A chronicle of a lifetime's passion for gig-going, by one of British television's most respected writers.
“Foreground Music is an absolute gem. Charming, very funny and often achingly melancholy, Graham Duff's memoir is suffused with a genuine passion for live music and its (occasionally eccentric) power. ―Mark Gatiss
The result of a lifetime's passion for gig-going by one of British television's most respected writers, Foreground Music is at once enthusiastically detailed and tremendously illuminating―of both the concert moment and its place in popular culture. It is an engaging memoir of a life lived to the fullest, and a vivid, insightful, and humorous exploration of what music writing might be.
Foreground Music describes music performances that range from a Cliff Richard gospel concert, attended by Duff at the age of ten, to the fourteen-year-old Duff's first rock show, where the Jam played so loudly he blacks out, to a Joy Division gig that erupted into a full-scale riot. Duff goes on pub crawls with Mark E. Smith of the Fall, convinces Paul Weller to undertake his first acting role, and attempts to interview Genesis P. Orridge of Throbbing Gristle while tripping on LSD.
Foreground Music captures the energy and power of life-changing gigs, while tracing the evolution of forty years of musical movements and subcultures. But more than that, it's an honest, touching, and very funny story of friendship, love, creativity, and mortality, and a testimony to music's ability to inspire and heal. Illustrated with photographs and ephemera from the author's private collection.

Foreground Music: A Life in Fifteen Gigs (Strange Attractor Press)

Duff, Graham

Humor & Entertainment

Strange Attractor Press

The first ever publication of Mark E. Smith's supernatural film treatment, co-authored with Graham Duff. In 2015 Mark E. Smith of The Fall and screenwriter Graham Duff co-wrote the script for a horror feature film called The Otherwise. The story involved The Fall recording an EP in an isolated recording studio on Pendle Hill. The Lancashire landscape is not only at the mercy of a satanic biker gang, it's also haunted by a gaggle of soldiers who have slipped through time from the Jacobite Rebellion. However, every film production company who saw the script said it was 'too weird' to ever be made. The Otherwise is weird. Yet it's also witty, shocking and genuinely scary. Now the screenplay is published for the first time, alongside photographs, drawings and handwritten notes. The volume also contains previously unpublished transcripts of conversations between Smith and Duff, where they discuss creativity, dreams, musical loves (from Can to acid house) and favourite films (from Britannia Hospital to White Heat). Smith also talks candidly about his youth and mortality, in exchanges that are both touching and extremely funny.

The Otherwise: The Screenplay for a Horror Film That Never Was

Smith, Mark E.

Movies

The Fenris Wolf is a research journal focused on the human mind, developments in comparative magico-anthropology, and on the occultural implications and applications of these fields of study. This volume contains material from the conference Psychoanalysis, Art & the Occult (London, 2016), with contributions from Gary Lachman, Vanessa Sinclair, Katelan Foisy, Sharron Kraus, Demetrius Lacroix, Graham Duff, Ken Henson, Peter Grey, Val Denham, Claire-Madeline Culkin, Steven Reisner, Katy Bohinc, Olga Cox Cameron, Ingo Lambrecht, Elliott Edge, Charlotte Rodgers, Alkistis Dimech, Fred Yee, Robert Ansell, Ray O Neill, Derek M Elmore, Julio Mendes Rodrigo, Eve Watson, and Carl Abrahamsson. Topics include Sigmund Freud and the Occult, Art as Alchemy, the art of John Balance, Cut-Ups as a magical and psychoanalytic tool, Maori shamanism within therapy, Animistic art, Dance as ritual, Androgynous aspects in Austin Osman Spare’s art, Salvador Dali’s meeting with Jacques Lacan, Rebis: the Double Being, David Bowie’s Non-Human Effect, similarities between ritual magic and psychoanalysis, and much more. Trapart Books, 2022. 6 x 9”, 234 pages.

The Fenris Wolf 9

Health, Fitness & Dieting

LACHMAN, GARY

Abrahamsson, Carl

Grey, Peter

Dimech, Alkistis

Denham, Val

Ansell, Robert

Reisner, Steven

Foisy, Katelan

Psychology & Counseling

Trapart Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Duff, Graham. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Duff, Graham