At last, after ten years, nearly 1250 posts, the exhaustion of five laptops and very nearly the author himself, the Alan’s Album Archives website (www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com) is now a bona fide book series. The AAA has been reviewing everything by a select list of thirty acts or artists since its inception in 2008 and we mean everything: all the studio albums analysed in mind-numbing detail (we get upset if a review doesn’t make 7000 words!), every live album, every solo spin-off, rarities albums, box sets, all the important compilation albums, A sides, B sides, EP tracks, all the key books and DVDs, a guide to all the surviving TV clips, the best songs that are still unreleased, landmark concerts, important cover songs, ‘extracts from our website’s ‘top ten’ column looking at topics shared amongst our bands and an essay per book getting to the heart of what makes each of our chosen artists tick. Exclusive to these books compared to the website are three new sections: ‘biographies’ of all the key players, ‘thematic threads’ analysing themes that run through the book and three key influences that inspired the chosen acts to make their music. Everything our chosen golden thirty ever did should be in these books somewhere, from teenage doo-wop recordings to albums only released in Germany to obscure spin-off live albums, all in as close to chronological order as is humanly possible. It’s like a big record – both in terms of recording everything a band ever did and in the fact that we’ve presented it like a ‘record’ with an ‘A’ side and a ‘B’ side. Along the way we seek to ask ‘why?’ an album or song turned out the way it did, as well as the usual questions of ‘Who?’ ‘What?’ ‘When?’ and ‘Where?’ These books aren’t meant to be definitive, they’re not meant to be the final word on the music and they’re not meant to replace the official books – that’s why they’re the Alan’s Album Archives Guides, one fan’s attempt to be the big brother with the record collection you always dreamed of whispering in your ear and saying ‘don’t buy that, buy this!’ One book a month in the series is due to be released between June 2018 and December 2020 in a colourful way designed for use in tablet form (though they can be read in monochrome Kindle format if you tweak your colour settings slightly).
The AAA bibliography is now replete, with book 18 no mean feat, vibrations reaching up to become light, across 658 A4 pages for your eyes of sight, between these pages there does lie every studio, live, solo and compilation album piled most high, that’s 18 in-depth reviews would you believe, with mini-reviews of others all around if you can perceive, plus you can also gaze on the album by The Blue Jays, additionally a B-sides section adds more notes to life’s chord, with yet more goodies for you to absorb, an essay key concerts influences, outtakes, TV clips, books and DVDs, so that everything Moody and Blue is here in some sort of degree, to cover everything by the band is our scope, to swap ideas with fans our life’s hope, to give it a name is important to some denizens and we call it ‘New Horizons’. This book’s essay looks at the different yet equally troubled themes that make up the Moodies' canon, while the ‘thematic threads’ section looks at nostalgia, age and children. The ‘news, views and music top tens’ section includes such entries as weirdest album covers (starring a wizard and a hoover), bands who started their own record labels and AAA utopias. To give you a taste and to check your compatibility levels, Alan’s favourite song and album in this book are: ‘For My Lady’ and ‘Seventh Sojourn’.
