Thursday, 16 September 2010

November 1981



Altered Images: "Happy Birthday"

Oneupmanship



The cover for Faded Lois Dreams has been designed by the creative geniuses (genii?)at oneupmanship.

Check out some of their work and also the best blog in the er... blogosphere

Site: http://www.countylads.com/
Blog: http://one-up-manship.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, 14 September 2010

Free CD with the first 100

A FREE CD WILL BE AVAILABLE WITH THE FIRST 100 COPIES:
FEATURING THE SOUNDS OF LONDON IN THE EARLY 80s... LOVINGLY CRAFTED BY FATHER FINTON STACK

Check the man out on http://www.fcumradio.co.uk/

Freestyling’ With Finton
Mondays at 18:00 (Repeated Sundays at 14:00)

Finton packs an hour with Modern Soul and Hip Hop favourites from across the decades. He also graces the airwaves with his Three to Play What I Want – Any Old Time feature, which is three rather tenuously linked (yet superbly selected) favourites of Finton’s. finton@fcumradio.co.uk

From the author of Casuals

Andy Vaughan's 'Faded Lois Dreams' is the tale of a northern footy lad residing in London on the cusp of what would become known as 'Casual.' It thankfully avoids many of the genre's cliches and instead offers an emotional and intelligent insight into the mindset of a young man trying to make his mark in the big city, a city that is described in meticulous detail; the pubs, the busses, the shops, the football grounds, the sights, the sounds, the smells of a London and a fan culture that has largely disappeared in the past three decades.

The brilliant title says it all; this is a story of sharp dressing and dreams left unfulfilled, the passing of fashions, like the passing of our shared experience is now a subject for nostalgia. In the early 80s attending the match was often an ugly and frightening experience and yet, in today's santised, super-stadia Sky TV subsidised days, somehow the good old bad old days seem like a golden era. Vaughan captures the London that we all secretly loved and wanted to experience first hand, the London of back street boozers and smokey clubs playing soul, jazz funk and reggae, the hidden realm of swanky shops providing the latest continental clothing labels that ensured, at the very least, a token blimp of approval from the only people you wanted to impress in those days; fellow lads who were 'in on it' whatever, as Vaughan confesses, 'it' was. If you knew then there was no need for words, for media coverage or cultural approval, it just was and 'Faded Lois Dreams' documents the era with a humour, humility and humanity sadly lacking in too many books on the shelves these days.

Phil Thornton

Launch Party Friday 29 October 2010


Party like it's 1982


Friday 29 October 2010

Brickmakers Arms

49 Woodhouse Lane

Wigan

WN6 7LN


The launch party for the new novel by Andrew Vaughan

A story about friendship, love and expensive training shoes set against a backdrop of Special Brew, jazz funk, the Falklands War and a dark and nasty North London.