He was a soldier. He was a flag-waver for the Labour Party. He is Billy Bragg, best known as a passionate political songwriter and urbane folk singer, but equally admired for his offbeat love songs. Billy Bragg is a British institution who never went out of fashion (he was never in fashion in the first place). In America he was chosen as the spiritual heir to legendary protest singer Woody Guthrie, beating rival claims from the likes of Bob Dylan and Neil Young. In the UK he surfaced on current affairs TV programmes during the 2001 election dressed as a Roman legionary advocating tactical voting to keep the Tories out. Billy Bragg is a one-off and Still Suitable for Miners is his official story, a portrait of a peerless entertainer and a fearless campaigner growing up in Britain in the years after rock 'n' roll. The book includes childhood photos and previously unseen images from Billy's personal archive.

    No album represented this rip-it-up-and-start-again movement better than the act's breakthrough 1982 LP, Rio. A cohesive album with a retro-futuristic sound-influences include danceable disco, tangy funk, swaggering glam, and Roxy Music's art-rock-the full-length sold millions and spawned smashes such as "Hungry Like the Wolf" and the title track.However, Rio wasn't a success everywhere at first; in fact, the LP had to be buffed-up with remixes and reissued before it found an audience in America. The album was further buoyed by colorful music videos, which established Duran Duran as leaders of an MTV-driven second British Invasion, and the group's cutting-edge visual aesthetic. Via extensive new interviews with band members and other figures who helped Rio succeed, this book explores how and why Rio became a landmark pop-rock album, and examines how the LP was both a musical inspiration-and a reflection of a musical, cultural, and technology zeitgeist.

    Understanding the unique talents and training of musicians, veteran music career counselor Angela Myles Beeching presents a wealth of creative solutions for career advancement in the highly competitive music industry. Step-by-step instructions detail how to design promotional materials, book performances, network and access resources and assistance, jump start a stalled career, and expand your employment opportunities while remaining true to your music. Beeching untangles artist management and the recording industry, explains how to find and create performance opportunities, and provides guidance on grant writing and fundraising, day jobs, freelancing, and how to manage money, time, and stress. The companion website puts numerous up-to-date and useful internet resources at your fingertips. This essential handbook goes beyond the usual how-to, helping musicians tackle the core questions about career goals, and create a meaningful life as a professional musician. Beyond Talent is the ideal companion for students and professionals, emerging musicians and mid-career artists.

    Life-saving canaries, empire-rescuing geese, dogs who can sniff out disease, ships' cats and even a ship's pig.All these animals are heroes to me - whether they risked their lives to pull people out of the ruins of a bombed building, won a race against impossible odds, danced their way to an Olympic gold medal or have been so incredibly badly behaved that they have managed to inspire something good (Stoffel, the honey badger, I'm thinking of you).Writing this book has brought home to me that there is no such thing as an ordinary animal.Every one has a heroic story to tell.

    Being Britney is the compelling account of a talented, troubled and talked-about modern icon, whose life, work and individual significance will be recognised for many decades to come.'After years of being framed as a victim, Britney deserves to be celebrated as the fighter, inspiration and enigma she truly is.' - Jennifer Otter Bickerdike

    He should have died. Doctors advised that if he did survive, there would be little of him left. If that wasn't enough, he went on to contract MRSA as a result of an operation to his skull and spent six months in hospital. Initially, Edwyn couldn't speak, read, write, walk, sit up, or feed himself. He had lost all movement in his right side and was suffering from aphasia—an inability to use or understand language. When he initially recovered consciousness the only words he could say were 'Grace,' 'Maxwell,' 'yes,' and 'no.' But with the help of his partner Grace and their 18-year-old son Will, Edwyn fought back. Slowly, and with monumental effort, he began to teach his brain to read and speak all over again—with some areas of his mind it was if he had been a slate wiped literally clean. Through a long and arduous road of therapy he began to re-inhabit his body until he could walk again. Grace's story is an intimate and inspiring account of what you do to survive when your husband is all but taken away without warning by a stroke.

    The rocker settled in Berlin, where he would make his “Berlin Trilogy”—the albums Low, Heroes, and Lodger, which are now considered some of the most critically acclaimed and innovative of the late twentieth century. But Bowie’s time in Berlin was about more than producing new music. As Tobias Rüther describes in this fascinating tale of Bowie’s Berlin years, the musician traveled to West Berlin—the capital of his childhood dreams and the city of Expressionism—to repair his body and mind from the devastation of drug addiction, delusions, and mania.             Painting a vivid picture of Bowie’s life in the Schöneberg area of the city, Rüther describes the artist’s friendships and collaborations with his roommate, Iggy Pop, as well as Brian Eno and Tony Visconti. Rüther illustrates Bowie’s return to painting, days cycling to the Die Brücke museum, and his exploration of the city’s nightlife, both the wild side and the gay scene. In West Berlin, Bowie also met singer and actress Romy Haag; came to know Hansa Studios, where he would record Low and Heroes; and even landed the part of a Prussian aristocrat in Just a Gigolo, starring alongside Marlene Dietrich. Eventually Rüther uses Bowie and his explorations of the cultural and historical undercurrents of West Berlin to examine the city itself: divided, caught in the Cold War, and how it began to redefine itself as a cultural metropolis, turning to the arts to start a new history. Tying in with an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, in September, 2014, Heroes tells the fascinating story of how the music of the future arose from the spirit of the past. It is an unforgettable look at one of the world’s most renowned musicians in one of its most inspiring cities.

