OUT THIS WEEK! SHIPPING NOW!
‘UP THE PACKET – ONE MAN’S CRISP ODYSSEY’ BY SIMON WILLIAMS – PUBLISHED MAY 14TH
Simon Williams has written for the NME, DJ’d on the Xfm radio station and partied hard in the vitally unofficial part-time ELO fan club. When he isn’t frantically authoring books about crisp packets, he runs the Fierce Panda record company. ‘Up The Packet’ is his fourth book, following on from ‘The Kite Who Was Scared Of Heights’ (for children of all ages), ‘1-2 Cut Your Hair! The Story Of Johnny Moped’, and ‘Pandamonium! How Not To Run A Record Company’
Readership: Crisp lovers, collectors, nostalgia geeks, and fans of retro graphic design.
‘Up The Packet – One Man’s Crisp Odyssey’ is published May 14th. Compiled by former NME journalist, Fierce Panda Records head honcho, all round indie rock legend, and crisp packet collector Simon Williams, ‘Up The Packet’ details one man’s journey through rock n’roll and eating crisps.
Since 1977, Simon has amassed more than 8,000 crisp packets.They are all empty, they all live in shoeboxes, and they are all different. Apart from the swapsies.
‘Up The Packet’ is a tale about those crisp bags and their amazingly zinging innards: from the Tayto potato to the Spudos spud; from the wartime birth of Golden Wonder to the 1990s stock & awe of Walkers; from the ‘70s kid-friendly frenzy to the growth in grown-up snacks and into the indie credibility revolution. It takes the reader on a crunchy cultural journey through the entire history of the potato crisp, packed with solid packet factettes and frankly wild snacking theories. Oh, and it delivers some fabulous new full colour pictures of crisp bags through the past 50 years in the ‘Don’t Look Bag In Anger’ pull-out photo spread.
But that isn’t all, because ‘Up The Packet’ packs in a heap of music references, as you may or many not expect from a book title which riffs on the Libertines’ debut album. Who is a Soho Salad? Why is Motörhead’s Backstage Buffet? What is Kid Jensen? Where is the actual epicentre of the actual crispy rock’n’roll universe? Is there parking?? Will there be snacks??? The fashions, the fads, the songs, the TV ads, the crazy flavourings and the hazy lost favourites and - of course - the long and fact-finding road from Smiths Salt’n’Shake to Splodgenessabounds, ‘Up The Packet’ is a crisp-lover’s paradise in rock’n’rolling form.
For Crisp lovers, collectors, nostalgia geeks, and fans of retro graphic design.
Simon will be discussing his book at a lot of events. There are three this week including events at the Social in London, The Grand in Brighton and the lovely ‘Old Ivy House’ in Clerkenwell along with Firece Panda band ‘Bag Of Cans’ playing a live set.
May 14th The Social, London
Cheers
Ian & Duncan