John Robb

"For my money, John Robb, a former Air Force officer and tech guru, is the futurists' futurist." —Slate The counterterrorism expert John Robb reveals how the same technology that has enabled globalization also allows terrorists and criminals to join forces against larger adversaries with relative ease and to carry out small, inexpensive actions—like sabotaging an oil pipeline—that generate a huge return. He shows how combating the shutdown of the world’s oil, high-tech, and financial markets could cost us the thing we’ve come to value the most—worldwide economic and cultural integration—and what we must do now to safeguard against this new method of warfare.

The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization

Brave New War

Vibrant and volatile, the punk scene left an extraordinary legacy of music and cultural change, and this work talks to those who cultivated the movement, weaving together their accounts to create a raw and unprecedented oral history of punk in the United Kingdom. From the Clash, Crass, Henry Rollins, and John Lydon to the Sex Pistols, the Stranglers, and the Buzzcocks, this reference features more than 150 interviews that encapsulate the most thrilling wave of rock and roll pop culture ever seen.

An Oral History

Punk Rock

This is the first comprehensive history of goth music and culture. Across more than 500 pages, John Robb explores the origins and legacy of this enduring scene, drawing on his own experience and interviews with a host of bands, from Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure to Throbbing Gristle and Lydia Lunch.

The History of Goth

The Art of Darkness

Tom King

After earning a loyal underground cult following, Green Day took their raw punk sound to a major label in 1994 with the release of their classic album Dookie, which went on to sell more than 10 million copies. Since then, the band has become a major mainstream rock act, and their unique mix of punk and garage has influenced an entire generation of musicians. Green Day’s ascension to the top of the charts is recorded here with insight from a host of band associates--among them Larry Livermore, the founder of Lookout Records; John Lucasey, owner of Studio 880, where the band recorded their American Idiot album; and Jon Ginoli, guitarist and singer with the band Pansy Division, who toured with Green Day on their Dookie tour.

Green Day - Welcome to Paradise

Stone Roses and the Resu

Manchester Music City 1978-2008

North Will Rise Again

‘An extraordinary history… The range of voices breathing new life into past events is vast’ **** Mojo ‘The Morrissey and Marr recollections are particularly revealing’ The Word The Buzzcocks. Joy Division. The Fall. The Smiths. The Stone Roses. The Happy Mondays. Oasis. Manchester has proved to be an endlessly rich seam of pop-music talent over the last 30 years. Highly opinionated and usually controversial, stars such as Mark E. Smith, Morrissey, Ian Brown and the Gallagher brothers have always had plenty to say for themselves. Here, in John Robb’s new compilation, Manchester’s gobbiest musicians tell the story of the city’s thriving music scene in their own words. When the Buzzcocks put on the Sex Pistols at Lester Free Hall in 1976, they kickstarted a musical revolution and a fervent punk scene exploded. In 1979 the legendary Tony Wilson founded Factory Records, the home of Joy Division/New Order and later the Happy Mondays. The Hacienda, the Factory nightclub, became notorious in the late 1980s as a centre of the influential Madchester scene, led by the Mondays and the Stone Roses, with a unique style and sound of its own. Then, from the ashes of Madchester rose über-lads Oasis, the kings of Britpop and the biggest UK band of the 1990s. John Robb is a leading music journalist and the author of the bestselling biography of the Stone Roses. His other books include Punk: An Oral History, The Charlatans … We Are Rock and The Nineties: What the F**k Was That All About? He lives in Manchester.

Manchester Music City, 1976-1996

The North Will Rise Again

Johan Bakker

A new edition of Behind the Rainbow, Johan Bakker' s biography on musician Eva Cassidy. Cassidy's story is one of the most compelling and poignant in recent music history. In this thoughtful and probing study Bakker re-evaluates her career and the fame that came only after her death at the tender age of 33.Cassidy performed largely in and around Washington D.C.. Iceland was the only place she ever played in Europe, yet her jazzy folk pop would, after her death, make her a star both there and in her homeland. Since her passing she has sold more than ten million records.Bakker has interviewed Cassidy's friends, colleagues, and family, and by tracing her formative experiences, outlook, and eventual disillusionment with the music business, has crafted a detailed and considered account of her life.

