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by Julian Cope 303pp, Bloomsbury, £14.99

Julian Cope, self-styled “visionary rock musician and musicologist, hip archaeologist and one-time frontman of the Teardrop Explodes”, is one of Britain’s more colourful fi gures. A pop star in the 1980s, he has spent the subsequent decades crusading against “greedhead” values and commercial compromise. “Copious” is the right word for his literary output, which includes two autobiographies and The Modern Antiquarian, an exhaustive study of megalithic and Bronze Age sites in the British Isles. In 1996, he published Krautrocksampler, an evangelistic overview of Germany’s greatest gift to the modern world, that immensely charming genre of 70s music known as Krautrock.

Japrocksampler aims to do the same thing for Japan, although the context could hardly be more diff erent. Krautrocksampler sought to rekindle an interest in music that was once widely appreciated in Britain but which had fallen into neglect due to changing fashions and fickle journalism. By contrast, the music discussed in Japrocksampler has made almost no impact outside Japan, partly owing to the barrier of an undecodably alien writing system. Cope himself is not a Japanese speaker, but his omnivorous LPcollecting and his friendship with some of Japan’s current rockers make him a credible candidate to write this book.

At first, Cope’s trademark hipster hyperbole seems to have been tamed by the challenge of elucidating a subject so obscure to most readers. Indeed, his potted history of post- Tokugawa dynasty Japan strikes a formal tone not far removed from that of a Victorian essayist: “As I stated in the beginning of this introduction, the purpose of this study was to explain to fascinated westerners the series of historical events that contributed to giving modern Japanese rock’n'roll artists their singular worldview.” He can’t keep it up, of course, and soon he’s raving about a “truly superlative piece of gonzo genius that felled skyscrapers with its snotty nihilism” and singing the praises of the glue-sniffi ng Golden Cups because “dammit they were (mainly) forward-thinking motherfuckers whose attitudes … dragged Japan’s reluctant ass out of its sobriety like none before or after them.”

Central to Cope’s thesis is the notion that mind-altering music can only be made by people who ingest mind-altering drugs, and that Japan’s notoriously anti-drug culture therefore impeded the artistic development of its musical pioneers. With a mixture of aff ection and condescension, Cope relates the attempts of Japanese wannabe “refuseniks” (or even “uberrefuseniks”) to ape the lifestyles of their American and British idols in a society where strict codes of honour still ruled and where the hippie musical Hair was closed down by the authorities. The oligarchical structure of the Japanese music business also meant that records - and the groups who played on them - were often put together by company bosses and producers. Cope astutely notes that for the Japanese, the entertainment industry was “a mythical hinterland wherein almost any opposing ideas could meet head-on”, an environment where a singer could contribute to an avantgarde freakout while maintaining a parallel career crooning Perry Como ditties in a velvet tux.

Cope’s descriptions are tantalising but no replacement for hearing the music itself, so the book’s usefulness depends on whether it inspires you to rush off in search of such classics as Blind Baby Has Its Mothers Eyes by Les Rallizes Denud?s or the eponymous album by Speed, Glue & Shinki. Less adventurous readers may simply enjoy the anecdotes about a host of chancers, mad idealists, Buddhist gangsters, Monkees clones (”Are We Not Crazy Cats? No, We Are Spiders!”) and bonafide geniuses. The Taj Mahal Travellers hit the road in their runeinscribed Volkswagen minibus, searching for windswept beaches where they can provide musical accompaniment to the waves at dawn. A young Yoko Ono attempts suicide in frustration at being upstaged by her first husband Toshi. Experimental violinist Takehisa Kosugi takes time out from the avant-garde to compose music for the children’s cartoon series Atom Boy. All human life is here, somewhat mangled in translation.

As a music commentator, Cope is passionately opinionated, which is both his strength and his weakness. His lack of affinity with folk or the subtler forms of jazz causes him to ignore or sideline many of Japan’s most distinctive artists. What he’s looking for is “the kind of unsignposted music with neither peaks nor troughs that still sounds relevant today”, ie music that resembles Krautrock. The way he tells it, his psychedelic renegades were central to the violent unrest that gripped Japan in the late 1960s, whereas in fact most of the clashes were between riot police and an army of Dylanesque protest singers. But in a book as over-amplifi ed as this, acoustic guitars don’t register.

