Rock and Hard Places Travels to Backstages, Frontlines and Assorted Sideshows

by Mueller, Andrew

• ISBN13: 9781593762681
• ISBN10: 1593762682
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-02-16
• Publisher: Soft Skull

Summary

In Rock and Hard Places, a collection of Muller's best journalism from the early nineties to the present, he travels to Lebanon with the Prodigy, comes to America with Radiohead, and roams all over the place with U2. He ventures to Bosnia during the war, sees Def Leppard play in a cave in Morocco, attempts to ask the Taliban what they think they're up to, and takes his own country band on tour to Albania. He visits Tupelo, Mississippi, where the greatest of American entertainers was born, and Branson, Missouri, where the rest of them go to die. He ventures into radioactive Chernobyl, sloshes miserably through the mud at Woodstock, II wakes up at least once in a park in Reykjavik, flies the world's least commercially sensible air route, and strongly advises avoiding the seafood salad in Sapporo Airport.

Author Biography

Andrew Mueller is Australian by Birth, Londoner by Choice, wanderer by nature, and journalist by profession. Unable to decide between being a rock critic, travel writer, or foreign correspondent, he hit upon the novel, if time-consuming, solution of trying to be all three at once.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Great Leap Foreword	p. xiii
In A Blue Yorke State of Mind: Radiohead in America	p. 1
I'm The Turban Spaceman, Baby: Afghanistan Under the Taliban	p. 15
Balkan after midnight: Sarajevo's Rock'n'roll Scene	p. 34
Yasser, I Can Boogie: The Prodigy in Beirut	p. 50
Every Which Way but Moose: Green Day in Canada	p. 62
Friday I'm in Chicago: The Cure in America and Canada	p. 74
Apathy in the UK: On book Tour in Britain	p. 85
No Sleep Till Travnik: China Drum in Bosnia	p. 94
Hungry Heartland: Brute Springsteen in America	p. 114
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Fez: Def Leppard in Morocco	p. 127
Eye of the Geiger: Chernobyl	p. 136
Strait to Hell: Anzac Day at Gallipoli	p. 147
If You Want Mud (You've Got It): Woodstock II	p. 159
Bastille Crazy After All These Years: 1968 revisited, Paris	p. 171
Whole Lotta Fake King Goin' on: Tupelo, Mississippi	p. 184
Take the Vedder With You: Lollapalooza in America	p. 191
24 Hours from Tuzla: The Bihar Pocket	p. 207
Borne Tehran: By Iran Air to Caracas	p. 221
(Get Your Kicks On) Beirut 66: The Road to Damascus	p. 231
California screaming: Courtney Love in Los Angeles	p. 242
Yen will I be famous?: Alisha's Attic in Japan	p. 260
What Time Is Louvre?: To France with Radiohead	p. 260
If you're looking for Rouble: Ambulance chasing with Highway Patrol, Moscow	p. 269
Mid-Life Strain to Georgia: Drive-By Truckers and The Hold Steady on the Rock'n'Rcil Means Well tour	p. 278
Crazy Norses: Iceland	p. 289
Magical Missouri tour: Branson	p. 301
Lemon on a Jet Plane: Around the world with U2	p. 310
I Wanna Be Your Zog: The Blazing Zoos in Albania	p. 331
Acknowledgments: Uptown Top Thanking	p. 348
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