Pete Frame's Rockin' Around Britain
- Rock 'n' Roll Landmarks of the UK and Ireland
(Omnibus Press 1999)
www.omnibuspress.com
Pete Frame's Rockin Around Britain is chock full of gems from the annals of rock 'n' roll. If you want to know which English cathedral Graham Nash wrote a song about after tripping acid there or why the Damned insisted on signing their record contract in Andover, this, as the poet would have it, is the book for you.

    Both Pete Frame's own encyclopaedic rock knowledge and contributions from folks all over our country make this a book you can't put down. The work will rekindle your lost youth or satisfy your curiousity to know exactly where the Beatles hung out. Stuffed full of photographs, crammed with stories, everyone from the famous to the infamous is here. Only a wag with Frame's irreverent humour could pull it off . And he does so in spades ('Fulking, nothing happened here but I like the name . . .').

    Witness the fabulous scam that the author retells to start off the book. Tired of folks pilferring his work without permission or crediting him Pete Frame planted a few choice bits of information in his earlier Rock Gazetter of Great Britain book. A national newspaper bit:
    "With great ballyhoo, they printed photographs of six 'Scenes from Rock History', one of which was a magnficent half page shot of a bridge over the turbulent River Exe near Tiverton in Devon. This, according to the caption, was "where New York folkie Paul Simon wrote 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' ".
    I think not. The story was a figment of my imagination, popped into the Rock Gazetteer to ensnare pirates."
    Forget all those geography lessons you endured at school. Put those 'Shakespeare slept Here' tourist traps back on the bookshelf. Delve into this book and you'll take a real trip into our countries social history. Indispensible. Roll over Shakespeare.
Mike Plumbley