Japrocksampler is by turns hilarious, wearisome, fascinating and obtuse. Behind its showbiz gossip and shamanistic mythmaking, we catch glimpses of another Japan, a Japan that eludes understanding. The incident where sword-waving members of Japan’s Red Army Faction (including the bass player of the Radical Music Black Gypsy Band) hijack a plane “to Cuba”, eventually landing to a heroes’ welcome in North Korea, is retold as a wacky caper, but the complex griefs and tensions that led to such gestures cry out for deeper analysis.

As a work of scholarship, Japrocksampler is slapdash and error-strewn. But at this early, na?ve stage of our appreciation of Japanese rock music, perhaps it hardly matters. Other books on the subject are not on off er. Alan Cummings, the most knowledgeable (and bilingual) British scholar of Japanese alternative music, writes articles for the Wire but has not yet written a stand-alone text. Japanese Independent Music, issued in 1998 by Sonore (a French publisher ) is out of print. For that matter, Julian Cope’s Krautrocksampler is out of print too. The sad truth is that very few people are interested in unusual “foreign” sounds. In our megastore marketplace, the familiar is endlessly recycled, while blinkered journalists reshuffle the same Top 100 lists ad nauseam. Japrocksampler is a flawed but welcome reminder that there are musical worlds beyond our ken.

Michel Faber’s The Apple: New Crimson Petal Stories is published by Canongate. To order Japrocksampler for £13.99 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875.

Where: San Francisco Bath House, Wellington
When: Saturday, September 22

Battles is the name of an American “Math-rock” band (a newish descriptor for modern progressive-rock music, or post-rock as it used to be called). And they are my favourite band of 2007.

As a music reviewer I do not get to say that (and mean it) nearly as often as I would like to. But hearing Mirrored, the band’s debut album (on the back of a couple of superb instrumental EPs) I was genuinely floored.

Here was an album that I wanted to tell everyone about with only one problem – how do you begin to describe it?

Seeing Battles live completes the circle, explains the band as a project/concept and confirms the passion and intensity of their recorded work.

John Stainer (ex-Helmet) sits front and centre behind a drum kit with a lone cymbal stretched high on a straight stand toward the ceiling.

Around him and his kit leap and pop Dave Konopka (ex-Lynx), Ian Williams (ex-Don Caballero) and Tyondai Braxton (the son of avant- garde jazz musician, Anthony Braxton).

Konopka, Williams and Braxton coax their sounds from guitars, keyboards, bass and computers – bopping about in time with the thrum of the band’s exciting sound.

Essentially, Battles is a band that has made progressive-rock cool; they have turbo-charged Kraftwerk and sold the sound to a generation raised on the post-rock and jazz experimentation of bands like Tortoise.

Stainer’s powerhouse drumming is machine-like in its consistency and sets the pulse for many of the tunes.

Braxton’s filtered wordless vocals (twiddled knobs shift the pitch of his voice in a possible approximation of the chatter between small woodland creatures) provide strange hooks – the audience cannot hang on them alone.

But, thanks to the stirring bass grooves, the layers of keyboard and guitar sounds and the visual exuberance of the four band members literally creating their own world on stage to live inside of, Battles manages to make what could easily, in the wrong hands, be construed as musical masturbation into a lively, danceable, accessible sound.

The single Atlas, easily the most pogo fun you can have nodding along to nonsense, is a huge mid-set highlight.

The song builds with time, then falls away and is rebuilt from the rhythm through to the melody. The pulse charging the separate parts, an inherent groove never lets the audience out of its grasp.

A musically intense, constantly exciting, evolving performance. Do you agree with this review? Send us your

Maya Arulpragasam’s Brooklyn apartment was a neglected mess whenshe finally returned to it after six months overseas. But it tookonly a day to straighten it up and turn it into her version of apied-a-terre, a makeshift multimedia headquarters. An audio mixingboard, film canisters and shiny gold and black dancing outfitsstand on one side of the apartment and half an uneaten papaya waitson a table in the back.

Arulpragasam, better known as the rapper M.I.A., is in town foronly about a week before going on tour, and when I ask when shewill return to the spacious studio in Bedford-Stuyvesant, aCaribbean and African immigrant neighbourhood, she shrugs. “I spenttime finding that couch,” she says, pointing to one of the fewitems of furniture, “and I haven’t even sat in it.”

