He has a public meltdown while chaperoning Oasis at an awards ceremony; he’s lost joy in his bathroom full of rock’n’roll memorabilia; and his young son is in trouble at school for emulating rock star behaviour.Reluctantly Michael consults Mrs Henckel, a no-nonsense therapist with zero experience of pop culture. As Michael addresses his feelings about the past, in particular his failed teenage band, Mental Elf, he’s forced to confront the question: is it finally time to grow up and forget rock’n’roll?Michael Odell is a former contributing editor to Q magazine and has written about music for NME, the Guardian, the Independent and Spin, among others. Currently he does interviews and writes on family matters for The Times. He lives in Bristol."Please don't put your life in the hands of a rock 'n' roll band, who'll throw it all away." So advised Noel Gallagher in 1995 and Michael Odell ignored him anyway.One of Britain's most fearless rock interrogators, Odell turns his merciless searchlight on himself in this wry, compelling odyssey into the heart of his own - and rock n roll's - madness. Larks with the legends are all here (Bowie, McCartney, Mick `n' Keef ... Michael Buble) but it's his inner life which illuminates, his psyche traumatically crumbling as he confronts his chaotic past. Hilarious, tragic and timely, this is high farce in high (and low) places, uncovering why rock's lost highway is littered with the bodies of the righteous dreamers. Could it be because "the music people are all mad?" (Clue: yes.)' -- Sylvia Patterson, author of I'm Not with the Band `Hilarious and disarmingly honest; a journey into the neurosis of rock fame, but through doors you don't expect.' -- Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry `Rock Bottom is one of the best music books ever written, because Michael Odell knows music isn't about the musicians - it's about what it does to the listener, even if what it does ends up being wholly disastrous. It's sad, funny, fascinating and wise. And everyone who ever claimed a record changed their life should read it, and then think again.' -- Michael Hann, former Guardian music editor

    My list goes: The Velvet Underground, The Byrds, The Beach Boys, The Doors, and then I stall on the fifth. Creedence? The Band - although they're mostly Canadian. Simon and Garfunkel? Jefferson Airplane? The Lovin' Spoonful? But I plump for The Monkees."-Robert Forster In The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll, Robert Forster takes readers on an exhilarating trip through the past and present of popular music - from Bob Dylan, AC/DC and Nana Mouskouri through to Cat Power, Franz Ferdinand and ... Delta Goodrem. To accompany Forster's acclaimed writing for The Monthly, there are some stunning new pieces - 'The 10 Rules' and 'The 10 Bands I Wish I'd Been In' and an appreciation of Guy Clark - as well as a reflection on The Velvet Underground, a short story about Normie Rowe and a moving tribute to fellow Go-Between Grant McLennan. Funny and illuminating, The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll shows a great critic at work.

    5SOS Annual

    * A beautifully designed resource chronicling one of gaming's most massive, dynamic universes! * MMORPG.com's Game of the Year 2009–2011! * 2014 marks the entry of EVE Online into its second decade!

    "BEFORE You Get Your Puppy" covers the first three developmental deadlines covering the period of puppy selection until your puppy's first week at home. 1st Developmental Deadline: Your Education About Puppy Education - Before you search for a puppy you need to complete your education about puppy education. You need to know how to select a good puppy and how puppies work. Selecting a puppy is similar to selecting a car: Do lots of research beforehand and "test drive" a wide variety. But first, you need to learn how to drive. 2nd Developmental Deadline: Evaluating Your Prospective Puppy's Progress - Before you choose your puppy, you need to know how to assess your prospective puppy's current socialization and educational status. Regardless of breed or breeding, if socialization, housetraining, and basic manners are not well underway by eight weeks of age, the puppy is already developmentally retarded. 3rd Developmental Deadline: Errorless Housetraining & Chewtoy-Training Make certain that an errorless housetraining and chewtoy-training program is instituted from the very first day your puppy comes home.

