Amy Spencer's book DIY: the Rise of Lo-Fi Culture is finally out.

Behind a very niftily-designed cover (by Michal Cupid with an illustration by Rachel Slampt), Amy traces the origins of today's zine/underground music/anti-corporate culture back to the old underground presses, early mail art, the SF fanzines of the 30s, and so on, and describes the ideas behind these cultural currents. She quotes or interviews everyone from skiffle musician Chas McDevitt to Gina Birch to Richard Hell to Tribe 8's Lynn Breedlove to a bunch of interesting people I'd never even heard of before.

I had no idea Amy was going to cover so much ground in this book. It is astonishingly wide-ranging, but clearly and concisely written - although she is doing a phD at the moment, there's no trace at all of any academic jargon. It contains lots of useful stuff I didn't know (which, oddly, includes the real surname of someone I've known for over a decade)!