Be Glad For The Song Has No Ending
Adrian Whittaker
704pp / 165mm x 221mm
220+ black & white illustrations
8 pages of colour
Limited edition hardback of 350
Paperback / Hardback
£25.00 / £40.00
Our collectors’ hardback edition is limited to 350 copies. It features debossed boards, ribbon and a variant dust jacket. It also comes with a chapbook containing Allan Frewin’s ISB comix from the original zines, with a card signed by the artist.
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A reminder that ‘fan’ is short for ‘fanatic’, Be Glad is as unique, layered, colourful and immersive as The Incredible String Band themselves. It hits a perfect sweet spot between learned critical analysis and freewheeling, life-affirming adventuring through an entire milieu. Multi-voiced and deeply researched, but never indulgent, it is not only a beautiful object, but an important historical artifact of a time never to be repeated.
– Benjamin Myers
Encyclopaedic in scope, passionate in tone, this book is a minotaur’s labyrinth of information about one of the most remarkable groups in 20th century music. Be glad, for everything you need to know is here.
– Rob Young, The Wire
A wide-ranging collection of interviews, anecdotes, essays, and ephemera concerning one of the most enigmatic bands to emerge from the 1960s psych-folk scene.
First published in 2003 and long out of print, Be Glad For The Song Has No Ending: An Incredible String Band Compendium is the definitive book about the ISB. Containing a wealth of interviews, essays, and ephemera from the band’s brief but tangled history, this new revised and expanded edition includes two new pieces by ISB member Rose Simpson on Witchseason Productions’ idiosyncratic offices and on recording with the ISB in the Sound Techniques studio, as well as interviews with Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys, folk musician Alasdair Roberts, and Ossian Brown of Coil and Cyclobe.
Contributors include Mike Heron, Robin Williamson, Rowan Williams, ISB manager and producer Joe Boyd, Andy Roberts, Billy Connolly, and Raymond Greenoaken.
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About the editor
Adrian Whittaker has written for The Wire, Shindig!, and Record Collector. In 2003 he edited Be Glad: An Incredible String Band Compendium. In 2019 he published Fitting Pieces To The Jigsaw, the definitive book on Irish psych-folk band Dr. Strangely Strange. He has also written and presented a number of music history documentaries for Resonance FM.