    24 hours later more than R160 billion rand of this fortune was wiped out. The Steinhoff Empire, that took 20 years to build into an international business giant, had crumbled overnight. Markus Jooste, Steinhoff’s flashy CEO, resigned via SMS and has since been fleeing an avalanche of scandals and accusations: luxury homes for a blonde mistress, allegations of fraud, racing horses and unparalleled extravagance, a lavish, black Jaguar for an old university residence… What exactly happened here? Who knew what? What is Steinhoff, who is Markus Jooste and what does it all have to do with the so called Stellenbosch mafia? Where does business tycoon Christo Wiese, Shoprite and Pepkor fit in and where is the pensioners’ money? Well-known financial writer James-Brent Styan unpacks these and other questions in this astounding tale of power and greed, of secrets and deceit, and ultimately the biggest financial breakdown in the history of South Africa. Through interviews with trustworthy sources, revelations from confidential documents and in-depth research about Steinhoff’s history, Styan uncovers what the group doesn’t want you to know. Follow the Money: The story of Steinhoff, Markus Jooste and the Stellenbosch Boys is a gripping financial thriller that will be told as cautionary tale or salacious scandal in both boardrooms and living rooms for decades to come.

    She was the oldest of seven kids; raised in poverty, married at 13, and a mother of 4 by the time she was 17. Few would have expected this type of adolescence to produce a woman who was the winner of every music award imaginable, the author of two New York Times bestselling books and a 2003 Kennedy Center honoree, and whose life story was the subject of an Academy Award winning movie.In You're Cookin' It Country, Loretta Lynn shares over 120 of her favorite recipes. From the dishes her mother cooked as she was growing up to the meals she has prepared for her family over the years. Also included are more than 35 stories relating to food as only Loretta can tell them. These include stories of her "Mommy" going out hunting for rabbit and possum to the more recent story of Jack White of the rock group The White Stripes flying to Nashville to have a dinner of chicken and dumplings with Loretta. There is also the story of her husband to be, Doolittle, buying a pie from her at an auction only to discover that Loretta had mistaken salt for the sugar when she baked it.You're Cookin' It Country will be a must have purchase for the millions of fans Loretta has made all over the world.Loretta's first book, Coal Miner's Daughter (1978) has sold more than one million copies. Her second book, Still Woman Enough (2002) has sold more than 200,000 copies. Both were New York Times bestsellers.

    Glen Campbell's boy-next-door persona belied his hedonistic, near-fatal lifestyle. It all started like a dream - the rise from ruthless poverty as one of twelve children in a small Arkansas town and the against-all struggle for stardom, first as a brilliant studio musician (behind artists such as Sinatra, Elvis, Ray Charles, and Nat King Cole), then as a solo performer who in the sixties and seventies sold some 45 million records (including the timeless classics "Wichita Lineman, " "Gentle on My Mind, " "By the Time I Get to Phoenix, " and, of course, "Rhinestone Cowboy") and hosted his own top-rated TV show. Too quickly, though, the dream became a nightmare of mad spending, multiple marriages, and abusive and all-too-public affairs, as well as wildly escalating alcohol and cocaine dependencies that threatened not only his career but his very existence. Now a Christian and in recovery, he has stepped back into the spotlight a whole man at last. With the help of bestselling author Tom Carter, Glen Campbell has given us a book that is both a star-studded show-biz memoir and a spiritual testimony that radiates great faith and emotion. Rhinestone Cowboy is his personal gift of thanks to the millions who have supported him through decades of good times and bad - and to the vast new audience who have grown to know him through his frequent appearances on cable television's 700Club and other Christian TV shows. "A lot of people are going to be surprised by my story, and I hope that a lot are going to be inspired, " Campbell declares. "All I know for sure is that it's time to tell it. And as honestly as I can, that's just what I've gone and done."

