For over 20 years, the Pet Shop Boys have been at the cutting edge of popular music. This book is a lavish visual retrospective of the duo's career, featuring behind-the-scenes shots from every video, concert and theatre show.

Everything I've ever doneEverything I ever doEvery place I've ever beenEverywhere I'm going toOver a career that spans four decades and thirteen studio albums with Pet Shop Boys, Neil Tennant has consistently proved himself to be one of the most elegant and stylish of contemporary lyricists. Arranged alphabetically, One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem presents an overview of Neil Tennant's considerable achievement as a chronicler of modern life: the romance, the break-ups, the aspirations, the changing attitudes, the history, the politics, the pain. The landscape of Tennant's lyrics is recognisably British in character - restrained and preoccupied with the mundane, occasionally satirical, yet also yearning for escape and theatrical release. Often surprisingly revealing, this volume is contextualised by a personal commentary on each lyric and a fascinating introduction by the author which gives an insight into the process and genesis of writing. Flamboyant, understated, celebratory and elegiac, Neil Tennant's lyrics are a document of our times.

Who's better? Billie Holiday or P. J. Harvey? Blur or Oasis? Dylan or Keats? And how many friendships have ridden on the answer? Such questions aren't merely the stuff of fanzines and idle talk; they inform our most passionate arguments, distill our most deeply held values, make meaning of our ever-changing culture. In Performing Rites, one of the most influential writers on popular music asks what we talk about when we talk about music. What's good, what's bad? What's high, what's low? Why do such distinctions matter? Instead of dismissing emotional response and personal taste as inaccessible to the academic critic, Simon Frith takes these forms of engagement as his subject--and discloses their place at the very center of the aesthetics that structure our culture and color our lives. Taking up hundreds of songs and writers, Frith insists on acts of evaluation of popular music as music. Ranging through and beyond the twentieth century, Performing Rites puts the Pet Shop Boys and Puccini, rhythm and lyric, voice and technology, into a dialogue about the undeniable impact of popular aesthetics on our lives. How we nod our heads or tap our feet, grin or grimace or flip the dial; how we determine what's sublime and what's "for real"--these are part of the way we construct our social identities, and an essential response to the performance of all music. Frith argues that listening itself is a performance, both social gesture and bodily response. From how they are made to how they are received, popular songs appear here as not only meriting aesthetic judgments but also demanding them, and shaping our understanding of what all music means.

"A guide to the stages and issues in boys' development from birth to manhood"--Provided by publisher.

Here is the autobiography of Cheetah Chrome, lead guitarist of the Dead Boys, one of the greatest punk bands ever. It’s a tale of success--and excess: great music, drugs (he overdosed and was pronounced dead three times), and resurrection. The Dead Boys, with roots in the band Rocket from the Tombs, came out of Cleveland to dominate the NYC punk scene in the mid-1970s. Their hit “Sonic Reducer” soon became a punk anthem. Now, for the first time, Cheetah dishes on the people he’s known onstage and off, including the Dead Boys’ legendary singer Stiv Bators, Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls, the Ramones, the Clash, Pere Ubu, and the Ghetto Dogs, as well as life at CBGBs, a year with Nico, and more. Straight from the man, these are the backstage stories that every punk fan will want to hear. Never mind the Sex Pistols, here’s Cheetah Chrome!

"A story of family, first love and forgiveness. I couldn't stop reading. I loved it!"—Miranda Kenneally, author of Catching Jordan Two shattered hearts are about to collide in this achingly poignant young adult novel. Monroe and Nathan are two lost souls each struggling with grief and guilt from a mistake that changed their lives – looking for acceptance, so they can find forgiveness. For Monroe Blackwell, one small mistake has torn her family apart—leaving her empty and broken. There's a hole in her heart that nothing can fill. That no one can fill. And a summer in Louisiana with her grandma isn't going to change that... Nathan Everets knows heartache firsthand when a car accident leaves his best friend in a coma. And it's all his fault. He should be the one lying in the hospital. The one who will never play guitar again. He doesn't deserve forgiveness, and a court-appointed job at the Blackwell B&B isn't going to change that... There's No Going Back Captivating and hopeful, this achingly poignant novel brings together two lost souls struggling with grief and guilt—looking for acceptance, so they can find forgiveness.