This book is a record of the Black music culture that emerged in post-colonial London at the end of the twentieth century; the people who made it, the racial and spatial politics of its development and change, and the part it played in founding London’s precious, embattled multiculture. It tells the story of the linked Black musical scenes of the city, from ska, reggae and soul in the 1970s, to rare groove and rave in the 1980s and jungle and its offshoots in the 1990s, to dubstep and grime of the 2000s. Melville argues that these demonstrate enough common features to be thought of as one musical culture, an Afro-diasporic continuum. Core to this idea is that this dance culture has been ignored in history and cultural theory and that it should be thought of as a powerful and internationally significant form of popular art.

This book tells the history of the London black music culture that emerged in post-colonial London at the end of the twentieth century; the people who made it, the racial and spatial politics of its development and change, and the part it played in founding London's precious, embattled multiculture. It conceives of the linked scenes around black music in London, from ska, reggae and soul in the 1970s, to rare groove and rave in the 1980s and jungle and its offshoots in the 1990s, to dubstep and grime of the 2000s, as demonstrating enough common features to be thought of as one musical culture, an Afro-diasporic continuum. Core to this idea is that this dance culture has been ignored in history and cultural theory and that it should be thought of as a powerful and internationally significant form of popular art.

A charming and inspiring book of 365 things to do in London. Beautifully illustrated with bitesize entries ranging from the well-known to the quirky, this is the perfect gift for anyone wanting to discover all of the gems London has to offer... 'One thing to do every day that'll stop you getting tired of the big smoke.' -- The Guardian 'A great way to explore London!' -- ***** Reader review 'Great fun and great information' -- ***** Reader review 'Great book to dip into. Always find something new to do/somewhere new to go' -- ***** Reader review 'A brilliant book with fascinating ideas to do around the city' -- ***** Reader review ****************************************************************************************************** As the late great Samuel Johnson sagely observed, 'When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.' When author Tom Jones found himself doing the same things week in, week out while living in England's treasured capital, he decided to heed Johnson's words and seek out a thing to do each day in London to make him fall back in love with the city. Here, in Tired of London, Tired of Life, Tom shares the fun, diverting and imaginative things that you can do to keep yourself amused in London. With seasonally appropriate suggestions for each day of the year, you can explore East London by canoe, search for Fagin's lair in Clerkenwell, play petanque in Southwark, seek out Aphrodite in the British Museum on Valentine's Day and enjoy a host of unusual ways to enjoy the capital. So grab your A-Z and start discovering a whole other side to this majestic city!

The New York Times bestseller that gives readers a paradigm-shattering new way to think about motivation from the author of When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing Most people believe that the best way to motivate is with rewards like money—the carrot-and-stick approach. That's a mistake, says Daniel H. Pink (author of To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Motivating Others). In this provocative and persuasive new book, he asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction-at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world. Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life. He examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose-and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action in a unique book that will change how we think and transform how we live.

Vast numbers of western youth have attached primary significance to raving and post-rave experiences. This collection of essays explores the socio-cultural and religious dimensions of the rave, 'raving' and rave-derived phenomena.

'The definitive look at dance music and club culture - a must read' - Paul Oakenfold 'Brilliantly woven collection of aural histories ... a damn fine read' - DJ MAG In 1987, four friends from London, Paul Oakenfold, Danny Rampling, Nicky Holloway and Johnny Walker, took a week-long holiday to Ibiza. What they saw there, and brought back home, would give rise to a new global music and counterculture movement. As the eighties drew to their close, with Thatcherism holding the nation tight in its grip, something funny was happening right across the jungle of Britain's nightlife scene. People were dressing down, not up, to go to clubs. And they were dancing right through the night armed seemingly with only bottles of water. Ecstasy and acid house music had arrived on British shores, and a tribal battle between for the moral future of the nation, between the youth and the establishment, had begun. In The Second Summer of Love, author and dance music promoter Alon Shulman uses exclusive contributions from the world's biggest DJs, including Paul Oakenfold, Carl Cox, Fatboy Slim, Moby, Faithless, Mr C, Farley & Heller, Danny Rampling and many others to faithfully recreate the story of the summers of 1988 and 1989, and chart the birth and rise of Acid House, dance music and club culture right through to the modern day where dance music has become a culturally dominant global industry. Complete with stunning unseen photographs, this is the first authentic account of what really happened in that glorious period - from the politics and the people to the music, the drugs, the fashion and the culture - told by people who were there, as they bring to life the creation of an underground scene which inadvertently altered the course of modern global youth culture forever. 'It's as if house music and rave culture tapped into this ancient predilection of humans to stay up all night dancing and staring into the fire, and just supercharged it with electricity and MDMA' -Moby 'What I was experiencing was right in front of my eyes, it was happening right now and I loved it' -Carl Cox 'It opened my eyes and ears to a different spirit in music' - Fatboy Slim

Ecstasy did for house music what LSD did for psychedelic rock. Now, in Energy Flash, journalist Simon Reynolds offers a revved-up and passionate inside chronicle of how MDMA (“ecstasy”) and MIDI (the basis for electronica) together spawned the unique rave culture of the 1990s. England, Germany, and Holland began tinkering with imported Detroit techno and Chicago house music in the late 1980s, and when ecstasy was added to the mix in British clubs, a new music subculture was born. A longtime writer on the music beat, Reynolds started watching—and partaking in—the rave scene early on, observing firsthand ecstasy’s sense-heightening and serotonin-surging effects on the music and the scene. In telling the story, Reynolds goes way beyond straight music history, mixing social history, interviews with participants and scene-makers, and his own analysis of the sounds with the names of key places, tracks, groups, scenes, and artists. He delves deep into the panoply of rave-worthy drugs and proper rave attitude and etiquette, exposing a nuanced musical phenomenon. Read on, and learn why is nitrous oxide is called “hippy crack.”