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[[Category:New Reviews|Entertainment]]==Entertainment==__NOTOC__{{newreview|author=Francine Stock|title=In Glorious Technicolor: A Century of Film and How it has Shaped Us|rating=4.5|genre=Entertainment|summary=Many of us have been captivated from an early age by the world of movies, whether introduced to them by visits to the cinema, or watching them on TV, video and latterly DVD. Author and presenter Francine Stock’s lifelong love affair with the medium began when she was taken as a child to see ‘My Fair Lady’ on the large screen. A little later, for her the most memorable thing about the summer of 1970 was not the weather, but repeated viewings of ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535645</amazonuk!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Martin KelnerPatti Smith|title=Sit Down and Cheer: A History Year of Sport on TVthe Monkey
|rating=4
|genre=SportBiography|summary=Like many English sports fansOn the coast of Santa Cruz, Patti Smith enters the majority lunar year of the calories I burn are used up by shouting at the TV monkey - one packed with mischief, sorrow, and occasionally going to the shops for more beer and crispsunexpected moments. Sports books tend to be about In a stranger's words, ''Anything is possible: after all, it's the sport itself or biographies year of those who expended great effort to reach the top monkey''. As Smith wanders the coast of their chosen sport. But Santa Cruz in solitude, she reflects on a year that brings huge shifts in Martin Kelner's 'Sit Down her life - loss and Cheer: A History of Sport ageing are faced head on TV', there is finally a book for as it the less energetic among usshifting political waters in America.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>140812923X</amazonuk>1526614758
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter DoggettWalton_Ask|title=The Man Who Sold The World: David Bowie And The 1970sAsk For Blues|author=Malcolm Walton|rating=43.5|genre=EntertainmentAutobiography|summary=With hindsight, it’s difficult Malcolm Walton's book is clearly a memoir about his introduction to argue with the oft-expressed opinion that David Bowie was the single most important rock musician Trad Jazz scene of the 1970s. Having been a perpetual ‘one to watch’ from around 1966 onwards late 1950s and early 1960s, but with only one hit during that decade, ‘Space Oddity’, from 1972 onwards he went through several remarkable self-reinventions has chosen to write it in musical stylethe form of a novel, with an uncanny knack of being able claiming in his prologue that this would give the book a different approach to pre-empt the next big trendmusic memoir. In examining His protagonist 'Martin' takes on Malcolm's mantle and begins with his whole career but focusing largely on first discovery of the Salvation Army band with his work throughout that particular decade, Peter Doggett looks specifically at every song he recorded, including cover versionsgrandfather. There are also boxed-out features on each album, and articles on related topics such as ‘The Art This catapults him into a love of Minimalism’ and ‘The Heart of Plastic Soul’. He concludes that by 1979 the man’s extraordinary creativity was more or less spent and his subsequent outputmusic, successful though it may have beeninitially taking piano lessons, was in effect treading water up to and later delving into his ‘elegant, unannounced retirement’ in 2007true love – the trumpet.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548879</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Scarlett ThomasMoore Bientot|title=Monkeys with Typewriters: How to Write Fiction and Unlock the Secret Power of StoriesA Bientot...|author=Roger Moore
|rating=4
|genre=ReferenceEntertainment|summary=I really wasnThe news of the death of Sir Roger Moore in May 2017 came as a great shock: he was one of those people you knew would go on forever. There was just one small glimmer of light in the sadness - the news that a matter of days before his death he't expecting a d delivered the finished manuscript of his book about how , ''À bientôt…'', to write fiction to change my TV viewing habitshis publishers. Alter Just a few months later a copy landed on my desk and I didn't even bother to look as though I could resist reading? Possiblyit straight away. Improve my writing? Hopefully. But watching Grand Designs in a completely different light?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857863789</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lois BannerMaslanka Sherlock|title=MarilynSherlock: The Passion Puzzle Book|author=Christopher Maslanka and the ParadoxSteve Tribe
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=With the possible exception of Princess Diana, Marilyn Monroe is probably the most written-about deceased woman in twentieth-century history. The thirty-six years of her life and the manner of her death will no doubt continue to provide an opportunity for as many writers as they have since her sudden passing. After a decade of research Lois Banner, a Professor of History and Gender Studies at university in California, has added another weighty tome to the relevant shelves. As a self-styled pioneer of second-wave feminism and the new women’s history, she has some interesting insights to offer into her subject’s life as a gender role model.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408814102</amazonuk>
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{{newreview
|author=Kirk Blows
|title=Hammered: Heavy tales from the hard rock highway
|rating=3
