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Excavate!
- The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall
- Narrated by: Dean Williamson, Maxine Peake, Pat Nevin
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
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Publisher's Summary
This is a book about Mark E Smith and The Fall - or more precisely, their ever-influential world. The Fall were so many things, so many worlds; if you got it (and not everyone did), they represented everything.
This is not a book about a rock band. This is not even a book about Mark E Smith. This is a book about The Fall group - or, more precisely, their world.
Over a prolific 40-year career, The Fall created a world that was influential, idiosyncratic and fiercely original - and defied simple categorisation.
Their front man and lyricist, Mark E Smith, spun opaque tales that resisted conventional understanding; The Fall's worldview was an education in its own right. Who wouldn't want to be armed with a working knowledge of M R James, shipping-dock procedures, contemporary dance, Manchester City and Can? The group inspired and shaped the lives of those who listened to and tried to make sense of their work.
Bringing together previously unseen artwork, rare ephemera and handwritten material, alongside essays by a slate of fans, Excavate! is a vivid, definitive record - an illumination of the dark corners of The Fall's wonderful and frightening world.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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What listeners say about Excavate!
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- John O
- 08-05-22
Frustratingly pretentious
This book is less about Mark E Smith than it is about the writers performing a pretentious academic wankfest :( I bailed halfway through.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story

- Voice of reason
- 05-22-21
Disingenuous
Promising at the outset but descending into a pretentious semiotic tsunami at which point the exit sign seemed to be the only salvation.
2 people found this helpful
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- Murmur
- 09-12-22
Disappointed read. Love the Fall but not this.
Too much waffle and the book could have been much shorter and much more gripping if they'd concentrated on the characters in the band more. Mark E would've found this incredibly boring.
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- Mr. A. J. Curran
- 07-10-22
Mrs Merton?
Not sure why Maxine had decided to do a Mrs Merton impression with the narration? Great listen though nonetheless.
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Story
The history of heavy metal brings us extraordinary stories of larger-than-life characters living to excess, from the household names of Ozzy Osbourne, Lemmy, Iron Maiden and Metallica to the brutal notoriety of the underground Norwegian black metal scene and the New Wave of British heavy metal. It is the story of a worldwide network of rabid fans escaping everyday mundanity through music, of cutthroat corporate arseholes ripping off those fans and the bands they worship to line their pockets.
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Entertaining but very Biased
- By Nick on 04-10-19
By: Andrew O'Neill
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Mutations
- The Many Strange Faces of Hardcore Punk
- By: Sam McPheeters, Tobi Vail - introduction
- Narrated by: Sam McPheeters
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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How can so many people pledge allegiance to punk, something with no fixed identity? Depending on who and where you are, punk can be an outlet, excuse, lifestyle, escapism, conversation, community, ideology, sales category, social movement, punishable offense, badge of authenticity, reason to drink beer forever, or an aesthetic of belligerent incompetence. Sam McPheeters championed many different versions. Over the course of two decades, he fronted Born Against, released dozens of records and fanzines, and toured 17 times across the northern hemisphere.
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Good but incomplete version - no footnotes
- By Kim family on 05-18-20
By: Sam McPheeters, and others
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Twilight of the Gods
- A Journey to the End of Classic Rock
- By: Steven Hyden
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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The author of the critically acclaimed Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me offers an eye-opening and frank assessment of the state of classic rock, assessing its past and future, the impact it has had, and what its loss would mean to an industry, a culture, and a way of life.
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not what I had hoped
- By Tom on 07-18-18
By: Steven Hyden
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Listen to This
- By: Alex Ross
- Narrated by: Alex Ross
- Length: 14 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Listen to This, which takes its title from a beloved 2004 essay in which Ross described his late-blooming discovery of pop music, showcases the best of Ross’s writing from more than a decade at The New Yorker. These pieces, dedicated to classical and popular artists alike, are at once erudite and lively.
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Educational!
- By Jason Anschutz on 07-10-15
By: Alex Ross
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Bowie
- By: Simon Critchley, Eric Hanson
- Narrated by: Simon Critchley
- Length: 1 hr and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Simon Critchley first encountered David Bowie in the early '70s, when the singer appeared on Britain's most-watched music show, Top of the Pops. His performance of "Starman" mesmerized Critchley: it was "so sexual, so knowing, so strange". Two days later Critchley's mum bought a copy of the single; she liked both the song and the performer's bright orange hair (she had previously been a hairdresser). The seed of a lifelong love affair was thus planted in the mind of her son, aged 12.
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the best music culture theory book that exists
- By Thomas on 02-20-15
By: Simon Critchley, and others
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Man in the Music
- By: Joseph Vogel
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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The first book dedicated solely to exploring his creative work, Man in the Music guides us through an unparalleled analysis of Jackson’s recordings, album by album, from his trailblazing work with Quincy Jones to his later collaborations with Teddy Riley, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, and Rodney Jerkins. Drawing on rare archival material and on dozens of original interviews with many who helped bring the artist’s music into the world, Jackson expert and acclaimed cultural critic Joseph Vogel reveals what gave rise to an immortal body of work.