Displacement is nothing new for M.I.A. In fact, she seems tothrive on it. A description of her life and music is inevitablylike one of those old movie montages in which a plane zigzagsacross a map from continent to distant continent. She left SriLanka at the age of nine, a refugee from an ethnic civil war that’sstill roiling, and discovered hip-hop in a London housing project.After art school in Britain she began making music that was simpleand handmade but had a far-reaching ambition, with flirty yetbrutally evocative lyrics set against whip-crack electro beats,dancehall reggae and Brazilian baile funk.

Her debut album, Arular (2005), sold a modest 129,000copies but hit a critical jackpot, both in the mainstream press andthe blogosphere. For her follow-up, Kala, released earlier thismonth, the original strategy was the conventional one: to pair withbrand-name producers and shoot for pop hits. But things did not goaccording to plan. Instead, the album became, by necessity and bychoice, another restless, far-flung journey.

Blocked from returning to the US for most of the last yearbecause of delays in renewing her working visa, she wound uptravelling to India, Jamaica, Trinidad and Australia, where sherecorded with the Wilcannia Mob. The resulting songs feel airborneand deliberately rootless. The enormous drums of Boyz, for example,were recorded in India but the rest of the song - aBollywood-tinged club banger about the rowdy, war-starting sex -was made in Trinidad. World Town rewrites a Baltimorehip-hop anthem for a violent Third World ghetto. The dizzyinglyabstract percussion loop of BirdFlu is spiked with Indiandhol drums and chicken squawks.

Twin Cities rock fans who can’t hardly wait for Paul Westerberg’s first hometown concert in three years still haven’t gotten their wish — even after the former Replacements frontman spent nearly two hours on stage Sunday night at First Avenue.

Westerberg emerged from another of his infamous/legendary hiatuses to film an episode of “The Craft,” a series of “Storytellers”-type shows that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is compiling for its archives and website (www.rockhall.com/thecraft). Like his “Craft” predecessors such as Elvis Costello and Ben Gibbard, the singer spent most of the night talking instead of singing. He only played 10 songs total.

Fortunately, Westerberg is a pretty good talker. “The Craft’s” host Warren Zanes also proved to be an adept if too-insidery interviewer, and he was especially fitting in this case. Zanes was a peer of the Replacements as a member of Boston’s Del Fuegos.

“We got it that this was a band that was gonna be remembered for 50 years,” Zanes said.

If only Westerberg himself was good at remembering things from even 20 years ago. He came up short on several questions but did offer up some insight into the ‘Mats legacy.

Among the random tidbits was one about drummer Chris Mars’ bass drum being overdubbed for much of the “Please to Meet Me” album (”He was good at snare drum and high hat,” Westerberg offered). He named “Don’t Tell a Soul’s” Matt Wallace as the band’s best producer. He also pointed to the song “Within Your Reach” as “one of the first chinks in the armor of the band,” since it was a quiet and emotional solo number.

Westerberg ended the show with two Replacements favorites, “Can’t Hardly Wait” and “Skyway.” He also played one unreleased old song, “Make the Best of Me,” which he said his ex-bandmates rejected as “too spiritual.”

While fans clearly relished the ‘Mats lore, the show’s more revealing moments were about Westerberg’s recent life. He credited his son, Johnny, 9, for inspiring and distracting him from the music, both in good ways. Referring to a hiatus after his son’s birth, he said, “I found it so fulfilling, it was hard to strap on a guitar.”

Westerberg also laughed about all the rumors that circulate about him nowadays, such as how a recent hand injury that he’s still recovering from (it showed subtly in his guitar playing) became, “I hear Paul cut his foot off!”

Sunday’s taping didn’t merit fans cutting off their own feet to get the free but elusive tickets, although some did pay $100-plus to scalpers. But the event certainly was one that the diehards and the singer took to heart.

Read a set list and more details at www.startribune.com/poplife.

Chris Riemenschneider • 612-673-4658

Chris Riemenschneider • chrisr@startribune.com

The BBC “seems to be treating very senior people completely differently from the way it’s treating junior people”, Bectu’s Luke Crawley said.

The BBC has refused to comment, but an executive on radio station 6 Music has quit over faked competition winners.

The corporation would not confirm reports that an ex-Blue Peter editor was sacked over a poll to name a cat.

Richard Marson was in charge of the children’s programme when Cookie came top in an online poll to choose a name for the pet.

