Search results for ""Author Robert Elms""

'ABC', as perfect as anything I've ever witnessed up until that point in my tiny little life. Three minutes of divine delirium.In 1972, when Robert Elms was thirteen years old, he saw the Jackson 5 play live at the Empire Pool. At some point during the performance, he found himself in a state of otherworldly perfect synchronicity with everything happening around him. This single event would set him off on an endless pursuit for that same height of pleasure.Since then, Robert has lived his life through live music, from pub rock to jazz funk, punk to country, and everything in between. Each gig is memorable in its own way, and his snapshots of musicians past and present are both evocative and startlingly concise: Tom Waits showboating with an umbrella, Grace Jones vogueing with a mannequin, Amy shimmying shamelessly like a little girl at a wedding, Gil Scott-Heron rapping with a conga drum. While in our changed times, Robert notes that we have found new ways of listening – of being part of something special by uniting fans with their favourite performers online – there is not, nor can there ever be, anything quite like the live experience. Live!: Why We Go Out is a memoir and a musing on why experiencing live music really matters.

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London’s Industrial Past gives the reader an opportunity to read about a selection of factories that were once scattered across the city. While older generations may look back at the names that have gone with great affection, for the younger reader it may come as a surprise that so many ‘things’ were once manufactured in Britain’s capital city. The sheer wealth and breadth of products that were made is staggering, from the mundanity of biscuits to the hightech of aircraft production. This volume sheds light on those lost names, many of which are still with us, but no longer made in London, or indeed in the UK. Areas of manufacture covered include brewing, toys, aircraft, cars, sweets, biscuits, electrical goods and art and photographic supplies. Brands mentioned include Truman’s, Lesney, Handley Page, Bentley, Trebor, Peek Freans, Lyons, Hoover, Kodak and Beechams. Packed with archive images and illustrations, this volume will be a great addition to the library of anybody with an interest in London’s history.

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'London is a giant kaleidoscope, which is forever turning. Take your eye off it for more than a moment and you're lost.' Robert Elms has seen his beloved city change beyond all imagining. London in his lifetime has morphed from a piratical, bomb-scarred playground, to a swish cosmopolitan metropolis. Motorways driven through lost communities, accents changing, skyscrapers appearing. Yet still it remains to him the greatest place on earth. Elms takes us back through time and place to myriad Londons. He is our guide through a place that has seen scientific experiments conducted in subterranean lairs and a small community declare itself an independent nation; a place his great-great-grandfather made the Elms' home over a century ago and a city that has borne witness to world-changing events.

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