Bøker av Stephen Lambe

Created in the late 1960s, fashionable in the early 1970s and hated in the 1980s, Progressive Rock has a colourful and eventful story. Many of the genre's main protagonists, including Genesis, Yes, King Crimson and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, remain as popular as ever, while lesser-known names like Camel, Caravan, Renaissance, Van der Graaf Generator and Gentle Giant retain cult status. In this completely revised and updated edition, Stephen Lambe guides the reader through the early years as the music developed out of the British Progressive Music boom of the late 1960s into its own genre, and reached full maturity in the early 1970s. He also discusses how the music was received and developed outside the UK, particularly in the USA and Europe. Received wisdom has it that punk swept Progressive Rock away in the late 1970s, yet the genre never died. An early 1980s revival, spearheaded by major label signings Marillion, IQ and Pallas, burned brightly but fell away sharply later in the decade. However, in the early 1990s, the movement began to re-establish itself, largely below the radar, led by Swedish band The Flower Kings and American group Spock's Beard. The rise of the internet and the decline of the worldwide pop industry allowed niche music - as Progressive Rock had now become - to flourish once again in the new millennium. Stephen Lambe has been co-promoter of the Summer's End Progressive Rock festival since 2006. He helps promote Welsh band Magenta, and is Secretary of the Classic Rock Society, whose patrons include Steve Hackett and Roger Hodgson. He writes regularly for the magazine Rock Society.

Against the odds, 90125, released towards the end of 1983, was Yes' best-selling album. Yet it was never intended to be a recording by one of the 1970s rock dinosaurs, but a combination of commercial expediency and luck saw an album by a new band called Cinema - featuring Yes stalwarts Chris Squire, Alan White and Tony Kaye alongside talented multi-instrumentalist Trevor Rabin - become Yes following the last-minute recruitment of vocalist Jon Anderson. A US number one hit single, 'Owner Of A Lonely Heart, ' led to a triple platinum record and a massive world tour, giving this band a new lease of life in the 1980s. Featuring new interviews with several of the main protagonists, including Jon Anderson and Trevor Rabin, this book traces the story of the album from its rudimentary demos in 1981, right up to the end of the world tour in early 1985. 90125 is reviewed in full, and the book also includes a detailed look at the somewhat complex and contrived process that created it, followed by an examination of the album's legacy and remarkable afterlife. The 90125 story is possibly the most astonishing in this legendary group's nearly six-decade history. This is how it happened.

This new, expanded edition celebrates a flurry of recent Yes activity. The book examines each one of the band's studio albums, highlighting the many high points, and the rarer missteps, as well as focussing on the changes in band dynamics which led to some varied - but always interesting - music.

Stephen Lambe's enlightening book guides the reader through Focus's early history year by year, dealing with all eight Focus albums song by song, while also giving the same treatment to Akkerman and Van Leer's lesser know solo work between 1970 and 1979.

First published in 1889 and never out of print, Jerome K Jerome's classic of humorous literature continues to delight new generations of readers. The book follows three friends, Harris, George and Jerome himself, accompanied by the ever-mischievous (and actually fictitious) dog Montmorency, as they skull up the Thames from Kingston in Surrey as far as Oxford. However, the book is far more than a travelogue. It uses incidents from the journey as jumping off points for some virtuosic set pieces, as hilarious and relevant today as they were in the late Victorian period when boating was becoming the "e;next big thing"e;. Stephen Lambe dissects Jerome's masterpiece, placing it in context as a brilliantly sustained piece of observational comedy. But he also examines the River itself, and by using both modern and period photographs presented in full colour, examines how the Thames has developed over the last 120 years. The result will be indispensible to fans of the book who want to know a little more about the context in which it was written, and also to all those that have an interest in the development of England's most important and famous waterway.

Stephen Lambe's meticulously-crafted book is the product of many months treading the footpaths around Tewkesbury. It features walks to suit all ages and abilities. Most of the walks are accessible from the town centre, while several others require a short journey to local villages, such as Bredon, Forthampton, Twyning or Apperley.

When the final episode of Seinfeld aired on 14th May 1998, an amazing 76.3 million Americans tuned in, making it the most popular situation comedy is US television history. Stephen Lambe's timely and superbly-crafted new book examines Seinfeld episode by episode, tracing the development of every character, catchphrase and quirk.