The one Taj Mahal Travellers album i've heard is amazing!

Really? What an absolute wankface he is. Why Les Rallizes and not Fushitsusha? That surely makes no sense.

I will be buying this for sure. It's bound to be a personal trawl through the genre rather than a comprehensive tome because it's Cope and he's a 'personality' and that's his style. I'll buy this for sure though because I want more dirt on Les Rallizes (not that I imagine there will be much more info that already out there) and his writing style is pretty enthused and, being a published book, should be a bit more to the point than the reviews on his site which, to be honest, try my patience with their lenght at times.

My cope-ious (geddit?) research has shown, by the way, that the cheapest place to get the book in the UK is HMV.co.uk, where it is available for pre-order for £9.99 postpaid.

well the review says cope starts his account of japanese rock by discussing the mid-19th century, so i'm not sure exactly how concise things are likely to be.

hmm perhaps i'll give it a second chance with a more focused listening. to be fair it may have been a bit of a hasty judgement, but that album didn't sound all that exciting to me...

I'm working my way slowly through the book. It's not one that I've picked up and felt unable to put down, I tend to read just a few pages at a time and then pick up where I left off a few days later. Sometimes a typeface and heavy density of words can put me off a book, and that's the case with this one. Once I get past that, it's a very interesting and informative book. The stuff about the 18th century is actually very interesting in the view that it gives of Japanese culture generally. It's a shame that the book stops (historically) where it does, though, as I would like to be able to read about more contemporary Japanese music, stuff like High Rise, Boredoms and Haino.