THE GREAT SCOTS MUSICOGRAPHY BOOK

This is a fairly recent book, published in 2002.

Written by Martin C Strong, the chunky encyclopedia does it's best to cover the entire history of Scottish music & performers, ranging from Rabbie Burns to Rave, and every music genre in-between.

All the artists are in alphabetical order, and where possible, gives the town of origin, band line-up and discography.

So for Retro Dundee purposes, I'll just give a couple of wee examples from the 60's, 70's & 80's.

For instance, the obvious big hitters like Average White Band, Michael Marra, Danny Wilson etc get substantial coverage. A few of the smaller bands such as Poor Souls, Rokotto, Scrotum Poles, Wilderness Children and so on, also get a mention.

Although the book is presented in an encyclopedic format, the content isn't too formal, for example, it describes Gerils as sounding like "Sonic Youth having a fight with The Fall!". It's loaded with wee quips like that.

A select few are also represented in caricature, these being the work of Stuart Murray. Above is an excellent one of Billy Mackenzie, showing his look, his whippets and his town.

Check out the top notch book cover!!

An added bonus is that there are also many pages on the output of Scotland's record labels.

John Peel described the book as an "Extraordinary work of scholarship".

Well worth looking out for.