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Full of inaccuracies, hearsay and sensationalism
- By Carl on 07-14-20
By: Joseph Vogel
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Perfect Sound Whatever
- By: James Acaster
- Narrated by: James Acaster
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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James Acaster wakes up heartbroken and alone in New York, his relationship over, a day of disastrous meetings leading him to wonder if comedy is really what he wants to be doing anymore. A constant comfort in James' life has been music, but he's not listened to anything new for a very long time. Idly browsing 'best of the year' lists, it dawns on him that 2016 may have been a grim year for a lot of reasons, but that it seemed to be an iconic year for music. And so begins a life-changing musical odyssey, as James finds himself desperately seeking solace in the music of 2016....
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BEST BOOK ABOUT 2016 IN 2019
- By sophie on 08-29-19
By: James Acaster
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Afternoons with the Blinds Drawn
- By: Brett Anderson
- Narrated by: Brett Anderson
- Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Suede began by treading the familiar jobbing route of London's emerging new 1990s indie bands - gigs at ULU, the Camden Powerhaus and the Old Trout in Windsor - and the dispiriting experience of playing a set to an audience of one. But in these halcyon days, their potential was undeniable. Anderson's creative partnership with guitarist Bernard Butler exposed a unique and brilliant hybrid of lyric and sound; together they were a luminescent team - burning brightly and creating some of the era's most revered songs and albums.
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A Must Read For Burgeoning Muscians
- By Piers Baron on 10-11-22
By: Brett Anderson
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Elton John
- The Biography
- By: David Buckley
- Narrated by: Simon Shepherd
- Length: 16 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Elton John is as much loved for his outrageous personality and witty outspokenness as for his music. Such shamelessness and sheer silliness rivals anything uttered by punk rockers, yet it is so typically Elton: honest and intemperate. Tragedy and heartbreak have played a large part in his life. Behind the parties, the hedonism, the lavish stage costumes, and silly glasses lies a more somber story. Between disputes with managers, legal wranglings, public breakups, and divorce, John has been faced with serious health problems and drug addictions.
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Trite!
- By michael mckone on 08-04-22
By: David Buckley
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This Searing Light, the Sun and Everything Else
- Joy Division: The Oral History
- By: Jon Savage
- Narrated by: Liam Gerrard
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Jon Savage's oral history of Joy Division is the last word on the band that ended with the suicide of Ian Curtis in Macclesfield on May 18, 1980. It weaves together interviews conducted by the author, but never used in the making of the film Joy Division, which told the story of the band in their own words, as well as those of their peers, collaborators, and contemporaries.
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a beautiful book
- By Elizabeth Swank on 04-20-23
By: Jon Savage
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Enter Night
- A Biography of Metallica
- By: Mick Wall
- Narrated by: Alister Austin
- Length: 17 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Until now there hasn't been a critical, authoritative, in-depth portrait of Metallica. Mick Wall's thoroughly researched, insightful work is enriched by his interviews with band members, record company execs, roadies, and fellow musicians. He tells the story of how a tennis-playing, music-loving Danish immigrant named Lars Ulrich created a band with singer James Hetfield and made his dreams a reality.
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Great book. Take with a grain of salt
- By scott grasser on 07-09-21
By: Mick Wall
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Major Labels
- A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres
- By: Kelefa Sanneh
- Narrated by: Kelefa Sanneh
- Length: 18 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Kelefa Sanneh, one of the essential voices of our time on music and culture, has made a deep study of how popular music unites and divides us, charting the way genres become communities. In Major Labels, Sanneh distills a career’s worth of knowledge about music and musicians into a brilliant and omnivorous reckoning with popular music - as an art form (actually, a bunch of art forms), as a cultural and economic force, and as a tool that we use to build our identities.
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Pure Pleasure Cultural History
- By A. Yerkes on 11-09-21
By: Kelefa Sanneh
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The Rest Is Noise
- Listening to the 20th Century
- By: Alex Ross
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 23 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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The Rest Is Noise takes the listener inside the labyrinth of modern music, from turn-of-the-century Vienna to downtown New York in the '60s and '70s. We meet the maverick personalities and follow the rise of mass culture on this sweeping tour of 20th-century history through its music.
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Learned so much!
- By Paula on 02-18-08
By: Alex Ross
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And in the End
- The Last Days of the Beatles
- By: Ken McNab
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Ken McNab's in-depth look at the Beatles' acrimonious final year is a detailed account of the breakup featuring the perspectives of all four band members and their roles. A must to add to the collection of Beatles fans, And in the End is full of fascinating information available for the first time. McNab reconstructs for the first time the seismic events of 1969, when the Beatles reached new highs of creativity and new lows of the internal strife that would destroy them.
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Familiar ground but a good listen
- By Tad Davis on 08-30-20
By: Ken McNab