Tag Archives: Easy On The Eye Books

Pre-orders now live

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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.

Boom Boom Boom Boom – The Blues Photographs / Pre Order Here

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!

https://www.78crazy.com/post/the-unseen-r-b-scene-rare-photos-of-the-60s-blues-boom-in-the-uk

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.

Dynamic duo

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A couple more snazzy pages from our upcoming book of rare Blues photographs. We will be sending another newsletter out to everyone who subscribed for details of this project, you can still do so on the Forthcoming page under The Blues Photographs of Brian Smith. The pages here show Bo Diddley on stage (we use the word stage very loosely!) at the Jigsaw Club in Manchester. Brian got squeezed up against the drum kit but he did get a nice shot of Clifton James as a result. On the other page is Buddy Guy enjoying the vibes from his backing band at The Twisted Wheel. Amazingly they turned up late to replace his regular band (who got lost!), discussed the set list and then went on with NO rehearsal for what Brian calls a storming set. His proper band finally arrived in time to do the second set. This accounts for the intense looks of the band as they keep tabs on Buddy for their cues.

Sonic Boom

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VINTAGE ROCK magazine have done Brian and his archive proud with a five page feature in their current October 2024 cover dated issue (71). I can normally buy this in a couple of outlets here in Sheffield but they have both sold out this time (who knew The Stray Cats – the cover stars – were so popular?!), so in the end we ordered it off the magazine’s own online shop. The focus here is very much on the photographs and Brian’s own story, and it’s nice to see him getting this recognition. We anticipate physical copies of his amazing blues photo book Boom Boom Boom Boom will be available during November.

Previewed

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We have added another page of previews of Brian Smith’s Boom Boom Boom Blues Photos book to this site. Some of these spreads have been up here before but are now replaced by updated and higher resolution versions. The images below show Chuck Berry warming his fingers up in the dressing room, and Sonny Boy Williamson relaxing back at Roger Eagle‘s Manchester flat before heading back into town for the show that night. The story behind those shots is worth the price of the book alone, trust us!

Work in progress

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Snapped at the designer’s (1960s Ercol) worktop a few weeks ago: “I often use a split screen set-up for the design and layout but here preferred to work on the laptop; on a final run through like this any changes are likely to be very minimal, most of the heavy work has – hopefully – been done..!” Each page of the Boom Boom Blues Photo Book is here being signed off via a monochrome laser print prior to preparing the PDF for the printer. The page on screen shows Buddy Guy in action at The Twisted Wheel Club, one of a series of terrific live shots Brian got on the night. Amazingly Buddy’s backing band for the first show were delayed getting there, and a local Manchester group were called in with zero rehearsal time. Buddy almost brought the house down, smashing his guitar into the Wheel club ceiling at the end! We did try a few times to get Buddy to write us a few words for the book but his useless manager rudely ignored all our emails.

Celebrity endorsement!

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Well clearly just the publishers having a bit of fun, with Willy Dixon pointing up the forthcoming book of Brian Smith’s blues photographs. This great shot was taken backstage by Brian and at the time Willy was chatting with Twisted Wheel promoter Roger Eagle. Roger had managed to get Willy to hold up a couple of copies of his ground-breaking blues magazine R’n B Scene (and the original photo is of course in the new book in the original monochrome). The publishers will be sending out a newsletter with updates on the book later this week and you can join that dedicated mailing list at any time.

Inside the tent

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looking out? Nice to sit and chat with people about The Art Of The Bizarre Vinyl Sleeve at the Huddersfield Literary Festival tent on the 26th, and to meet vinyl fans after. Next time I will bring a torch as it was difficult at times to see my notes inside the tent despite the sunny day! Steve is now getting ready for a display of the sleeves at the Bearded Theory festival at Catton Hall, Derbyshire, 23 – 26 May 2024 [beardedtheory.co.uk] so we’re busy updating the flyers to get them ready in time, then back to work on the next book.

Gift guide

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We see quite a few nice comments on social media but this one tickled us today. Somebody bought The Art Of The Bizarre Vinyl Sleeve for relatives in Australia, and got this nice message back! The only problem now is what can Mum find to top this next year?

And April 1st saw The Sun devote most a page to a selection of sleeves from the book, which given the date must really have confused readers who probably thought they were all spoofs! However we did have a smile at their headline, which went “Hex and Rugs and Rock and Roll” alongside appropriate covers. Happily we got a PDF sent, so didn’t actually have to part with money for a copy.

Rabbits

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While we are now cracking on with our next title (stay tuned!), The Art Of The Bizarre Vinyl Sleeve continues to create a buzz, and the results of a poll at the last exhibition as to the worst sleeves on display has now produced a top ten chart. Gathered from over 600 votes at The Williamson Gallery before Christmas, it looks set to be a benchmark for strange sleeves for some time to come!  Particularly amazing perhaps is the sleeve above; we still don’t know what prompted these Romanians to pose with nothing but a rabbit each for their comeback album back in 1995. We have made this and the rest of the ten worst covers into a special gallery at the vinyl sleeve art website run by Simon Robinson over at ST33, so – if you dare – go and take a peek!  If you’re wondering exactly what the book is all about check it out on the site.  

Last chance to see!

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If you are in the North West, Steve’s Bizarre Vinyl display at The Williamson in Birkenhead finishes on Saturday this week (27th). It then moves across to Alnwick in the North East in early February. More details on that soon. In the meantime you can now see the older Bizarre Vinyl Newsletters at our online archive site. Current newsletters are exclusive to subscribers.

And before we all collectively try and get on with the new year here’s one of the festive sleeves which didn’t make Steve’s book The Art Of The Bizarre Vinyl Sleeve… is uptrousering a thing? And if so should it be make illegal?