    We'll hear of the great love stories ranging from Johnny Cash and June Carter in the 1960s to Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, who married in 2005. We'll get the truth of the tragedies that led to the loss of three stars all in the same month, starting the rumor of the "Opry Curse." We'll learn how after being stabbed, shot, and maimed, Trace Adkins calls his early honky-tonk years "combat country," and we'll find inspiration from DeFord Bailey, an African American harmonica player in 1927 crippled by childhood polio who rose to fame as one of the first Opry stars. Our hearts will break for Willie Nelson, who lost his only son on Christmas Day, and soar for Amy Grant and Vince Gill, who found true love. Based on over 150 firsthand interviews with the stars of The Grand Ole Opry, these are stories that tell the heart of country--the lives that are lived and inspire the songs we love.

    The "Getting Started" section will give you a great overview and help explain some things for the very beginner. Next, learn some easy stitch patterns in the section "Basic Stitches." When you're ready to try your first project, take a look at the "Potholder Patterns" section, but make sure to read the "Pattern Information & Notes" first for some important stuff that pertains to all the patterns. The ebook is also filled with photos to help you along your way.Why Potholders?Potholders are a great project to work with Tunisian crochet because:• The back/wrong side is hidden between the two layers• Tunisian crochet makes a very thick final product• Working square shapes is easy for the beginnerHave fun, and happy hooking to you!

    In the early hours of Thursday, August 8, 1963, at Sears Crossing near Cheddington in Buckinghamshire, £2.6 million (£45 million today) in unmarked £5, £1 and 10-shilling notes was stolen from the Glasgow to London mail train in a violent and daring raid which took forty-six minutes. Quickly dubbed "the Crime of the Century," it has captured the imagination of the public and the world's media for fifty years, taking its place in British folklore. Ronnie Biggs, Bruce Reynolds, and Buster Edwards became household names, and their accounts have fed the myths and legends of The Great Train Robbery. But what really happened? This definitive account dismantles the myths and strips away the sensational headlines to reveal a flawed, darker, and more complex story. The crime, the police investigation, the trial, two escapes from high-security prisons, and an establishment under siege are all laid bare in astonishing detail for an epic tale of crime and punishment. Fifty years later, here is the story set out in full for the first time—a true-life crime thriller, and also a vivid slice of British social history.

    Of those 34 years, 17 have been spent putting his body through hell in perhaps the toughest football competition on the planet. Lockyer has, quite literally, spent half his lifetime in the NRL. By season's end Lockyer is set to hold the all–time appearance record for club, state, and country. The remarkable longevity of Lockyer's excellence has earned him the respect of fellow athletes around the world and the adoration of fans everywhere. But while undoubtedly one of the most recognizable athletes in Australia, Lockyer has largely maintained his privacy, rarely, if ever, allowing fans a look at the man behind the man. In this book Lockyer, for the first time, opens up on the people, places, incidents, and events which have shaped the life and career of an Australian sporting icon. From his days growing up and working at the family–owned truck stop on the outskirts of a tiny Queensland town, to his arrival at the Broncos as a teenage sensation, and subsequent ascension toward rugby league immortality, Lockyer will shed new light on some of the biggest names and stories of the past two decades. Contributions from Lockyer's family and friends, as well as legendary figures give this book a unique edge, each providing a rare insight into their view on Lockyer the player, the leader, and the man.

    Collating classic music press and glossy magazine articles, Morrissey in Conversation describes the rocker's crazy-quilt career in his own words. It’s all here — how the Smiths created 1980s indie rock; the anti-rock credentials, feminist sympathies, and militant vegetarianism; Morrisey’s obsession with pop culture and girl groups, his (a)sexuality, and sardonic salvos against the mediocre. This is the story of how one man bewitched the ‘80s, peaked in the ‘90s, and triumphed in the new millennium.

    in January 1968, The Who Sell Out was, according to critic Dave Marsh, a complete backfire--the album sold well, but not spectacularly [and was] ultimately a nostalgic in-joke: Who but a pop intellectual could appreciate such a thing? Further rarifying its in-joke status was its unapologetic Englishness; 13 tracks stitched together in a mock pirate radio broadcast, without a DJ, with cool, anglocentric commercials to boot. In the 36 years since its release, Sell Out, though still not the best selling release in The Who's catalog, has been embraced by a growing number of fans who regard it as the band's best work, one of the few recordings of the late 1960s that best represents the ambitious aesthetic possibilities of the concept album without becoming mired in a bog of smug, self-aggrandizing, high art aspirations. Sell Out, powerfully and ecstatically, articulates the nexus of pop music and pop culture.As much as it is an expression of the band's expanding sonic palette, Sell Out also functions as a critique of the rock and roll lifestyle. Not the cliched mantra of sex, drugs, and rock and roll but in the ways that commercial advertising fabricates a youth-oriented cultural reality by hawking pimple cream, deodorant, food, musical equipment, etc., and linking it with rock and roll. In this sense Sell Out is a reflective work, one that struggles with rock and roll as a cultural expression that aspires to aesthetic permanence while marketed as ephemera. From this conflict emerges a pop art masterpiece.

    By turns hilarious, cautionary, poignant and powerful, the Stop Me...stories collected here include encounters with some of rock's most iconic stars, including David Bowie, Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Elvis Costello, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Smiths, R.E.M. and Pearl Jam. From backstage brawls and drug blow-outs, to riots, superstar punch-ups, hotel room confessionals and tour bus lunacy, these are stories from the madness of a music scene now long gone. Allan Jones is an award-winning British music journalist and editor. In 1974, he applied for a job on the UK's best-selling music paper as a junior reporter, signing off his application with "Melody Maker needs a bullet up the arse. I'm the gun, pull the trigger†?. He was editor of Melody Maker from 1984 to 1997 and until 2014 editor of music and film monthly Uncut.

    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.