I’m really jazzed about getting my hands on the first finished copy of Totally Wired, my history of the music press which is published by Thames & Hudson this autumn.

Designer Daniel Streat has done wonders with the day-the-world-turned-dayglo jacket concept and my choice of cover star Poly Styrene.

There are 60 or so illustrations, all magazines from my archive. The diversity reflects the content of the book, which covers the usual suspects – NME, Melody Maker, Rolling Stone – but will hopefully turn readers onto the unexpected and surprising, from Black Music and Collusion to WET, Ben Is Dead and Girlfrenzy.

Totally Wired is published in the UK and elsewhere on September 22 and in North America on November 29. It is available to order now from all good booksellers as well as my Bookshop page at uk.bookshop.org/shop/paulgorman or by clicking on this panel:

Tags: Ben Is Dead, Black Music, Collusion, Daniel Streat, Girlfrenzy, Melody Maker, NME, Rolling Stone, Thames & Hudson, WET

I’m featured in the Los Angeles Review of Books in conversation with the journalist and musician Elizabeth Nelson about the life and times of the late graphic designer Barney Bubbles.

Read the LARB piece here.

Nelson has also recorded a tribute to the late graphic artist with her band The Paranoid Style. The track was released yesterday and is available to stream/download via Bandcamp.

Here’s the song lyric video complete with customised Bubbles artworks:

The Wild World of Barney Bubbles, the third edition of my monograph, is published by Thames & Hudson this summer accompanied by specialist imprint Volume’s limited edition A Box of Bubbles. Order your’s here.

Tags: Bandcamp, Elizabeth Nelson, Los Angeles Review of Books, Thames & Hudson, The Paranoid Style, Volume

Working on my forthcoming book The Rise & Fall Of The Music Press has brought home to me the brilliance of publications and journalists who have been marginalised in the story of the media sector inaugurated by the launch of The Melody Maker (as it was then known) in 1926.

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Tags: Alan Lewis, Black Music, Burnin', Catch a Fire, Dave Godin, In Their Own Write, Innervisions, IPC, Jahugliman, James Brown, Kerrang!, Loaded, Matumbi, Melody Maker, NME, Shout, Thames & Hudson, The Rise & Fall Of The Music Press, Tony Cummings

My next book, The Wild World of Barney Bubbles, is published around the world this summer by Thames & Hudson.

This is the enhanced and revised third edition of my monograph of the late graphic artist, who died in 1983 and would have been 80 this year.

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Tags: Art Chantry, Billy Bragg, Bookshop, Clarita Hinojosa, Design Freaks, Peter Saville, Rough Trade, Thames & Hudson

This is the front of the jacket of my new book The Story Of The Face: The Magazine That Changed Culture, which is published by Thames & Hudson this autumn.

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Tags: Buffalo, Corinne Day, Dylan Jones, Felix Howard, GQ, Jamie Morgan, Kate Moss, Melanie Ward, neville Brody, Phil Bicker, Thames & Hudson, Therese Vandling

//From The Observer, December 6, 2015//

Derek Boshier: Rethink/Re-entry – the artist monograph I edited – has been picked as one of the best art books of 2015 by British broadsheet The Observer.

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Tags: David Hockney, Diego Rivera, Peter Conrad, Thames & Hudson, The Observer

//Framed sketches for CLASH 2nd Songbook with copies of the published work//

//Specially designed by Boshier for the show, Art ‘Til You Drop tote bags and badges will be available along with copies of the monograph Rethink/Re-entry//

The installation of Rethink/Re-entry, the exhibition at central London gallery Flowers showcasing important works by Derek Boshier from the 1970s as well as collages and films made in the last year, is all-but complete.

These shots were taken yesterday as co-curator Guy Brett and I worked with the Flowers team on sequencing and final selection for the show, which opens tomorrow (October 7).

//Three sketches for sleeve of David Bowie’s 1979 LP Lodger//

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Tags: 16 Situations, Clash 2nd Songbook, Daily Mail - Poem Of Hate, David Bowie, Flowers Gallery, Guy Brett, Lodger, Thames & Hudson, The Clash, The Stun

//Cover artwork by Boshier, incorporating references to his 1973 installation Change and a portrait by his friend, Nigel Waymouth//

In January 2012, on a cold night in a print studio in, of all places, Wandsworth, south London, the eminent artist Derek Boshier asked me if I was interested in putting together a monograph of his life’s work with his friend and champion, the writer and curator Guy Brett.

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Tags: Blanche Craig, David Hockney, Guy Brett, Jamie Camplin, Karin Fremer, Maggie Hanbury, Nigel Waymouth, Thames & Hudson

//Artwork: Derek Boshier 2015//

Derek Boshier is the next subject of the BBC strand What Do Artists Do All Day? – Zara Hayes’ film, which was shot in Los Angeles and shadows Boshier on his daily routine, will be screened at 10.30pm UK time on BBC Four next Monday (August 24).

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Tags: BBC Four, Cork Street, Flowers Gallery, Thames & Hudson, What Do Artists Do All Day?, Zara Hayes

//The Identi-Kit Man, Derek Boshier, centre, Tate Britain. Photo: Chris Stephens.//

Chris Stephens, the Tate’s head of displays and head curator of modern British art, has organised for Derek Boshier’s 1962 painting to be hung at Tate Britain on London’s Millbank.

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Tags: Chris Stephens, David Hockney, Tate Britain, Thames & Hudson, The Hidden Persuaders, The Identi-Kit Man, Vance Packard