But staff changed the result and called it Socks instead.

It follows a previous scandal involving a phone-in competition where Blue Peter staff asked a studio visitor to pose as the winner.

Mr Marson left the show soon afterwards, but stayed with the BBC. The deception led to the corporation being fined ?50,000 by regulator Ofcom.

On Thursday, it emerged that 6 Music’s head of programmes Ric Blaxill had resigned after competition winners were fabricated on three of the digital network’s shows.

But Bectu has claimed other employees who have been disciplined are more junior, such as a 6 Music producer who the union said was sacked for gross misconduct.

Mr Crawley said his union was representing 10 staff who had been given “some kind of disciplinary penalty” for deceiving audiences.

“There’s been one [senior] person, it is alleged, who has been sacked - the editor of Blue Peter - and that’s it,” Mr Crawley said.

“The other person whom you could reasonably call somewhat senior is Ric Blaxill, who has not been disciplined and who has been allowed to resign. It seems to me a slightly unusual position.”

He went on: “Where are the senior people - aren’t they responsible editorially? The answer is yes they are - so why aren’t they in the dock?”

Mr Crawley also questioned why BBC creative director Alan Yentob had not been disciplined over his Imagine arts series.

It emerged some of the interviews Mr Yentob supposedly conducted were actually recorded by colleagues - with Mr Yentob’s questions and reactions added later to make it look like he was present.

The BBC has introduced a number of measures in response to the issue of deception, including “unprecedented” training for all 16,500 production staff on “editorial trust”.

A spokeswoman said the BBC would not comment on any of the issues raised by Mr Crawley.

Being considered one of the best bands in pop-punk is either a great thing or an awful thing, depending on how seriously you take pop music. It is one of those labels that has always bothered bands that are trying to be taken more seriously by their fans.Fortunately, Motion City Soundtrack seem perfectly unable to take anything seriously, which is what makes the band’s music so refreshing, especially on the third studio release Even If It Kills Me, released Sept. 18 on Epitath Records.This is most evident on tracks such as “The Future Freaks Me Out” from the debut album and “It Had To Be You” from the new album.”It Had To Be You” begins as a forlorn monologue about lost love, but then, following a power-pop chorus complete with “woohoos,” transforms into a completely silly description of lead singer and lyricist Justin Pierre’s perfect date of getting “wrecked on pop tarts and sex” and “fighting crime with mangos and limes.”The band’s influences are audible in the album; from the swirling and surging synths that recall The Cars to self deprecating, pop culture influenced lyrics that make one think of early Weezer to the huge Cheap Trick-esque choruses, Motion City Soundtrack has been able to create a distinct sound that is instantly recognizable.It is perhaps fitting that Cars’ front man Ric Ocasek, who produced Weezer’s first album, has taken the helm for some of the production of this album; splitting duties with Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne and Eli Janney of Girls Against Boys. His influences can be heard all over Motion City’s sound so it was inevitable that they would team up in some way.While the band has had success with a familiar formula in the past, they’ve also branched out on this album. “The Conversation” is a plaintive piano ballad that’s stripped down, piano and vocals mix sounds more like Ben Folds Five than Weezer.In fact there are times when the band has more success shunning its formula than following it. Lead single “Broken Heart” sounds like an inferior version of the hit from the last album “Everything Is Alright.”That’s not to say the band should shun its formula completely. Motion City haven’t lost the ability to write a great pop song. “This Is For Real” might just be the catchiest song the band has every written, and since they have released it as the second single, it could be the one to push the band all the way into the mainstream, where they could join fellow Warped Tour veterans Fall Out Boy and Gym Class Heroes at the top of the charts.Don’t be surprised to see Motion City Soundtrack making its push into the ears of mainstream pop fans before long.

Oakland's Rogue Wave appeared on the scene in 2004 with Out of the Shadows, an album of infectiously sweet pop musings and pastoral acoustic folksiness. They followed up with the like-minded Descended Like Vultures in 2005. After these two first strong showings on Sub Pop, they return with Asleep at Heaven's Gate on Brushfire Records, owned by surf folkster Jack Johnson.