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Kirk Blows is Who doesn't love a good puzzle, especially those really fiendish ones that get the former editor of brain working extra hard rock journal Metal Hammer. Just ? There really is nothing to compare to confusethat buzz we get from the Aha! moment, he is also well known as a sports writer when everything falls into place and an authority on 'the other Hammers', namely West Ham FCsolution reveals itself. However this book is nothing If puzzles are your thing then you may wish to do with sport. Instead it devotes its attention put your grey cells to a brace of his interviews the test with various hard rock luminaries. These took place for ''The Sherlock Puzzle Book'', based on the journal some years ago, and have now been revised and updated for book publicationpopular TV series.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0859654850</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude CarriereCorcoran_Dylan|title=This is Not Do You Mr Jones?: Bob Dylan with the End of the Book;Poets and Professors|author=Neil Corcoran
|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=In many ways, the cover Bob Dylan's award of my edition of this book is perfectly appropriate. Huge, bold serif script, with nothing but the typeface; a declamatory instance of Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016 'for having created new poetic expressions within the art great American song tradition' proved highly controversial. It inevitably led some people in the most common of fonts, literary world to take stock and that perfect semi-colon look at the end of the book's name - proving that that itself is not the be-all his work and end-allreputation with a fresh eye. Buy this book, as you can, This volume of essays was first published in electronic form2002, and you might see this cover for ten seconds at most, but it is so much part and parcel of what's withinnow reissued with a new foreword by Will Self.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552450</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Molly CarrKyncl_Stream|title=A Sherlock Holmes Who's Who (With of Course Dr.Watson)Stream Punks|author=Robert Kyncl and Maany Peyvan|rating=24.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Given the amount written about Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, even the most dedicated I watch quite a lot of Sherlockians must sometimes require YouTube. I play music videos when I want to listen to a refresher on the charactersparticular song I don't already have in my collection. As I'm certainly not use it to find out how to do things, with the most dedicated of instruction videos they seem to have for pretty much anything. At the gym, although I love Holmes 'll stick it on on my phone, prop it up on the cross-trainer and have read watch some behind the scenes interviews with the entire canoncast of my favourite shows. And sometimes I'll treat it as if it is Netflix, I was eagerly anticipating the chance to remind myself of those withinwatch series with new episodes releasing every few days, exclusively on YouTube. Having a new smart TV adds an extra, easy way to watch without having to plug in my laptop or squint at a small phone screen. SadlySo yes, I like YouTube and I use YouTube. But I didn't know a whole lot about the site it until I read this book has done little to quench my anticipation.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780920822</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert CannonJVDK_Swing|title=OperaWe Can Swing Together: The Story of Lindisfarne|author=John Van der Kiste
|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=OperaIt all began with a group of youngsters in North Shields. Rod Clements, Simon 'Si' Cowe, Cannon tells us in Ray 'Jacka' Jackson and Ray Laidlaw formed ''The Downtown Faction'', soon changing the introduction name to this book, 'has never ceased 'Brethren'' when they were joined by singer-songwriter Alan Hull. As a US-based group had a similar name they opted to grow change the name again - and change – often quite radically.' His aim is to describe and show 'Lindisfarne'' (with the many different facets of opera in its development over name taken from an island off the centuries, Northumberland coast) was born. More than forty years on and its relevance to with numerous changes of personnel the modern worldband is still very much around. While he does They might not intend to write a history as such, he has organised this book chronologically as opera developed be touring or producing much in a very conscious the way across Europeof new material, but they still perform, with Rod Clements, one of the original members on his fourth stint with the group.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0521746477</amazonuk>
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 {{newreview|author=Francesca Beauman|title=Shapely Ankle Preferr'd: A History of the Lonely Hearts Advertisement|rating=5|genre=History|summary=You might think the Lonely Hearts ad a trivial matter. You might think it should appear in lower case and not be capitalised, but you'd be in disagreement with Ms Beauman, who gives a big L and a big H to it every time she writes of it in her survey of its history. What's more, she gets to write about a lot more than just the contents of the adverts in this brilliant book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009951334X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Colin Grant|title=I & I: The Natural Mystics|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Just mention the word reggae, and the name that nearly always springs to mind is that of Bob Marley and the Wailers. The music has always been very much a product of the Jamaican culture, nurtured in years of turbulent history. In this book Colin Grant, born in Britain of Jamaican parents, goes back deep into its roots, and in the process examines the childhood lives of the Wailers’ three main personalities, namely Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Neville Livingston, better known as Bunny Wailer, to provide an account of the group – but much more than that.