condition (book): EX

Softcover book with illustrations. Third edition. Signed by Julian Cope.

Subtitle and all, the full sprawl of it: One Head's Guide to the Great Kosmische Musik, 1968 Onwards. Julian Cope wrote it in 1995, self-published it through Head Heritage, and never licensed a proper reprint, which is why a paperback that cost a few pounds now changes hands for absurd sums. It is not a reference work in any sober sense. Cope writes as a convert, ranking, raving, occasionally getting a date wrong, and the prose runs hot enough to embarrass an academic. What it did, though, was real: for a generation of English-language listeners it drew the map, putting Faust, Amon Düül, Ash Ra Tempel, and the rest into a single excitable narrative at a moment when most of these records were out of print and half-forgotten. Read it for the enthusiasm, not the footnotes.