Juxtaposing pop music with dark lyrics is not a new trend. It is, however, an art — and a subtle art at that — cultivated and crafted in some of the most surprising ways by the least obvious bands. It is the prevalence and success of dark pop bands in the indie pop genre (I hate calling it a genre, but it now is, isn't it?) that makes indie pop an arguably more satisfying listen than the traditional, bubble-gum-oriented major label pop. The themes explored in indie pop in general are not solely relegated to love, relationships, etc., as they typically are in radio-friendly pop. And so it is easy for sub-genres to emerge within indie pop that explore a diverse range of styles and topics. Hence, dark pop. And hence, bands like Rogue Wave.

Unfortunately, indie pop bands tend to ripen on the vine, and perhaps as a result, their best work is often found in the frustrations of their early emergence and is sometimes later lost as a result of success. The music evolves with the audience. Consequently many pop bands, indie and mainstream alike, find themselves kowtowing to traditional pop conventions, which places them in the dreaded void of pseudo-adult contemporary pop. It is a natural evolution, but one that is not conducive to hailing reviews by critics in combination with the credibility normally extended to a new and exciting sound. However, what a band surrenders in growth, they exchange for a semi-loyal following of a decent and sometimes growing size. Hopefully this leads to financial benefits and more.

Rogue Wave is in the unenviable position in their history to succumb to this pressure to ‘mature’ or at the very least to mimic growing trends in music. Well, Rogue Wave doesn't have much room to mature, as their first two albums revealed them to be a band with a cohesive and competent sound that is as accessible as it is challenging. Fortunately for fans of Rogue Wave, the band has ignored the flawed wisdom in trying to incorporate trends and has instead wisely chosen to build upon their already solid sound as a unit. Thusly, Asleep at Heaven's Gate firmly establishes Rogue Wave's identity as a band and continues their already strong musical narrative.

Produced by Roger Moutenot (Yo La Tengo, Sleater Kinney, Elvis Costello), Asleep at Heaven's Gate is such a consistent album that a listener may have trouble picking out their favorite song. Beginning with the piano-driven "Harmonium," Heaven's Gate unfolds melodies and choruses that will etch themselves onto your brain; fortunately not in the commercial-jingle-kind-of-way. Repeated listens will inspire much swaying and singing along.

All of the familiar Rogue Wave elements are here in Asleep at Heaven's Gate: the somber acoustic introspection of "Christians in Black" and "Missed" for example. But Rogue Wave also manages to cram variety galore into this album. Subtle flourishes like samples and studio effects on "Like I Needed," steel drums in "Chicago X 12," and chimes on "Lullaby" add just the right touch without making the production seem meddlesome.

There is a lot of emotion within Asleep at Heaven's Gate, as evidenced by the surprising but short jam at the end of the combustive "Phonytown." The album culminates with its most emotionally charged track, "Cheaper Than Therapy." Beginning with a slow, dirge-like, organ-driven passage, the song quickly evolves into a somber piano-driven gem - a fitting end to an altogether impressive album.

From track to track, the uncompromising Asleep at Heaven's Gate is like a pleasant Sunday afternoon – cautiously optimistic, but not without moments of sunny inspiration. This album certainly puts Rogue Wave's importance to indie pop in perspective and makes the case for Rogue Wave's potential as a band with longevity. I highly recommend it.

The US rapper confirmed that he will play the Odyssey Arena on November 5 - just three weeks before his rival Kanye West performs at the same venue.The surprise announcement by 50 Cent comes after he was beaten by West this week at the Mobo Awards and in the battle to top the album charts.50 Cent stated that he would retire from music if West outsold him in the race for the number one album.West, who plays the Odyssey Arena on December 1, sold nearly one million copies of his Graduation album in its first week. In comparison, 50 Cent sold 691,000 copies of Curtis.However, 50 Cent later seemed to withdraw his threat to quit, saying that he was "excited to have participated in one of the biggest album release weeks in the last two years".His announcement to play Belfast before West does seems to suggest an about-turn for the rap star, who also lost out at the Mobos last night.The rapper, real name Curtis Jackson, pulled out of the Mobos and the Vodafone Live Awards. West went on to win Best Video for Stronger and Best Hip Hop Act, beating 50 Cent in this category.It is understood 50 Cent cancelled a number of European promotional tours this week, but a spokeswoman for Aiken Promotions said he had confirmed he was playing Dublin and Belfast in November."He seems to like it here," she said.50 Cent was in Dublin during the summer, when he appeared on stage at the RDS with Justin Timberlake. He collaborated with Timberlake on the recent single Ayo Technology.He last played Belfast in 2005.Tickets for his November 5 gig go on sale on Friday, September 28, priced £39 seated and £35 standing.

