From life in an East End pub to fame on a global stage, Matt Johnson – founder, songwriter and visionary lynchpin of iconic band The The – created some of the most engaging, challenging and enduring music of his era. Then he walked away from it all. In this authorised biography Neil Fraser has drawn back the curtain on a brilliant enigma. Neil Fraser has gained unprecedented access to Matt Johnson and his The The archives. He has conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with Johnson and those involved in his life and work, including Johnny Marr, Johanna St Michaels, JG Thirlwell and Tim Pope. Long Shadows, High Hopes reveals the whole story, from early days to glory days. It examines the man behind the iconic songs and the acclaimed albums – an outspoken political lyricist and visionary force who made a success of living on his own terms. With the announcement from Matt Johnson in in 2017 that The The would appear again, this book reveals what has prompted him to step out of the long shadows after so long.

Matt Johnson is a film soundtrack composer, publisher, broadcaster, conservationist, and local activist, although he is best known as the creative force behind THE THE. Written with the cooperation of Matt Johnson and with full access to his archives, Long Shadows, High Hopes: The Life and Times of Matt Johnson & THE THE is the first official biography of one of the UK alternative music scene's major figures. Active since 1979, THE THE has returned this year bigger than ever, selling out the Royal Albert Hall in seven minutes as they play their first gigs in more than 16 years.

In 1962, exactly fifty years before the Olympic Games rolled into Stratford, East London, the Johnson family took over the Two Puddings, the most notorious pub in the area. Due to a combination of its cream-tiled walls and the volume of blood spilt, it was also known locally as the Butcher s Shop . Within a few short years, it had become one of London s busiest and most fashionable pubs, its hugely popular music nights acting as a magnet for a large and colourful cast of disparate characters who would regularly descend upon the premises, including renowned actors, writers, singers, musicians, champion boxers, infamous gangsters, television personalities, and World Cup-winning footballers. By the time the Puddings closed its doors for the last time, nearly four decades later, landlord Eddie Johnson was the longest serving licensee in London. Tales from the Two Puddings is a poignant, at times hilarious, look back upon a lost world of East End eccentrics, local villainy, vindictive policemen, punch ups, and practical jokes, all now lying buried beneath the concrete blocks and sterile shopping centres of the new Stratford.

“THE SHARPEST AND MOST UNUSUAL STORY I READ LAST YEAR . . . [Mat] Johnson’s satirical vision roves as freely as Kurt Vonnegut’s and is colored with the same sort of passionate humanitarianism.”—Maud Newton, New York Times Magazine NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Vanity Fair • Houston Chronicle • The Seattle Times • Salon • National Post • The A.V. Club Recently canned professor of American literature Chris Jaynes has just made a startling discovery: the manuscript of a crude slave narrative that confirms the reality of Edgar Allan Poe’s strange and only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Determined to seek out Tsalal, the remote island of pure and utter blackness that Poe describes, Jaynes convenes an all-black crew of six to follow Pym’s trail to the South Pole, armed with little but the firsthand account from which Poe derived his seafaring tale, a bag of bones, and a stash of Little Debbie snack cakes. Thus begins an epic journey by an unlikely band of adventurers under the permafrost of Antarctica, beneath the surface of American history, and behind one of literature’s great mysteries. “Outrageously entertaining, [Pym] brilliantly re-imagines and extends Edgar Allan Poe’s enigmatic and unsettling Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. . . . Part social satire, part meditation on race in America, part metafiction and, just as important, a rollicking fantasy adventure . . . reminiscent of Philip Roth in its seemingly effortless blend of the serious, comic and fantastic.”—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post “Blisteringly funny.”—Laura Miller, Salon “Relentlessly entertaining.”—The New York Times Book Review “Imagine Kurt Vonnegut having a beer with Ralph Ellison and Jules Verne.”—Vanity Fair “Screamingly funny . . . Reading Pym is like opening a big can of whoop-ass and then marveling—gleefully—at all the mayhem that ensues.”—Houston Chronicle

The intimate biography of the iconic DJ who was lost too soon. Tim Bergling was a musical visionary who, through his sense for melodies, came to define the era when Swedish and European house music took over the world. But Tim Bergling was also an introverted and fragile young man who was forced to grow up at an inhumanly fast pace. After a series of emergencies resulting in hospital stays, he stopped touring in the summer of 2016. Barely two years later, he took his own life. Tim - The Biography of Avicii is written by the award-winning journalist Måns Mosesson, who through interviews with Tim's family, friends and colleagues in the music business, has intimately gotten to know the star producer. The book paints an honest picture of Tim and his search in life, not shying from the difficulties that he struggled with.

Rory Gallagher is regarded as one of the greatest guitarists of all time. He was a dazzling showman, an accomplished songwriter and a champion of blues music. He began his career in an Irish showband at age fifteen, before forming Taste, one of the great Irish bands. He went on to even greater success as a solo artist in the 1970s. After his success peaked, Gallagher's later life was troubled, ending in disillusion and early death. He remains a legend, with musicians such as the Edge, Johnny Marr and Joe Bonamassa among the legions of fans who still revere him. Drawing on extensive interviews, Julian Vignoles casts new light on the familial, musical and other influences that inspired Gallagher, and on the complex personality that drove his career. Crucially, Vignoles shows how many of Gallagher's songs speak eloquently – and poignantly – about the person who penned them. Meticulously researched, this portrait is the insightful biography that Rory Gallagher deserves.

Initially created to add new colors and flavors to the sound of the electric guitar, effects pedals are so much more than just mere tools of the trade. Many stompboxes have become collectible, valuable, highly-fetishized objets d'art, often prized as much for their looks, quirks and history as for their basic sonic properties.Photographer Eilon Paz and writer/editor Dan Epstein-the creative team behind Stompbox: 100 Pedals of the World's Greatest Guitarists-have scoured the globe in search of some of the rarest, weirdest and most iconic stompboxes in existence, and Vintage & Rarities: 333 Cool, Crazy and Hard to Find Guitar Pedals is the eye-popping result. From primitive fuzzboxes and one-off prototypes to whimsical boutique creations and elaborate multi-effects units, Vintage & Rarities presents these incredible pedals in lustrous, exquisitely-detailed photographs, along with informative captions about their origins, construction and use.Vintage & Rarities also features profiles of 25 pedal collectors from the USA, England, France, Belgium, Portugal, Russia and Japan-including legendary musicians Adrian Belew, Henry Kaiser and David Torn, Beastie Boys producer Mario Caldato Jr., and celebrated pedal builders Oliver Ackermann (Death By Audio), Mike Piera (Analog Man) and Josh Scott (JHS)-all of whom share their personal tales of stompbox addiction, while offering additional insight into these fascinating devices.Vintage & Rarities will amaze, amuse and delight anyone who digs cool stompboxes-many pedals here have never been seen before, even by the most hardcore collectors-and it may even inspire an obsessive search for some vintage treasures of your own!