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099526727</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Bruce Robinson|title=The Rum Diary - A Screenplay|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Kemp has lied his way onto a failing newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rica, as the only candidate for the job, and in a semi-comatose state induced by too many miniatures from the hotel minibar, stumbles into a conspiracy of epic proportions, via classic bar room brawls and nightclub mayhem. On the way he (almost) writes horoscopes and bowling championship stories, meets the fantastically erotic girlfriend of the evil businessman, and teams up with a proto-Nazi out of his mind on a cocktail of hootch and LSD, and a photographer side kick. There is no question that this is Hunter S Thompson territory, especially when all the above is combined with a witty, slow-talking hero who in spite of his alcoholic haze sees clearly through the exploitation of a third world country by its massive first world near neighbour. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555697</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mick O'Shea|title=Amy Winehouse: A Losing Game|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=At the risk of stating the obvious, this is a sad book. Writing this review some five months after her death, now the immediate smoke has cleared, it is apparent from this book (as well as other general sources) that she was a gifted performer, with a jazz voice which could have qualified her for a lengthy career long after scores of aspiring X-Factor contestants had given up singing and opted for less glamorous, more steady careers. After all, her idols had been not only near-contemporaries like Michael Jackson and Missy Elliott, but also those of an earlier generation such as the classic 1960s girl groups, as well as Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, with whom she was thrilled to record a duet four months before she died.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0859654826</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Gillian Lynne|title=A Dancer in Wartime: One Girl's Journey from the Blitz to Sadler's Wells|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=At eight years old, Gill Pyrke was driving her parents crazy, as she couldn't sit still and was nicknamed ''wriggle-bottom''. Her mum took her to see the family GP and told him in great detail how annoying she was. The doctor asked if he could talk to Gill alone and put on some music. She started to dance around and climbed on to his desk. He prescribed ballet classes. She started off in a Bromley dance class where one of her classmates was later to be the famous ballerina Beryl Grey. This story is lovely and funny, and has lots of elements of a dream story, yet is told in a very down to earth style which makes it very convincing. The same could be said of the whole of Gillian Lynne's memoir of her early years, starting out on a brilliant career in dance.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701185996</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jermaine JacksonJVDK_ELO|title=You Are Not AloneElectric Light Orchestra: Michael Through A Brother's Eyes|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=It is inevitable that the books we have already seen about Michael Jackson in the two years since his sudden passing will be merely the tip of the iceberg. Yet for those which comprise and are based on first-hand knowledge of his life and death, there will surely be few if any to rival this account Song by his brother Jermaine and ghostwriter Steve Dennis.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007435665</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSong|author=Mark Kermode|title=The Good, the Bad and the MultiplexJohn Van der Kiste
|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=I've been thereMy memories of pop music in the early sixties revolve around guitars and drums, sometimes the piano with only occasional excursions into strings and so, despite all number of free press screenings, has Mark Kermodebrass. When a major cinema chain I probably shouldnPop music rarely stands still and it wasn't namelong before the basic instruments were seen as constraints and The Beatles, but will - Odeon - moved from their smelly inner-city fleapits The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys began to a major new development far from any convenient bus routesexperiment, with other groups following where they started led. Amongst these groups was The Move and their multiplex life with the best intentionslead guitarist and songwriter, having an arthouse film every week, on a Wednesday, and an offer of free entry courtesy of the local newspaperRoy Wood. This was brilliant for me - or would have been, if they'd managed Wood wanted to keep up with my expectations. I lost track of develop the number of weeks they had the wrong film on the projector, and particularly how many times they started the right one without glimpsing that it group's sound by adding more instruments but was being shown on the wrong-sized screen, through the wrong lenses, not matching with the gate, or even upside down. The projectionist of course had eleven other screens to worry about, pressing a button for each prevented from achieving what he wanted by cost limitations and never needing (or wanting?) to watch a movie. Kermode is correct in that if we must still think of cinemas in because the parlance rest of theatres, and film-showings as performances, the projectionist can ruin a show just as a bad actor can a stage playgroup didn't really share his enthusiasm.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847946038</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert RossWatkins_Lets|title=Marty FeldmanLet's Make Lots of Money: The Biography of a Comedy LegendMy Life as the Biggest Man in Pop|author=Tom Watkins