The early 1960s were a time of change in the jazz world. People like Miles Davis were beginning to investigate and incorporate other musical styles and formats and broadening the definition of what constituted jazz. There were the experiments with the music of other cultures and their integration into compositions, and this was followed by fusing jazz with elements of pop music, specifically funk.Soloists were starting to lean toward more and more complex improvisations in their performances as they looked for newer and different ways to express the themes of a piece of music. Taking their cue from the postwar generation of players, like Charlie Parker, their playing became increasingly elaborate as the years went on.At one point jazz was the preserve of orchestras that would sometimes approach symphony orchestras in size and make-up. But in the post World War two era more and more often you'd find smaller combinations of instruments ("combos"). These smaller groups were ideally suited for improvisation and solo work as fewer people meant easier communication between members while playing. It's interesting to note that the groups today who are still experimenting with improvisation and solos are those with the smaller number of players. The Chicago Underground Trio, El' Zabar Kahil's Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, and his Ritual Trio continue to break new ground in improvisation techniques with specific focuses on rhythm and the use of electronics. You can't talk about jazz and improvisation without talking about the influence of John Coltrane. Arguably, he was one of the most inspired and inspiring saxophone players in jazz if not ever, than at least during his lifetime. His recording career lasted only twelve years, and when he died in 1967, he was still at the peak of his skill level.For some reason very little film of John Coltrane exists, although I'd say part of the reason would have been his unwillingness to tailor a performance to the needs of a television show. How many North American variety shows are going to have as guests a jazz band whose average song length was in the fifteen-minute range? Thankfully European television didn't seem to have the same hesitation and it's to recordings in Germany and Belgium that the Jazz Icons Series produced by Reelin' In The Years have turned for their wonderful DVD John Coltrane Live In '60, '61 & '65In 1960, John was still part of the Miles Davis Band, and was part of their European tour that Norman Granz had arranged with two other combos, The Stan Getz Quartet and the Oscar Peterson Trio. Part of the tour was to have been three broadcasts for a Dusseldorf television station, with each band recording a session. When Miles Davis, for whatever reason, refused to perform, John Coltrane stepped into the breach to lead his band. Granz also persuaded both Stan Getz and Oscar Peterson to play with Coltrane on a couple of numbers.This early performance in his career shows Coletrane's potential as both a soloist and an improviser. What's especially revealing are his duets with fellow tenor saxophone player Stan Getz on two numbers, "Moonlight In Vermont" and "Hackensack". While Getz is a gifted be-bop player and shows it in his solos, Coletrane is already starting to move beyond that style. In his solos, he has more layers and textures of sound than you hear in Getz's work. He's not deliberately trying to show Getz up, and what he does isn't jarring or out of place with the other performer. There's just more to his solos then what Getz plays. Note after note pile up in a cascading waterfall of sound that will soon become his trademark. In the following year, when Coltrane returned to Europe, it was as the leader of his own band. Most notably this early version of his band included the incomparable Eric Dolphy contributing on flute and complimentary saxophone. Elvin Jones on Drums and McCoy Tyner on piano would end up being members of his permanent band for years to come and a couple of years down the line when Jimmy Garrison joined them on bass, they would become one of the best and most popular bands during their time together.But to get back to the '61 concert for a moment with Eric Dolphy; since his previous visit to Europe, Coltrane had developed his own repertoire of songs including his magnificent reworking of "My Favourite Things". For this song he switches to playing the soprano saxophone, one of the most temperamental reed instruments this side of an oboe. However, Coltrane made that instrument sing and played it with the same confidence that he brought to all his endeavors.With Dolphy taking the second lead on "My Favourite Things" on flute, the song is given an added dimension that doesn't exist on another recording. Seeing and hearing that performance is worth the price of the DVD on its own. However, it doesn't end with that, in fact one could almost say that's only the beginning, because the final recording from 1965 is Coltrane backed up by the band mentioned above where we see him at the peak of his playing prowess. John Coltrane Live In '60, '61 & '65 is an amazing record of not only an incredible musician, but it also shows us some the development and changes he went through as a performer in the space of five years. With sound and visual quality that's amazing for the time, you are able to hear all the nuances and subtleties Coltrane includes in his solos and appreciate their evolution.The booklet that accompanies the DVD provides a great analysis of all three concerts and provides pertinent details about the professional career of John Coltrane. It was very refreshing to only read about his music and learn more about this man who still remains something of an enigma for most of us. The combination of the booklet and the DVD make for a great presentation that is a fitting tribute to one of the greatest jazz saxophone players that ever lived.

