A good interview with MES, with mentions of Liverpool here: http://www.music-news.com/showreview.asp?H=Mark-E-Smith&nReviewID=3792 though I digress. This book goes beyond The Beatles and Gerry and the Pacemakers, giving a decent overview of Merseybeat bands - and how it gets forgotten that The Beatles were actually copying what was around in that scene rather than being pioneers. And it covers the music trends of Liverpool right up to the mid 2000s.I've yet to finish the book so can't give it a real overview, but I get reached the era of punk/post-punk and how bands in Liverpool were a bit different from the norm - more experimental in sound. This has coincided with me picking up Julian Cope's biography, Head On, which ties in and has some cross over. I'm particularly enjoying reading about a character who called himself "Duke", with a Bowie obsession, who is really petty about musical one-up-man-ship (ie getting turned onto bands before anyone else hears of them), and all-round a bit of an annoying, antagonistic type as well as moody. He then gets referred to as McCull. I'm sure you know who this is by now. I never knew this, but he sang with one of Julian Cope's first attempts at a band (there were many) - before Julian got irked enough to give him the boot. And Read it in Books was an early song of this band's. Interesting to note there was a bit of animosity from Julian Cope towards "Duke"/Ian McCulloch; envy to do with his singing talents. I never actually thought to compare the two bands before, but the similarities are there in the vocals and the early keyboards.It's also been interesting to read about Pete Wylie and Bill Drummond. I don't know enough around the former, and didn't realise the latter lived in Liverpool and was involved in the music scene there.Getting back to Cope. I'm about halfway into his book where he's just picked up on a phrase from a comic book ending for his latest incarnation, The Teardrop Explodes. [An aside: I was watching the real first episode of Brookside on Youtube recently (fascinating stuff, actually - you'd be surprised - as a snapshot in time) and the band's name was graffitied on a wall. Brilliant!]. Well, a while ago cropped up the topic of albums you've taken back to the shops for a refund/exchange and I was mostly blank, bad at remembering. But now I've recalled that Kilimanjaro was one I was glad to take back to a provincial HMV, in roughly about 2001. It rode right over me. Non-plussed. Reward - which was on the CD re-release - was always one I liked from a new wave compilation I bought when I was 15, and it is an undeniable classic that I'm fond of - "Bless my cotton socks, I'm in the news" remains one of the best, most joyous proclamations of opening lyrics in the world, and that keyboard and trumpet work is fantastic (and Cope in a scruffy scrappy brown old coat on Top of the Pops is quite brilliant).But I must confess, even with re-assessing some of the band's songs on Youtube years later, I still don't quite "get" The Teardrop Explodes. But I will aim to give Kilimanjaro a fresh listen soon, as well as some of their other albums, including Cope's solo stuff. I remember Try Try Try from the ITV Chart Show - what a hat! World Shut Your Mouth is a good 'un. And I remember various ,ad mystic Julian and his mental trippy bollocks quotes from NME - I'm sure there will be many to come in the book I am reading. Teardrop may never be my thing, but I've been enjoying listening to a lot of 80s stuff recently as curios of the time, reference points, archives, and of course connections to present-day stuff. I highly recommend both the books I've mentioned for anyone interested in music history.One more quick anecdote before I go - a teenage Courtney Love ran off to move to Liverpool. Bill Drummond was on the look out for a girl duo, and Courtney and a friend came up with some hopeless keyboard racket and rapped lyrics about a dog barking down an alleyway at Julian Cope. The two girls were something of a joke, and were besides a vicious pair of nightmares to live with, so one day someone chucked their suitcases down the stairs after them as a hint. Strawberry Switchblade got signed instead.