|rating=4
|genre=BiographyEntertainment|summary=Some years agoWho on earth would be a manager in the larger than life, here today gone tomorrow world of pop? Anybody with an ego, I was given a Penguin edition of Wilderuthless streak, an opportunity to embrace the chances and accept that it's 'The Picture not going to last, evidently. Tom Watkins is just one of Dorian Gray'several to have walked the fine line and, with what looked like an uniquely fearsome face on for part of the front covertime, quite successfully. A year or two laterAs his memoirs suggest, I saw a photograph part of Marty Feldman and the time was convinced he must have inspired it if not actually been the modelachievement enough.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857683780</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nick HastedKendrick_Scrappy|title=You Really Got Me: The Story of The KinksScrappy Little Nobody|author=Anna Kendrick|rating=43.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Celebrity autobiographies. It'People in America talk about s a genre long tainted by the examples of people who clearly didn'The Beatlest deserve to be a celebrity, the Stoneslet alone have a ghost-writer create their book, The Whoand by those who did so little but managed to churn out five memoirs before they were even thirty.' For me But more recently it's become a way of staking a claim to importance for female comics. They'The Beatlesve not all written autobiographies, as Bridget Christie proved, but enough have to provide for a rapidly-filling shelf at the Stonesbookstore. 2016 we had Amy Schumer winning a GoodReads award, The Kinks.Lena Dunham' Those wordss been at it, quoted in the book, are those of Pete Townshend of The Who himselfand we've also got Anna Kendrick. He is certainly Now she's not alone in his verdict thata strict comic – not all of her films are designed to make you laugh, at the height and some of the swinging sixties in Britain, the Muswell Hill quartet were No 3 in the premier music league. Patchy chart success since their heyday them that are just don't – but this has done nothing to diminish their reputation, or that of leader Ray Davies as one of the most gifted British songwriters of be in the last fifty yearssame bracket.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849386609</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Marcus GrayRopek_Tragic|title=Route 19 RevisitedTragic Magic: The Clash and London CallingLife of Traffic's Chris Wood|author=Dan Ropek
|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=When I began reading these 500 pages or so, my initial feeling Chris Wood was – how could anybody write a book THIS long on one album? Soonmember of Traffic, it became clear that I had been slightly misled the group formed by the titleSteve Winwood in 1967 after he left The Spencer Davis Group. Although 'London Calling'A gifted musician best known for his flute and saxophone work, long feted he also played keyboards, bass guitar and contributed backing vocals as well as the best LP (now having a CD, naturally) ever made by one hand in writing several of punk's most seminal groups, is the focal point, this volume also charts in detail songs and one or two instrumentals. This biography takes its title from the history and development name of one of the Clash to that point, his compositions for their subsequent career (and decline), and their legacyfifth album.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099524201</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Barbara SinatraDolby_Sound|title=Lady Blue Eyes: My Life With Frank SinatraThe Speed of Sound|author=Thomas Dolby
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyEntertainment|summary=Barbara Blakeley, born in 1926From struggling post-punk musician to pop star, was married firstly from Silicon Valley innovator to Robert Oliver, an executiveuniversity professor, with whom she Thomas Dolby has had a sonremarkable if not unique career, and secondly to Zeppo Marx. But it was often reinventing himself on the already thrice-married and thrice-divorced Francis Albert Sinatra, whom she had idolized as a singer for a long time, with whom she would make her most enduring marriage, and vice versaway. They tied the knot in 1976, This memoir is based on his extensive notes and stayed together until his death in 1998journals.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091937248</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Philip NormanMorris_Legion|title=John LennonThe Legion of Regrettable Supervillains: The LifeOddball Criminals from Comic Book History|author=Jon Morris
|rating=5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=For part of my formative yearsAs much as I like comics – and I do, John Lennon was whether superhero ones or not – I have to admit one of thing, namely that the four most famous people villains in them are a bit pants. What is The Penguin but the world. All that we have learnt about him 's worst Mafioso, with a hobby of waddling along like his pet birds? Where else do you win an Oscar of all things by playing a two-bit killer who just fell in a vat of random chemicals and changed colour, and got mardier as a result (although recently he's become a nanotech genius – but let's not go there)? And what is it with the thirty years or so since his death has kept his name firmly gimp in the public eye, if not always for see-through plant pot because he is the embodiment of cold? And that's just some of the best better-known enemies of reasons. At over 800 pages''Batman'', this is one of the lengthiest biographies written about better goodies. You can imagine how awful the extraordinary life and times of baddies related to the former Beatlebad goodies can be. ItAnd if you can's also surely one of t, this is the most impartialperfect primer. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>000719742X</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Donald SpotoFletcher_Midnight|title=PossessedIn the Midnight Hour: The Life & Soul of Joan CrawfordWilson Pickett|author=Tony Fletcher|rating=34.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Thanks to Tamla Motown groups and singers apart, in the memoir 'Mommie Dearest' by her adopted daughter Christina, mid-sixties there were three major names in the enduring image of movie star Joan Crawford is one soul music field who mattered above all. James Brown was something of an alcoholic, sadistic monster. Spoto clearly believes that this portrait is a gross exaggerationcult name who rarely bothered about or troubled the singles charts, and is at pains to rectify Otis Redding was on the balance. Having previously written biographies verge of Alfred Hitchcock and Marilyn Monroe among others, shooting into the stratosphere when he clearly knows died in an aeroplane crash. The other was the subject of cinema inside outman from Alabama, and has written a very thorough chronicle of Crawford's career. The impression the reader is left with, however, is that in looking at her family life and art he has perhaps striven too far to present her as a person more sinned against than sinning, a legendary talent, beauty and above all a grossly maligned adoptive motherwicked Pickett'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091931274</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Keith RichardsPaling_Reading|title=LifeReading Allowed: True Stories and Curious Incidents from a Provincial Library|author=Chris Paling
|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Nearly forty years agoI once made a comical faux pas in a library when I was younger, Keith Richards was considered but it certainly didn't put me off returning. I once declared in a self-important way that I would start at the beginning of the books for young children and not stop til the end, then do the same for those for the next most likely rockolder children – ''nand then do it all over again with them'roll star to succumb to drugs', I said, pointing at the large-print shelves. The man has defied all ''I hope not'', was the odds in staying aliveresponse – but little me was only aware of a need for large font for my fellow whippersnappers, and not for any other reason. Since then I've needed libraries, and continuing going to do what he them has been doing second nature. On the dole I made sure I could use the free Internet they provided to pay me back for almost half my council tax; later I was intent on finding out if a centurySenior Library Assistant girl was worthy of her title, and of course, it saved a fortune on books for study and fun. In I'm not alone in sharing the process, he has earned warmth of both their heating system and the sometimes grudgingvery thing they were born to provide – books, sometimes unqualified respect but there was still a huge step up between my level of those who would once never given him the time use and knowledge of daythem to actually working in one. Which is where Chris Paling comes in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297854399</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Christopher IsherwoodSpringsteen_Born|title=Diaries Volume 1|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=In January 1939 Christopher Isherwood left England for America in the company of poet WH Auden. This hefty volume covers his diaries from that date until August 1960, when he celebrated his fifty-sixth birthday. A 49-page introduction setting out the background leads us into the entries, which are divided into three sections – The Emigration, Born to the end of 1944; The Post-war Years, to 1956; and The Late Fifties. After these we have a chronology and glossary, or to put it more accurately a section of brief biographies of the main characters mentioned, these two sections comprising over a hundred pages altogether.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555824</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewRun|author=Eric Siblin|title=The Cello Suites: In Search of a Baroque MasterpieceBruce Springsteen|rating=3.5|genre=Entertainment|summary=At the end of the 20th century Eric Siblin was a rock and pop critic for the 'Montreal Gazette'. This, he says, was, a job which filled his head 'with vast amounts of music, much of which I didn't want to be there'. Aware that there were vast horizons crying out to be explored, he went out one night to hear a recital from the Boston cellist Lawrence Lesser, featuring the solo cello suites of Bach. The contrast between hearing one solitary performer playing a simple wooden cello for an audience a fraction of the size could have hardly been more different to the stadium style gigs he had been covering regularly until then. About three years earlier, he had reviewed a show by U2, noting that for the 52,000 fans who attended and 'wanted to see more than four Lilliputian musicians making huge noises...technology blew everything out of proportion.' The inevitable hate mail soon rolled in. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546787</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Lindsay Reade|title=Mr Manchester and the Factory Girl: The Story of Tony and Lindsay Wilson|rating=4