    I’ve gone back and repurchased a lot of the CDs I sold off—which, thanks to the bargain bin at Half-Price Books, has actually been a fairly inexpensive proposition—and reacquainted myself with groups that I once adored before they died off, broke up, or settled into respectable but uninspired careers. My goal is to rediscover what I saw in these bands when I was a teenager, and figure out why the music went from enlightening to deadening so rapidly, from the bucolic early years of Lollapalooza to the apocalyptic assault of Woodstock ’99. Because as easy as it is now to take potshots at the mumbly, histrionic sounds of the ’90s, this is music that meant a great deal to me and many others at the time. Out of respect for my teenaged self, I’m giving it an honest re-examination.Each installment of Whatever Happened To Alternative Nation? will be tied to a year, starting with 1990—which I’m packaging with this introduction, since it’s really a prologue year—and proceed chronologically up through 1999. However, this isn’t intended to be a definitive history of grunge; I won’t be writing about every single Seattle band, or even most Seattle bands. A lot of it won’t even be about grunge; I also plan on looking at the feel-good bro tunes of Sublime, and the ironic arena-rock posturing of Urge Overkill, among other groups, and how they fit in with the overall narrative of ’90s alt-rock’s rise and fall. I promise I’ll completely overlook at least one of your favorite bands; please don’t take it personally. As a general rule, I’m interested in discussing ’90s bands that were played regularly on MTV and on the radio, even in a small city like my hometown of Appleton, Wisconsin, because this was the last time (as of now, anyway) that rock music acted as the engine under the hood of American pop culture. Inevitably, this series will reflect what I liked and cared about back then, which fortunately matches up with what millions of other teenaged residents of Alternative Nation liked and cared about. More than an exercise in nostalgia—or, worse, an excuse to pick on bands that haven’t aged all that well—I hope to give those who deserve it their due, and maybe figure out how something that seemed so promising at the time went so wrong." - excerpt from Whatever Happened To Alternative Nation?

    A book that has and continues to move hearts.

    Six prefabs, three pubs, a school, a church and a yard where the electricity board kept cables. Two long rows of terraced house faced each other at one end of the street; and, at the other, big houses with big doors and even bigger windows. There was a phone box next to one of the pubs and when it rang everyone came out to see who it was for. It was a tiny road - at one end of which there was Greenwich Park. It was heaven being there, its beauty always shone on me from the trees at sunsets and from the bushes in the rain. I was there in all weathers. It was 1964, I was ten years old and this is when my memory really begins. The previous decade is built up from vague recollections that lean heavily on the imagination.'Chris Difford is a rare breed. As a member of one of London's best-loved bands, the Squeeze co-founder has made a lasting contribution to English music with hits such as 'Cool For Cats', 'Up The Junction', 'Labelled With Love', 'Hourglass' and 'Tempted'. Some Fantastic Place is his evocative memoir of an upbringing in Sixties' South London and his rise to fame in one of the definitive bands of the late Seventies and early Eighties.

    How big was the pressure? How deep was the division? Those were the questions that would beg answering long after the Chicago Bulls had completed their strife-ridden 1997-98 season in the National Basketball Association, a season that often seemed to resemble a house of mirrors for both the Bulls and their fans.

    Why did Kurt Cobain write "Polly", his graphic anti-rape song? What is "Teen Spirit"? Who is Floyd the Barber? As Chuck Crisafulli answers these questions he chronicles Nirvana's rise to fame and the emergence of grunge. 90 full-color and b&w photos.

    It will keep you entertained for hours. It's the very unusual story of Paul Henry - from his eventful childhood to his adventurous career in journalism to his recent outrageous comments on television which divided the country.A natural-born story teller, Paul spins many great yarns in this book. It's fascinating insight into his complex character. He's surprising -- he doesn't adhere to any prescribed set of beliefs. He's bold -- he set himself up as an international news correspondent working out of his Masterton lounge. And he's versatile -- turning his hand to running a cafe, running for Parliament and running from terrorists.

    The answers will surprise and delight you as Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, explains how dogs perceive their daily worlds, each other, and that other quirky animal, the human.Temple Grandin meets Stephen Pinker in this engaging and informative look at what goes on inside the minds of dogs—from a cognitive scientist with a background at The New Yorker.With more than 52 million pet dogs in America today, it’s clear we are a nation of unabashed dog-lovers. Yet the relationship between dogs and humans remains a fascinating mystery, as no one really knows what goes on in the canine mind. Now, in Inside of a Dog, Alexandra Horowitz fuses her perspectives as both scientist and dog-owner to deliver a fresh look at the world of dogs—as seen from the animal’s point of view. Inspired by her years of living with her own dog, Pumpernickel, who was a constant source of delight and mystery, Horowitz’s mind became filled with questions and ideas. In crisp, clear prose, she draws on her research in the field of dog cognition to give readers a sense of a dog’s perceptual and cognitive abilities—and paints a picture of what the canine experience is like. Horowitz’s own scientific journey, and the insights she uncovered, allowed her to understand her dog better and appreciate her more.Containing up-to-the minute research and providing many moments of dog-behavior recognition, this lively and absorbing book helps dog owners to see their best friend’s behavior in a different, and revealing light, allowing them to understand their pets and enjoy their company even more.