John Lennon started it all back in 1964 when the lovable moptop assembled his Milliganesque black humour and primitive expressive drawings into his first book, Spaniard In the Works and followed it up with the equally successful sequel Right hand Draw and then retired from publicly displaying his drawings until he met Yoko many years later.

Patti Smith, Jim Carroll and Leonard Cohen were all published poets and storywriters before they took up music. The Patti Smith Band began as the nucleus of Patti reading her written works with the accompaniment of Lenny Kaye on guitar and she has continued to publish various works along with her musical career. After early fame and success in a literary career, Leonard’s muse however took him so deeply into music and lyric writing, that he took a 20 year break between books. First published at 17, Jim Carroll gained acclaim for The Basketball Diaries and then decided to live out his rock n roll fantasy for a couple of years leaving his moment of musical immortality with People Who Died , he returned to poetry and has been working on his first novel for the past 10 years.

First novels can be tricky; Bob Dylan’s Tarantula was a disappointingly impenetrable stream of consciousness book about nothing in particular, before he redeemed himself recently with masterful musical memoir Chronicles Volume One of hopefully many, which started life as leaflet notes for a series of CD re-releases. Nick Cave’s And The Ass Saw the Angel was a ponderously paced, overlong indulgence in Southern gothic that did not compare to his masterful lyrics. Billy Corgan’s debut book of poetry was so badly hammered by critics and consumers alike that we’ve heard no news of a follow up. In Australia, Steve Kilbey has dabbled in various non-musical areas including spoken-word performance and collections of poetry and prose, beginning with his 1987 book Earthed, released with an accompanying solo CD, while he currently blogs continuous prose and poetry on his website. Billy Thorpe produced three very successful, energetically written and lived books, apparently edited down from much longer works that will hopefully someday see the light of day in his absence. While in Melbourne Stephen Cummings has penned two well-reviewed novels; his flight of imagination Wonderboy and Lightning’s Girl, based on his early years in the music scene.

Then there is the sub-genre of confessional drug and tell books; Dave Navarro chronicled a year of drug debauchery and decadence in prose and photo in Don’t Try This At Home, a coffee table book for your local coke dealer. After writing many songs about his drug addictions and rehabs Anthony Keidis wrote about it all over again in his walk on the LA wildside book Scar Tissue, while Motley Crue collaborated on the hilarious and horrifying Spinal Tap-on-steroids Dirt, now Nikki Sixx has gone solo with the dauntingly titled Heroin Diaries, another year in the half-life hell book and Tommy Lee just won’t shut up! Dee Dee Ramone wrote Legend Of A Rock Star (guess who it was about!) and a supernatural junkie thriller set in the notorious Chelsea Hotel.

All of which makes the first of the genre, Diary Of A Rock N Roll Star by Mott the Hoople singer Ian Hunter printed in 1974 seem positively quaint by comparison, although it was at the time the first behind the scenes view of what it was like to be in a band, albeit cleaned up for print.

The demented Shamanic genius Julian Cope began his writing career with two books based on his band years in Liverpool and his brief flirtation with the pop charts in Teardrop Explodes, then wrote the Holy Grail for krautrock fans, the incredibly researched and exuberant Krautrocksampler, recently followed up with Japrocksampler and since has produced two magnificent volumes of gonzo scholarship, The Modern Antiquarian, a survey of ancient sites in Britain and followed that up with the similarly-themed, massive and remarkable, The Megalith European, both hailed by academics as much as by his acolytes.

Currently retired from music, Henry Rollins has also juggled stand-up, spoken-word shows and a radio and TV career with penning 30 books about himself by his own publishing company; any other company would have told him to get an editor.Even more prolific and self-governing is my favourite eccentric, Billy Childish who alongside releasing 100 albums under various guises and painting over 2500 works, has also published 40 poetry books and four novels in his spare time!

But surely even more ambitious is recent PhD in Astronomy and post-Queen magnate Brian May who has just released his first scholarly and modestly-titled tome.