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Mr ManchesterNo, as Tony Wilson came to be knownyou haven't stumbled into a music review from the 1970s, could I'm talking about The Boss's autobiography. Lots of books have been written about Springsteen by folk who knew him, worked with him and by others who have only read the next John Humphryscuttings. Instead Over the last seven years he ended up becoming has been going about – not putting the next Malcolm McLaren record straight, exactly or, perhaps, a far less successful version of Richard Bransonbut telling it from his own perspective. After graduating from Cambridge University with a degree in English As he became puts it: ''Writing about yourself is a trainee news reporter for ITN, and for much of his life he worked as an anchorman for regional evening news programmesfunny business''. Yet he is less remembered for this than for By his championship of alternative music and punk rockown admission, founding of Factory Records and involvement with it isn't the Hacienda Club. Although he loved the Beatles and folk music whole truth, discretion holds him back but ''in generala project like this, he disliked much of the contemporary music scene until he saw writer has made one promise, to show the Sex Pistols live in the summer of 1976reader his mind.'' ''In these pages, I've tried to do this.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0859654567</amazonuk>''
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Larry StempelJVDK_Beatles|title=ShowtimeA Beatles Miscellany: A History of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Broadway Musical Theater|rating=4|genre=Entertainment|summary=Stempel is an associate professor of music at an American university so I would imagine that this book is primarily a labour of love. In the Preface Stempel bemoans the loss of important research material over the years, whether it be musical scores, playbills or similar. It happens. It is a fact of life. Simply thrown away or discarded as being considered not important. It's only a musical, after all. A bit light and frothy. Stempel thinks otherwise - and takes his time telling us exactly why.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393067157</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewBeatles but Were Afraid to Ask|author=Peter Doggett|title=You Never Give Me Your Money: The Battle for the Soul of the BeatlesJohn Van der Kiste
|rating=5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=When four young Liverpudlians got together to make music in the early 1960s, they can You might have had no idea of their future impact on thought that just about everything which could be said about the world around them. Likewise they would surely not have Beatles had an inkling of the extraordinary business minefield which their existence as a group would create, been said and which would leave the scars long after they had gone their separate ways, even after two of them had died. As at least one of them ruefully commentedcertainly, they must have provided several lawyersthere' children with a very expensive education.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532360</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Alan Davies|title=Teenage Revolution: Growing Up in the 80s|rating=3.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=Born in 1966, Alan Davies grew up in Essex, the son s been no shortage of a staunchly Conservative-voting father and a mother who died of cancer when he was only six. It was a childhood dominated at first by 'Citizen Smith' and the other TV sitcoms, 'Starsky and Hutch', 'Grease', Barry Sheenebooks about what went wrong, what happened to the Barron Knights, money and Debbie Harryeven what went right. The book begins at 1978, But what I've never seen before is a 'the year I started venturing out more'miscellany', and finishes at 1988, when he graduated from Kent University to find that stand-up comedy could be an alternative all those little facts which are so hard to finding a job where he would have to do what he was told.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141041803</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Clinton Heylin|title=Still on the Road: Songs of Bob Dylan, 1974-2008|rating=4.5|genre=Entertainment|summary=Heylin is also obviously a fan, a very knowledgeable and obsessive one to boot. He has never met or directly interviewed his subject (who is known to guard his privacy quite fiercely most of the time), but his research materials include official recording sessionographies track down and interviews conducted by others. All this is naturally invaluable information for where historian John Van der Kiste comes into his analysis and history of all the 600-plus songs the man is known to have written or co-written from 1974 to almost the present day. In terms of his discography, that spans the albums from ‘Blood on the Tracks’, released in 1975 and commonly regarded as probably his best post-1960s set, to ‘Together Through Life’, which appeared in 2009.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849010110</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Marina Hyde|title=Celebrityown: How Entertainers Took Over The World and Why We Need an Exit Strategy|rating=3.5|genre=Entertainment|summary=I have what is perhaps he's a regular-sized interest in A and B-list celebrities. I can name the off-spring of many man with an actress, tell you who the spokespeople eye for certain brands are, write a list of celebs with publicly declared devotions to certain religions, even win detail and the odd pub quiz thanks ability to knowing the birth names of various performersbring everything together into a very readable whole. I know all sorts of things about this rather small subset of society, but I know the ''what'' more than the ''why'', and thatIt's exactly the problem, according to this book. After all, if more of us sat down to wonder about what it actually ''is'' that the likes a wonderful collection of Geri Halliwell and Nicole Kidman bring to the UN, we might seriously question how and why they ever got involved in the first placesmall facts.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532050</amazonuk>
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