Steeped in the chaotic swirl of the Manchester music scene, David Nolan is the critically acclaimed author of Bernard Sumner: Confusion and I Swear I Was There: The Gig That Changed The World. He's also an award-winning former Granada TV producer with 150 television credits to his name including documentaries on the Sex Pistols, The Smiths and Echo and the Bunneymen.
The definitive book about The Smiths, one of the most beloved, respected, and storied indie rock bands in music history. They were, their fans believe, the best band in the world. Hailing from Manchester, England, The Smiths--Morrissey, Johnny Marr, Andy Rourke, and Mike Joyce--were critical and popular favorites throughout their mid-1980s heyday and beyond. To this day, due to their unforgettable songs and lyrics, they are considered one of the greatest British rock groups of all time--up there with the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, and the Clash. Tony Fletcher paints a vivid portrait of the fascinating personalities within the group: Morrissey, the witty, literate lead singer whose loner personality and complex lyrics made him an icon for teenagers who felt forlorn and forgotten; his songwriting partner Marr, the gregarious guitarist who became a rock god for a generation of indie kids; and the talented, good-looking rhythm section duo of bassist Rourke and drummer Joyce. Despite the band's tragic breakup at the height of their success, A Light That Never Goes Out is a celebration: the saga of four working-class kids from a northern English city who come together despite contrasting personalities, find a musical bond, inspire a fanatical following, and leave a legacy that changed the music world--and the lives of their fans.
At the end of the 1970s, Manchester seemed to be sliding into the dustbin of history. Today the city is an international destination for culture and sport, and one of the fastest-growing urban regions in Europe. This book offers a first-hand account of what happened in between. Arriving in Manchester as a wide-eyed student in 1979, Andy Spinoza went on to establish the arts magazine City Life before working for the Manchester Evening News and creating his own PR firm. In a forty-year career he has encountered a who’s who of Manchester personalities, from cultural icons such as Tony Wilson to Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson and influential council leaders Sir Richard Leese and Sir Howard Bernstein. His remarkable account traces Manchester’s gradual emergence from its post-industrial malaise, centring on the legendary nightclub the Haçienda and the cultural renaissance it inspired.
Is it possible that various disciplines, theorists and cultural commentators have been hurtling down a blind alley in the last thirty years, searching for the holy grail of the postmodern? What if, after all, we have never have been postmodern? Or what if we are, instead, now living 'after postmodernity'? As global culture rushes off the cliff of catastrophe with its neo-liberal, neo-conservative ideologies mangled in the process, this book provides theory at the speed of light designed to capture the fast flickering images of the real, gone before you can blink in today's accelerated culture.
Resistance and the City focuses on the diverse strategies of resistance and subversion that challenge the stability of the hegemonic order of urban communities.
*** The definitive collection of the Joy Division photographs of Kevin Cummins, including interviews with Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris. A ROUGH TRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR A LOUDER THAN WAR BOOK OF THE YEAR "Lovers of Joy Division, revel in Juvenes! Dazzling... Glorious..." LOUDER THAN WAR The iconic images captured by Cummins - from snowy bridges and dark rehearsal rooms to electrifying live performances - helped to define Joy Division and cement their place in music history. Originally published in an ultra-limited run of just 226 copies, Juvenes is a book with legendary status. Now comprehensively updated with new material and images that have never been published in a book before, this new edition will allow fans to own it for the first time. Also containing insightful and moving essays from the band's family, contemporaries and fans including David Peace and Pat Nevin, Juvenes is a striking, poignant celebration of a truly special band. With a foreword by Ian Rankin. "Whenever I picture Joy Division, it's through Kevin Cummins' camera lens. Never before or since has one photographer captured a band's story so well." TIM BURGESS "I first saw Kevin Cummins' photographs of Joy Division when I was a music-obsessed teenager. The stark black and white shots captured perfectly the austere and serious nature of the music. Look at this book and dream a new future into being. God knows we need one." BOBBY GILLESPIE
This book is about forms of media that have reflected or increased consciousness of - a sense of place or a regional identity. From landscape painting in the Romantic era to newspaper coverage of devolution, the chapters explore, through contextualized case studies, the aesthetics of a wide range of local, regional and grassroots forms of media.
The impact of digital global media, geopolitical changes and migration demands new theorizations within memory studies. Despite the growing field of media memory studies, the impact from film and media studies has been scarce within memory studies. This unique study offers new theorizations of three crucial concepts for media memory studies: remediation, transculturality and the archive. This book takes a closer look at the media specificity of archival footage and how it is adapted, translated and appropriated. In its original approach this work reflects upon the role of documentary film images for the construction of memory. By merging film and media studies with memory studies the work offers multiple theoretical and methodological approaches for everyone interested in the heritage of audiovisual media: film and media scholars, memory scholars, historians, art historians, social scientists, librarians or archivists, curators and festival programmers alike.
30-Second Rock Music starts with 1950s rock'n'roll (and its roots) and explores blues and folk, progressive and heavy metal, punk, indie and alt rock, profiling extraordinary bands and musicians along the way. Featuring groups as diverse as Wilco, The Killers, Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Wonder and The White Stripes, this book promises rock fans the world tour of a lifetime, from Detroit to Tokyo and everywhere in between.