Wednesday 31 May 2017

Hell's Angels - Jan Hudson

The full story of America's motorcycle 'Wild Ones'


NEW ENGLISH LIBRARY (NEL) FOUR SQUARE 2092
2ND PRINTING NOVEMBER 1967
(1ST printing September 1967)
LONDON, UK

They live on ton-up motorcycles-screaming across the roads of America, leaving behind a trail of drunken brawls, sexual assaults, destruction and terror.

They are Hell's Angels: a breed of wild young men who dress like pirates and wear Nazi emblems.

They defy law and order, live by their own violent code and dice with death every day.

Jan Hudson knows the Angels. He's mixed with them and their girls and heard their views on life, sex, violence-and, most important of all, motorcycles. His book is a startling inside picture of the most amazing rebels of the sixties.

Tuesday 30 May 2017

Monkey Off My Back - Jack Brown

An ex-convict and drug addict relates his discovery of personal freedom


LAKELAND BOOKS 230
1ST PRINTING 1972
LONDON, UK

The former 'con man' was always finding the easy way to make money for his expensive drug habit...yet the trail of shady tricks and crime always led Jack to the same place - stone walls, iron bars and guards.

Having served more than seventeen years in prison Jack Brown tells an almost incredible story - beatings, fights, riots, murders, immorality of every sort. He talks about people he met: the Birdman of Alcatraz - Machine-gun Kelly - Al Capone and other legendary figures of the underworld.

Most of Jack's life has been spent in various institutions: attempts to cure his criminal habits and his drug addiction failed repeatedly. But outside prison walls waited his devoted wife and family who prayed and encouraged Jack to take God seriously.

There is no 'happy ever after' routine at the end of his story - just the miracle that God changed the depraved drug addict convict, gave Jack the determination that Jesus shall control his life - and he can't keep it a secret!

*Apparently Jack Brown is the person that Johnny Cash wrote Cocaine Blues about.

Monday 29 May 2017

R.I.P. Benji "Yellow Benji" Melendez 1952-2017

Yellow Benji of The Ghetto Brothers

I know this blog is normally a book blog but after hearing the sad news today of the death of Benji "Yellow Benji" Melendez of the Ghetto Brothers, I though I'd post this, after all these JD books we all collect are pretty much all about gang members like him.  "Yellow Benji" was best known for brokering the gang truce in the Bronx and Harlem in 1971, when he was President of the Ghetto Brothers and lead guitarist of the Ghetto Brothers band. He was also in the 2015 documentary Rubble Kings. If you haven't seen the documentary or heard the album the Ghetto Brothers released, I urge you to do so, you really are missing out.

R.I.P Benji

Go, Man, Go! - Edward De Roo

Highway Thrills, Race Car Kicks...and Love-Hungry Chicks!
Lawless Hot-Rodders! A Jungle on Wheels...


DIGIT BOOKS R357
1ST PRINTING • NO DATE
LONDON, UK

Faster! Faster! Faster!

It's real cool, man. When you're a kid in a hot-rod you just wanta GO! And there ain't nothin' or nobody gonna stop you, 'cause behind that wheel you're the most.

And if you're in with the gang-you ain't never gonna chicken out on 'em, 'cause you can't, you'd die first!

Sunday 28 May 2017

Young - Miriam Colwell

THE LOW-DOWN ON TWO WILD TEENAGE GIRLS IN SEARCH OF EXPERIENCE


ACE BOOKS (UK) H268
1ST PRINTING 1959
LONDON, UK
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN HARDBACK BY WEIDENFELD AND NICHOLSON 1955
COVER ART BY JOHN VERNON

The American jungle of wolf-whistles and stalking Cadillacs through which the narrator, a wise-cracking girl in her teens, moves like a willing prey.
-MANCHESTER GUARDIAN

A graphic and uncensored account of how two adolescent American girls saunter through a summer's day, winding up with the spectacle of sudden death at a roadside beer-parlour.
-DAILY MAIL

A day in the life of two American girls in their late teens...One of them by British standards a juvenile delinquent; smart, wisecracking, knowing beyond her years, she unfolds a picture of a society with only the haziest ideas of manners and morals.
-THE TIMES

Saturday 27 May 2017

Bethnal Green - Michael Fisher

Now filmed as...
A PLACE TO GO
STARRING RITA TUSHINGHAM, MIKE SARNE, BERNARD LEE
A RELPH-DEARDEN PRODUCTION
FOR BRITISH LION-BRYANSTON RELEASE THROUGH B.L.C.


PAN BOOKS X230
1ST PRINTING 1963
LONDON, UK
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN HARDBACK BY CASSELL & CO 1961
MOVIE TIE-IN

BETHNAL GREEN

...a brawling, dingy, decaying mass of street-markets and pubs, damp old houses, reeking gasometers and littered bomb-sites.

Ricky Flint knew no other world. Yet he craved to burst out, to win a better life somewhere for himself and his girl Catherine, an amoral slut, but fired by her own fierce pride...

How Ricky met his one violent chance is told with biting authenticity.

Friday 26 May 2017

A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

A novel of the near future by one of the most talented and imaginative writers of today


PAN BOOKS X 321
1st PRINTING 1964
LONDON, UK
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN HARDBACK BY WILLIAM HEINEMANN 1962

'HORRORSHOW'

-that's the adjective which Alex, the delinquent teenage villain of the piece would use to describe A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.

You, we are sure, will find it one of the most unusual and unforgettable novels you have read. The extreme in wickedness, social satire, abundant racy humour-all are here in this story of London in the none-too-distant future, a city terrorized at night by prowling toughs, where the powers-that-ought-to-be struggle to buy peace and order through the skills of brainwashing psychiatrists!