A History of Goth

This is the first comprehensive history of goth music and culture. Across more than 500 pages, John Robb explores the origins and legacy of this enduring scene, which has its roots in the post-punk era. Drawing on his own experience as a musician and journalist, Robb covers the style, the music and the clubs that spawned the culture, alongside political and social conditions. He also reaches back further to key historic events and movements that frame the ideas of goth, from the fall of Rome to Lord Byron and the romantic poets, European folk tales, Gothic art and the occult. Finally, he considers the current mainstream goth of Instagram influencers, film, literature and music. The Art of Darkness features interviews with Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, The Damned, Nick Cave, Southern Death Cult, Einstürzende Neubauten, Bauhaus, Killing Joke, Throbbing Gristle, Danielle Dax, Lydia Lunch and many more. It offers a first-hand account of being there at the gigs and clubs that made the scene happen.

When Kriso Tovak joins the Foreign Legion, he believes his beloved wife to be dead. However, discovering that she's still alive, Tovak deserts to join his wife in Prague. But he's captured, court-martialled and executed, which sparks a series of ghastly events in the Legion base at Dini Sadazi.

I Shall Avenge!

'The Stone Roses have become folk heroes, frozen in time. And their story, with roots in punk through post-punk, scooter boys, skinheads, Northern Soul, psychedelia, acid house and Madchester, is everything that is great about British street culture.' Reni. Mani. Ian Brown. John Squire. Names that will forever be remembered for creating their defining album The Stone Roses and a unique but inimitable baggy style. Their phenomenal story was first documented by the man who was with them every step of the way: John Robb. And now, in this special edition of his acclaimed and intimate biography, Robb brings the ultimate rock 'n' roll tale fully up to date.

The Reunion Edition

The Stone Roses And The Resurrection of British Pop

This book is a long-term history of how the human body has been understood in Europe from the Palaeolithic to the present day, focusing on specific moments of change. Developing a multi-scalar approach to the past, and drawing on the work of an interdisciplinary team of experts, the authors examine how the body has been treated in life, art and death for the last 40,000 years. Key case-study chapters examine Palaeolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Classical, Medieval, Early Modern and Modern bodies. What emerges is not merely a history of different understandings of the body, but a history of the different human bodies that have existed. Furthermore, the book argues, these bodies are not merely the product of historical circumstance, but are themselves key elements in shaping the changes that have swept across Europe since the arrival of modern humans.

Europe from the Palaeolithic to the Future

The Body in History

With its own fashion, culture, and chaotic energy, punk rock boasted a do-it-yourself ethos that allowed anyone to take part. Vibrant and volatile, the punk scene left an extraordinary legacy of music and cultural change. John Robb talks to many of those who cultivated the movement, such as John Lydon, Lemmy, Siouxsie Sioux, Mick Jones, Chrissie Hynde, Malcolm McLaren, Henry Rollins, and Glen Matlock, weaving together their accounts to create a raw and unprecedented oral history of UK punk. All the main players are here: from The Clash to Crass, from The Sex Pistols to the Stranglers, from the UK Subs to Buzzcocks—over 150 interviews capture the excitement of the most thrilling wave of rock ’n’ roll pop culture ever. Ranging from its widely debated roots in the late 1960s to its enduring influence on the bands, fashion, and culture of today, this history brings to life the energy and the anarchy as no other book has done.

