Killed (of Kids) a book by Huggy Bear
pre-order opens today for our most ambitious title yet. plus some other news...
Hello,
A much neglected newsletter here, and our apologies for that. There are a few bits of news to go through, here they are in reverse chronological order.
Killed (of Kids) a book by Huggy Bear
The Grass is Green in the Fields for You, alongside JABS in the US, are ready and set to publish Killed (of Kids) a book by Huggy Bear. A fine moment for the press as this is by far our longest running and most expansive project to date.
Killed (of Kids) is by Niki Elliott, Karen Hill, Jo Johnson, Chris Rowley, and Jon Slade. Edited by Ethan Swan, designed by Matthew Walkerdine.
Huggy Bear was a UK riot grrrl band that existed from 1991-1994. Outcast and outraged, they made a howling, squalling mess of punk, all the menace and freedom of flocking birds. The handful of records, zines, and memories that document this brief, bonfire lifespan sketch a blueprint for how to be in the world, for how to understand the forces of capitalism and patriarchy and capitulation and still resist. Huggy Bear was a group that let things be complicated, that considered themselves complicit, but never took that as a reason to surrender. There’s no band more important.
Killed (of Kids) is a book by the five members of Huggy Bear. It reproduces all seven zines made by the band during their lifespan alongside photos, correspondence, flyers and ephemera from their three year existence. This archive is joined by new text drawn from two years of interviews with the band members, carefully assembled into an extensive dialogue about intention, surprise, distress, encouragement.
The book is now available for pre-order on TGIGITFFY website and will be published and shipping on 16 November 2024. Launches are looking likely around the UK and US, more news on those soon. A sincere thank you to Niki, Karen, Jo, Chris and Jon for letting us work on this with them.
190mm x 250mm, 352 pages, full colour printing, section sewn, perfect bound, softcover, first edition.
Please note! The Grass is Green… is responsible for publishing the book in UK, Europe and beyond. If you are from the US, Canada and that side of the world, order from JABS.
Asparagus Piss Raindrop
Also currently available for pre-order is another project which has run alongside TGIGITFFY, but in a different manner. In 2017, as part of the Good Press responsibilities to Publication Studio Glasgow at the CCA, we put together a book collecting the history of Glasgow based, but internationally looking, Asparagus Piss Raindrop. This was intended to be an ongoing project where future iterations of the band and their performances would be collected, the book then republished. This didn’t happen for a few reasons, but the book lived, sort of. Maybe only a handful of copies were printed. Until now…
Asparagus Piss Raindrop (the book, this book) gathers a (near) complete history of the crytpo conceptual science fiction anti climax band of the same name. Active between the years of 2012 — 2017 and broadly based in Glasgow and its experimental music scene, the group performed at gigs, festivals, artist-led spaces and institutions internationally.
Gathered here are artefacts and evidence of the group’s activity up to the original date of publication, including but not limited to scores, email correspondence, reflective texts, photographs, drawings and planning documents. Across more than twenty chapters, significant, durational projects are surveyed alongside the partial, speculative and improvisatory. Asparagus Piss Raindrop’s work arises from the questions: How can we do things otherwise? What musical forms arise from and inform our daily experience? Performances typically draw on such things as recycled children’s games, group therapy, shapeshifting, declarations of ridiculous texts, geology, architectural intervention, gender theory, site specificity and slug reproduction.
Asparagus Piss Raindrop re-publishes the August 2017 edition of the book, which was produced in a limited run with Publication Studio Glasgow and Good Press, and includes a new chapter on the group’s final performance R&R Rat Race at the Witch Hazel Schoolfrom November 2017.
191 x 248mm, 292pp, perfect bound, B&W printed interior onto gloss stock, B&W printed cover onto yellow stock with fluro sticker affixed, first edition.
The book is now available for pre-order on TGIGITFFY website will be published and shipping by the end of September 2024. Very highly recommended!
A new website for the press
A very small, very logistical, thing happened and maybe no one noticed. We changed the website to make it better for both you and us. It is much easier to order the books. It has a more comprehensive and visual information and archive page. Most thrilling of all, something we’ve wanted to do for a long time, we have a submissions page. Go to the website and have a look, but the gist is:
The overarching concern of the press is MUSIC & SOUND, and we're interested in how that overlaps with performance, ephemera and artefact, visual history, and design, be that factual or fictional.
So please get in touch should that be of any interest!
It does also highlight that whilst you are signed up to this newsletter, there is also a newsletter available via the website, they will most likely be similar, if not the same.
Finally, we relocated…
To round up this bulletin, The Grass is Green in the Fields for You is no longer based in Glasgow, Scotland. We relocated! We now live and breathe in Reading, England. We left our jobs and we will have different concerns very soon. TGIGITFFY does indeed live on though. We have been enjoying the increased amount of sunshine and warmth, the joys of cycling around, and a different grocer at the end of the street.
Back to some form of work soon though, for now, bye!