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Espedair Street
''Espedair Street'' is a novel by Scottish writer Iain Banks, published in 1987. Plot introduction The book tells the (fictional) story of the rise to fame of Dan Weir ('Weird'), a bass guitar player in a rock and roll band called Frozen Gold, and of his struggles to be happy now that he is rich and famous. Plot summary Weird starts out in the Ferguslie Park area of Paisley in a very underprivileged Catholic family. He is impressed by a group named Frozen Gold when he sees them live, in the Union of Paisley College of Technology, and auditions with them. Christine Brice likes his songs, and he joins the band. He ends up writing all their material and playing bass guitar (after trying unsuccessfully to get them to change their name), as the band rises in the drug- and booze-fuelled rock and roll of the 1970s, assisted by A&R man Rick Tumber of ARC Records. In the Three Chimneys tour, singer Davey Balfour takes Dan along on an attempt to break an unofficial (and illegal) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iain Banks
Iain Banks (16 February 1954 – 9 June 2013) was a Scottish author, writing mainstream fiction as Iain Banks and science fiction as Iain M. Banks, adding the initial of his adopted middle name Menzies (). After the success of '' The Wasp Factory'' (1984), he began to write full time. His first science fiction book, '' Consider Phlebas'', appeared in 1987, marking the start of the ''Culture'' series. His books have been adapted for theatre, radio, and television. In 2008, ''The Times'' named Banks in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". In April 2013, Banks announced he had inoperable cancer and was unlikely to live beyond a year. He died on 9 June 2013. Early life Banks was born in Dunfermline, Fife, to a mother who was a professional ice skater and a father who was an officer in the Admiralty. An only child, he lived in North Queensferry until the age of nine, near the naval dockyards in Rosyth, where his father was based. The family then moved to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aeroplane
An airplane (American English), or aeroplane (Commonwealth English), informally plane, is a fixed-wing aircraft that is propelled forward by thrust from a jet engine, Propeller (aircraft), propeller, or rocket engine. Airplanes come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and wing configurations. The broad spectrum of uses for airplanes includes recreation, air transportation, transportation of goods and people, military aviation, military, and Experimental aircraft, research. Worldwide, commercial aviation transports more than four billion passengers annually on airliners and transports more than 200 billion tonne-kilometersMeasured in RTKs—an RTK is one tonne of revenue freight carried one kilometer. of cargo annually, which is less than 1% of the world's cargo movement. Most airplanes are flown by a pilot on board the aircraft, but some are designed to be unmanned aerial vehicle, remotely or computer-controlled such as drones. The Wright brothers invented and flew the Wright Flyer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mystery Fiction
Mystery is a genre fiction, fiction genre where the nature of an event, usually a murder or other crime, remains wiktionary:mysterious, mysterious until the end of the story. Often within a closed circle of suspects, each suspect is usually provided with a credible motive and a reasonable opportunity for committing the crime. The central character is often a detective (such as Sherlock Holmes), who eventually solves the mystery by logical deduction from facts presented to the reader. Some mystery books are non-fiction. Mystery fiction can be detective stories in which the emphasis is on the puzzle or suspense element and its logical solution such as a whodunit. Mystery fiction can be contrasted with hardboiled detective stories, which focus on action and gritty realism. Mystery fiction can involve a supernatural mystery in which the solution does not have to be logical and even in which there is no crime involved. This usage was common in the pulp magazines of the 1930s and 1940s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Wasp Factory
''The Wasp Factory'' is the first novel by Scottish writer Iain Banks, published in 1984. Before the book came out, Banks had written several science fiction novels that had not been accepted for publication. He decided to try a more mainstream novel in the hopes that it would be more readily accepted, and wrote about a psychopathic teenager living on a remote Scottish island. According to Banks, this allowed him to treat the story as something resembling science fiction — the island could be envisaged as a planet, and Frank, the protagonist, almost as an alien. Following the success of ''The Wasp Factory'', Banks began to write full-time. ''The Wasp Factory'' is written from a first person perspective, told by 16-year-old Francis Cauldhame ("Frank"), describing his childhood and all that remains of it. Frank observes many shamanistic rituals of his own invention, and it is soon revealed that Frank killed three children before he reached the age of ten himself. The book so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Horror Fiction
Horror is a genre of speculative fiction that is intended to disturb, frighten, or scare an audience. Horror is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror. Literary historian J. A. Cuddon, in 1984, defined the horror story as "a piece of fiction in prose of variable length... which shocks, or even frightens the reader, or perhaps induces a feeling of repulsion or loathing". Horror intends to create an eerie and frightening atmosphere for the reader. Often the central menace of a work of horror fiction can be interpreted as a metaphor for larger fears of a society. History Before 1000 The horror genre has ancient origins, with roots in folklore and religious traditions focusing on death, the afterlife, evil, the demonic, and the principle of the thing embodied in the person. These manifested in stories of beings such as demons, witches, vampires, werewolves, and ghosts. Some early European horror-fiction were the Ancient Greeks and Ancie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gothic Novel
Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror (primarily in the 20th century), is a literary aesthetic of fear and haunting. The name of the genre is derived from the Renaissance era use of the word "gothic", as a pejorative to mean medieval and barbaric, which itself originated from Gothic architecture and in turn the Goths. The first work to be labelled as Gothic was Horace Walpole's 1764 novel '' The Castle of Otranto'', later subtitled ''A Gothic Story''. Subsequent 18th-century contributors included Clara Reeve, Ann Radcliffe, William Thomas Beckford, and Matthew Lewis. The Gothic influence continued into the early 19th century, with Romantic works by poets, like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Lord Byron. Novelists such as Mary Shelley, Charles Maturin, Walter Scott and E. T. A. Hoffmann frequently drew upon gothic motifs in their works as well. Gothic aesthetics continued to be used throughout the early Victorian period in novels by Charles Dickens, B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rock Journalism
Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on what is now regarded as classical music. In the 1960s, music journalism began more prominently covering popular music like rock and pop after the breakthrough of the Beatles. With the rise of the internet in the 2000s, music criticism developed an increasingly large online presence with music bloggers, aspiring music critics, and established critics supplementing print media online. Music journalism today includes reviews of songs, albums and live concerts, profiles of recording artists, and reporting of artist news and music events. Origins in classical music criticism Music journalism has its roots in classical music criticism, which has traditionally comprised the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of music that has bee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was published on Saturday 26 March 2016, leaving only the online edition. The daily edition was named National Newspaper of the Year at the 2004 British Press Awards. ''The Independent'' won the Brand of the Year Award in The Drum Awards for Online Media 2023. History 1980s Launched in 1986, the first issue of ''The Independent'' was published on 7 October in broadsheet format.Dennis Griffiths (ed.) ''The Encyclopedia of the British Press, 1422–1992'', London & Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992, p. 330. It was produced by Newspaper Publishing plc and created by Andreas Whittam Smith, Stephen Glover and Matthew Symonds. All three partners were former journalists at ''The Daily Telegraph'' who had left the paper towards the end of Lord Hartwell' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marillion
Marillion are a British neo-prog band, formed in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, in 1979. They emerged from the post-punk music scene in Britain and existed as a bridge between the styles of punk rock and classic progressive rock, becoming the most commercially successful neo-prog band of the 1980s. Marillion released their debut single "Market Square Heroes" in 1982, followed by their first album ''Script for a Jester's Tear'' in 1983. They have released 20 studio albums in total. The band achieved eight Top 10 UK albums between 1983 and 1994, including a List of UK Albums Chart number ones of the 1980s, No. 1 album in 1985 with ''Misplaced Childhood''. The album also produced two UK Top 10 singles in "Kayleigh" (No. 2) and "Lavender (Marillion song), Lavender" (No. 5), while the follow-up album, 1987's ''Clutching at Straws'', included another UK Top 10 single "Incommunicado (song), Incommunicado" (No. 6). ''Clutching at Straws'' was the band's last studio album with original le ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fish (singer)
Derek William Dick (born 25 April 1958), better known by his stage name Fish, is a retired Scottish singer, songwriter and occasional actor. He was the lead singer and lyricist of the neo-prog band Marillion from 1981 until 1988. He released 11 UK Top 40 singles with the band, including the Top 10 singles "Kayleigh", "Lavender (Marillion song), Lavender" and "Incommunicado (song), Incommunicado", and five Top 10 albums, including a number one with ''Misplaced Childhood''. In his solo career, Fish explored contemporary Pop music, pop and traditional Folk music, folk, and released a further five Top 40 singles and a Top 10 album. Fish's voice has been described as both "distinct" and a "conflation of Roger Daltrey and Peter Gabriel",David Hepworth's review of ''Clutching at Straws''. ''Q (magazine), Q''. July 1987. while his lyrics have been described as "Prose poetry, poetic prose". In 2004, ''Classic Rock (magazine), Classic Rock'' ranked Fish at number 49 on its list of "The 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fleetwood Mac
Fleetwood Mac are a British-American Rock music, rock band formed in London in 1967 by the singer and guitarist Peter Green (musician), Peter Green. Green named the band by combining the surnames of the drummer, Mick Fleetwood, and the bassist, John McVie, who have remained with the band throughout its many line-up changes. Fleetwood Mac have sold more than 120 million records worldwide, making them one of the List of best-selling music artists, world's best-selling bands. Primarily a British blues band in their early years, Fleetwood Mac achieved a UK number one single in 1968 with the instrumental "Albatross (instrumental), Albatross" and had other UK top ten hits with "Man of the World (song), Man of the World", "Oh Well (song), Oh Well" (both 1969), and "The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown)" (1970). Green left the band in May 1970 and McVie's wife, Christine McVie, joined as an official member on vocals and keyboards two months later, having previously contribute ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd are an English Rock music, rock band formed in London in 1965. Gaining an early following as one of the first British psychedelic music, psychedelic groups, they were distinguished by their extended compositions, sonic experiments, philosophical lyrics, and elaborate Pink Floyd live performances, live performances, and became a leading progressive rock band. Pink Floyd were founded in 1965 by Syd Barrett (guitar, lead vocals), Nick Mason (drums), Roger Waters (bass guitar, vocals) and Richard Wright (musician), Richard Wright (keyboards, vocals). With Barrett as their main songwriter, they released two hit singles, "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play", and the successful debut studio album ''The Piper at the Gates of Dawn'' (all 1967). David Gilmour (guitar, vocals) joined in 1967; Barrett left in 1968 due to deteriorating mental health. Following Barrett's departure, all four remaining members contributed compositions, though Waters became the primary lyricist an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