'To see The Clash on the White Riot tour was like discovering how to be a rock star: you just did it yourself. You didn't wait for someone to come and discover you. That was the most important thing that came out of punk... We came home and we cut our hair and bought skinny trousers. It was year zero. That was the moment for me' Billy Bragg Punk Rock is a book like no other. It is an oral history of a radical movement which exploded in Seventies Britain. With its own clothes, hair, artwork, fanzines and radical politics, Punk boasted a DIY ethos that meant anyone could take part. The scene was uniquely vibrant and energetic, leaving an extraordinary legacy of notorious events, charismatic characters and inspirational music. John Robb has spent over a year interviewing more than 100 contributors including Glen Matlock, Mick Jones, Don Letts, Slash, Billy Bragg, Hugh Cornwell and Captain Sensible. Now, for the first time, they give the inside view on events such as The Sex Pistols' swearing live on the Bill Grundy TV show and staging their anti-Jubilee riverboat party on the Thames, famous gigs at The Roxy and 100 Club, and the groundbreaking records by The Pistols, The Clash, The Damned and others. From the widely debated roots of punk in the late-Sixties through to the fallout of the post-punk period in 1984, and the ongoing influence on today's bands, Punk Rock is the definitive oral history of an inimitable and exciting movement.

The Justice Tonight tour is the most legendary UK tour of the last twelve months. Put together as a one off gig in support of the campaign for justice for the 96 football fans who died at Hillsborough, it quickly turned into a tour. The initial idea was for Mick Jones from The Clash to join Pete Wylie and the Farm and play a few songs for a key cause. It suddenly gained momentum when Mick agreed to play Clash songs for the first time for thirty years. The tour was a sold out, emotional, political ride through British rock 'n' roll culture which every night was joined by guests like The Stone Roses playing their first ever show together since they reformed, the Manic Street Preachers, Richard Hawley, and even Eric Cantona guesting in France as well as a near Clash reformation. Backstage the gigs were something else with guests from MPs like Tom Watson and Steve Rotherham to underground political figures, authors, madmen and rock 'n' rollers. Every night was full of great, legendary stories ...

Hillsborough Justice Tour 2012 - The John Robb Diary

Marcia-Anne Dobres

Agency in Archaeology is the first critical volume to scrutinise the concept of agency and to examine in-depth its potential to inform our understanding of the past. Theories of agency recognise that human beings make choices, hold intentions and take action. This offers archaeologists scope to move beyond looking at broad structural or environmental change and instead to consider the individual and the group Agency in Archaeology brings together nineteen internationally renowned scholars who have very different, and often conflicting, stances on the meaning and use of agency theory to archaeology. The volume is composed of five theoretically-based discussions and nine case studies, drawing on regions from North America and Mesoamerica to Western and central Europe, and ranging in subject from the late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers to the restructuring of gender relations in the north-eastern US.

Agency in Archaeology

IF YOU REMEMBER THE NINETIES...YOU WERE THERE! The Rock 'N' Roll Fifties. The Swinging Sixties. The trashy Seventies. The money-grabbing Eighties. There is a neat bunch of clichés for every era, but THE NINETIES... What the f**k was that all about? John Robb takes us on a personal odyssey through the definitive pop cultural moments that shaped the decade in the UK.

What the F**ck Was That All About?

The Nineties

Des premiers orages punks aux grandes heures de la britpop, en passant la new wave, l'âge d'or du label Factory et les folies acid de l'Hacienda. Peter Shelley, Howard Devoto, Morrissey, Peter Hook, Shaun Ryder, Johnny Marr, Noel Gallagher, Ian Brown, Tony Wilson, le journaliste Jon Savage et plus d'une centaine d'autres figures de la scène de Manchester, parfois plus obscures mais tout aussi essentielles. Tous ont longuement raconté leur histoire à l'écrivain et musicien John Robb. Leurs souvenirs, leurs analyses, leurs confidences (souvent pleines d'anecdotes et de révélations !) dressent le portrait haut en couleurs d'une ville indissociablement liée à quelques grandes pages du rock anglais.Un document unique aux allures de folle épopée, plein de fraîcheur, de naïveté et de passion.

Buzzcocks, Joy Division, The Fall, New Order, The Smiths, The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Oasis,...

Manchester music city 1976-1996

History of the "post-post-punk scene" of the 80s.

John Robb

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