Topping & Company Booksellers of Bath, Edinburgh, Ely, and St Andrews

MUSIC

A Bookseller Recommends...

The Absence: Memoirs of a Banshee Drummer

Budgie

As a member of Big in Japan, The Slits and, most famously, Siouxsie and The Banshees and The Creatures, 'Budgie' was an era-defining drummer in the much-mythologised post punk scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The beating heart of this at times painfully honest account of a life often sabotaged is, of course, his long-term position as Siouxsie and The Banshees' drummer and co-writer alongside his ex-wife Siouxsie Sioux. Their creative partnership produced some of the most seductive and celebrated pop music of the decade. Eventually, their personal relationship started to fall apart, with inevitable consequences for both bands.

The Absence is bravely unflinching in its dissection of how and why this happened, and powerfully moving in its account of the angels that emerged to heal both these wounds and those of a mother's lost love.

A Bookseller Recommends...

And the Roots of Rhythm Remain

Joe Boyd

"Boyd's book is the Proust of music history - à la recherche of much music lost, here regained and affirmed in our present." ~ Observer

Legendary producer and record label boss Joe Boyd has spent a lifetime travelling the globe and immersing himself in music. He has witnessed first-hand the growing popularity of music from Africa, India, Latin America, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe since the 1960s and was one of the protagonists of the 'world music' movement of the 1980s.

And the Roots of Rhythm Remain shows how personalities, events and politics in places such as Havana, Lagos, Budapest, Kingston and Rio are as colourful and momentous as anything that took place in New Orleans, Harlem, Laurel Canyon or Liverpool. And, moreover, how jazz, rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll would never have happened if it weren't for the notes and rhythms emanating from over the horizon.

New: Music

If Only You Knew

Lulu

Signed first edition

Annie Lennox

Signed bookplate

Night People

Mark Ronson

Signed first edition

How High: A Portrait of The Charlatans

Tim Burgess and Tom Sheehan

Signed first edition

The Colonel and the King

Peter Guralnick

Our Secrets Are The Same

Charlie Burchill, Graeme Thomson and Jim Kerr

Never

Rick Astley

Rumours of My Demise

Evan Dando

The Tremolo Diaries

Justin Currie

It's Not a Cult

Joey Batey

Signed first edition

Softly, As I Leave You: Life After Elvis

Priscilla Presley

Signed first edition

Mark Kermode's Surround Sound

Mark Kermode

Cat On The Road To Findout

Yusuf/Cat Stevens

George Harrison

Graeme Thomson

The Absence

Budgie

Signed first edition

My Name is Barbra

Barbra Streisand

Truly

Lionel Richie

Signed first edition

Wings

Paul McCartney

Burning Down the House

Jonathan Gould

John and Paul

Ian Leslie

Last Rites

Ozzy Osbourne

Sound Tracks

Graeme Lawson

The Fun Lovin’ Criminal

Huey Morgan

Signed first edition

Cher

From Here to the Great Unknown: A Memoir

Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough

Me and Mr Jones

Suzi Ronson

Never Understood

William Reid and Jim Reid

A Thousand Threads

Neneh Cherry

The Bagpipes

Richard McLauchlan

Everything We Do is Music

Elizabeth Alker

Guitar

Earl Slick and Jeff Slate

Bless Me Father

Kevin Rowland

Signed first edition

Over the Rainbow

Alex James

Prince: A Sign o' the Times

John McKie

Decade Of Dissent

Sean Egan

Every Valley

Charles King

Hark

Alice Vincent

Signed first edition

Mania

Stuart Wood

Signed bookplate

My Effin' Life

Geddy Lee

Women and the Piano

Susan Tomes

Bob Dylan

Harry Freedman

Gliders Over Hollywood

Paul Rappaport

Patti Smith

Claude Gassian

Small Town Joy

Carrie Marshall

The Uncool

Cameron Crowe

David Gilmour — Luck and Strange — Studio/Live

Polly Samson

Far Above The World

Paul Morley

Insomnia

Robbie Robertson

I Was There

Alan Edwards

Sound Advice

Alan Green

168 Songs of Hatred and Failure

Keith Cameron

3 Shades of Blue

James Kaplan

A Sound So Very Loud

Ted Kessler and Hamish MacBain

Bono: Stories of Surrender

Author 117895 CS

The Book of ABBA

Jan Gradvall

BOWIELAND

Peter Carpenter

Capitol Gains

Andrew Cook

Lit Up Inside / Keep 'Er Lit

Van Morrison

The Philosophy of Jazz

Kevin Le Gendre

Pink Floyd Shine On

Mark Blake

Roll With It

Tom Sheehan

The Slicks

Maggie Nelson

Smile

David Leaf

Where We Come From

Aniefiok Ekpoudom

Volcanic Tongue

David Keenan

Signed first edition

Buzz Me In

Martin Porter and David Goggin

Carole King

Jane Eisner

In One Ear

Simon Raymonde

Lazarus: The Second Coming of David Bowie

Alexander Larman

Oasis

Jill Furmanovsky and Noel Gallagher

Peter Broetzmann

Daniel Spicer

Petroc Trelawny's Classical Music Puzzle Book

Petroc Trelawny, Gareth Moore and Laura Jayne Ayres

Teenage Daydream

Debsey Wykes

To Hell With Poverty!

Jon King

Becoming Ella Fitzgerald

Judith Tick

Brothers

Alex Van Halen

Mike Joyce - The Drums

Mike Joyce

My Family and Other Rock Stars

Tiffany Murray

Mystery Train

Greil Marcus

Paul Weller: Dancing Through the Fire

Dan Jennings

The Rolling Year

Hannah French

Searching for Dexys Midnight Runners

Nige Tassell

Songs In The Key of MP3

Liam Inscoe-Jones

What Art Does

Brian Eno and Bette Adriaanse

Alternative for the Masses

Greg Prato

Definitely Maybe

Andy Bollen

Down River

Mark Brend

Fela

Jibola Fagbamiye and Conor McCreery

The Grateful Dead by Jim Marshall

Jim Marshall, Amelia Davis and David Gans

Live Forever

John Robb

Love and Fury

Darryl W Bullock

Men of a Certain Age

Kate Mossman

Quartet for the End of Time

Michael Symmons Roberts

Ringo

Tom Doyle

The Yardbirds

Peter Stanfield

She Played and Sang

Gillian Dooley

1984: The Year Pop Went Queer

Ian Wade

All You Need Is Love

Steven Gaines and Peter Brown

Before Elvis

Preston Lauterbach

Bitter Crop

Paul Alexander

‹

›

A Bookseller Recommends...

Nina Simone's Gum

Warren Ellis

I hadn't opened the towel that contained her gum since 2013. The last person to touch it was Nina Simone, her saliva and fingerprints unsullied. The idea that it was still in her towel was something I had drawn strength from. I thought each time I opened it some of Nina Simone's spirit would vanish. In many ways that thought was more important than the gum itself.

On Thursday 1 July, 1999, Dr Nina Simone gave a rare performance as part of Nick Cave's Meltdown Festival. After the show, in a state of awe, Warren Ellis crept onto the stage, took Dr Simone's piece of chewed gum from the piano, wrapped it in her stage towel and put it in a Tower Records bag. The gum remained with him for twenty years; a sacred totem, his creative muse, a conduit that would eventually take Ellis back to his childhood and his relationship with found objects, growing in significance with every passing year.

Nina Simone's Gum is about how something so small can form beautiful connections between people. It is a story about the meaning we place on things, on experiences, and how they become imbued with spirituality. It is a celebration of artistic process, friendship, understanding and love.