'The music business is a cruel and shallow money ranch, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.' - Hunter S. Thompson

It's the negative side that features mainly in this bilious collection of quotes from those involved in the industry up to their teeth. They have a go at themselves and their colleagues in a book that spares nobody's blushes, least of all their own.

The chapters are titled after the names of Bob Dylan songs. Dylan himself, who wasn't short of an insult or two himself in his time, also features as a quoter. ('Folk music is just a bunch of fat people.')

Music may be a pure art form but musical people, on the evidence of this collection, are not. Whether they're speaking to the press or off the record - as it were - they seem to glory in washing their dirty linen, using the kind of language one doesn't usually hear in Sunday School.

Sample at your peril.