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 genres 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.Prog expert Stephen Lambe guides the reader through the early years as the music developed out of the B...

When Yes ran into problems recording their tenth album in Paris at the end of 1979, it was almost the end. Yet in the 80s, the band rallied, firstly as part of an unlikely collaboration with new wave duo The Buggles, then with 90125, the most successful album of their career, which spawned a number one hit in the USA with ‘Owner Of A Lonely Heart’. The band failed to capitalise on this success, however, lingering too long over its successor Big Generator and by the end of...

For a few short years in the 1970s, the unique music of Focus entertained the world. Built around the prodigious instrumental talents of Dutch masters Jan Akkerman (guitar) and Thijs van Leer (keyboards and flute), the band produced three hit albums in quick succession between 1971 and 1974, at the same time scoring two worldwide hits with 'Sylvia' and 'Hocus Pocus'. The latter piece is as ubiquitous as tunes from the 70s get, distinctive for Akkerman's famous riff and van Leer's bizarre y...

When Sonicbond Publishing produced its first books in 2018, we didn’t expect that by 2024, we would have published over 120 new titles in our flagship On Track series. To celebrate we are pleased to present our very first printed, pocket-sized sampler. This represents a brief dive into eight of our titles in the series across a wide range of music genres, including progressive rock, indie, classic rock, folk rock, singer-songwriter and metal.Yes’ seminal Fragile album finds the band...

Tewkesbury is a fascinating and busy market town, steeped in history. Best known for its medieval buildings, there is also plenty of evidence of the town's prosperity during the Georgian era. This full colour book celebrates a complete year, taking in all the seasons, from picturesque winter snows through to the busy and colourful street scenes of the summer months. It also recognises the impact that the two rivers, the Severn and the Avon, have on the town. The book also focuses on some o...

China is experiencing an unprecedented phenomenon: breakneck industrialization on a scale and at a pace not seen before. It is trying to achieve in just a few decades what Western nations took more than a century to do. The arrival in the country’s cities of tens of millions of rural dwellers, at most semi-skilled, has put huge strain on the country’s system of vocational education, known as TVET. How have the Chinese authorities and their education administrators responded? Is China’s TVE...

The Sage Handbook of Sociology of Education is an international and comprehensive groundbreaking text that serves as a touchstone for researchers and scholars interested in exploring the intricate relationships between education and society. Leading sociologists from five different continents examine major topics in sociology from a global perspective.This timely, thought-provoking Handbook features contributions from leading and emerging sociology schola...

School dropout remains a persistent and critical issue in many school systems, so much so that it is sometimes referred to as a crisis. Populations across the globe have come to depend on success at school for establishing careers and gaining access to post-school qualifications. Yet large numbers of young people are excluded from the advantages that successful completion of school brings and as a result are subjected to consequences such as higher likelihood of unemployment, lower earning...

My family was never supposed to meet my fake fiancee.Except she just walked into my hospital room, looking just as surprised as I am.All because of one white lie. They think we’ve been together for a year, but I only met her last night.I panicked after my father didn’t name me as the next CEO of our family’s billion-dollar company. His reasoning was that “I care *too* much about work”. In fact, the whole small town we live in thinks I’m too rigid an...

Yes are the archetypal 1970s progressive rock group. Playing powerful and adventurous music when it was briefly part of the mainstream, the band thrilled millions with their iconic albums and epic live shows. Records like Fragile and Close To The Edge helped define an era, and although the band dissolved at the end of the decade, Yes emerged once again with 90125, a streamlined, modern sound in the 1980s and a US number one hit single in 'Owner of a Lonely Heart'. Now in their sixth decade...

This is a new edition, bringing the Yes story up to date for 2020 and specifically including a brand new section on the 2019 album ‘From A Page’.In Yes On Track, Stephen Lambe provides a thorough assessment of the career and output of one of the most important Progressive bands of all time.Lambe authoritatively examines each of the band’s twenty-one studio albums, chronicling the many high points and the rarer missteps, as well as dissecting the changes in band dynamics, wh...

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 pie...