copy. The publishers have made good use of one of Brian’s sixties photographs of T-Bone Walker to make the wrap-round dust jacket (and there are a few more of Brian’s images inside). This is primarily a text book though and logs the concerts across the years from 1951 by date, set out in database form then followed by interesting commentary from Richard and others. Naturally for those who did attend the venue it is the gig dates you check out first (happily I kept most of my tickets too) but it’s not long before you find yourself drawn into the mass of detail, even for artists you wouldn’t normally be too concerned about. Richard also adds further context by listing some bands at other venues in the city the same year and an appendix of the bigger concert halls at the end too. There are plenty of indexes to find pretty much anything you want with ease. It all comes to an ignominious end in 1996 with the venue flogged off to be gutted and turned into a hotel. Clowns.
Brian Smith’s book of fabulous Sixties blues photographs Boom Boom Boom Boom is finally shipping. It’s a big deal for us moving the title from ‘forthcoming’ to ‘out now’ on the site! We spent most of last week dealing with pre-orders, moving stock up from the printers (three trips so as not to ruin the suspension on the old Honda), nipping back and forth to the post offices (plural, we like to support our local businesses so used all three of our closest outlets) as Ann got copies packed and labelled, as well as getting a pallet loaded to go down to the warehouse so bookshops will be able to order from next week. Early indications are that the book is being well received (and we are certainly chuffed with how it looks) but we will catch up on people’s comments another day. A huge thank you to everyone who has supported this project at any stage of production and for the patience of customers, especially this past few weeks while we dealt with final production niggles. It’s now on to the promotion side of things to get the word out and we will keep people updated on that as things happen.
Nice article here from The Manchester Evening News a few years ago, where readers discussed Rod Stewart appearing at The Twisted Wheel. Brian Smith responded with a couple of his prints. He got more of a response than we have trying to get them to mention the new book… they’ve not even bothered to reply!
All subscribers to the Boom Boom book newsletter were sent Newsletter 7 on Jan 16th. Do check your spam folder as sometimes these mail-outs do end up being sent there by your email system!
In the meantime the photo above shows the full colour digital proof of the book which was checked and signed off last week. At this stage these proofs are for checking that each page is correctly orientated for each folio which as you can see can be a little confusing!
There is still plenty of time to place a pre-release order to ensure you get the book before anyone else has stock.
We are very pleased to be able to announce that after a long wait, Pre-Orders for Boom Boom Boom Boom – The Blues Photographs of Brian Smith have now opened. The book is currently with the printers and it is planned to ship in January 2025. Pre-ordered copies will be mailed in the order in which we get them and you will get them ahead of any other supplier (including you know who). There is a discount for pre-orders on our official shop as well, the link below goes direct to the order page.
PDF copies have been going out to book reviewers and one of the first to cover it was Bob Bell at the excellent 78 Crazy website he runs. Bob knew Brian and Roger Eagle back in the day, and writes movingly about the scene back then and memories prompted by the photographs. The link below takes you direct to the review but do also take some time to explore other aspects of his website once you have read it!
If anyone has problems ordering through our shop, then two recommended UK online retailers who support indie publishers and shops are Hive.co.uk and uk.Bookshop.org. Just quote our ISBN and they will be able to take an order. We use them for our own book buying when we cannot get to town. Do feel free to hassle Waterstones who can also order our titles but refuse to carry them in store!
Here’s another spread from the book, Chuck Berry in animated conversation with one of Brian’s friends backstage and later larking about in his mate’s car before they all went out for dinner. The other page shows The Chants, one of whom later founded The Real Thing.
easy on the eye books 