Wow! eBook
This Place Is Awesome: A Strange Funny Drunken Sad Noisy Week WIth The Dreadnoughts
Author(s): Adam PW Smith (Author)
- Publisher: BookBaby
- Publication Date: October 18, 2011
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 158 pages
- ISBN-10: B006PU8MMC
- ISBN-13: 9781618427489
Book Description
youtu.be/wTQFglDCeyw?hd=1
Before five star hotels and personal jets, before regular hotels and economy class seats, even before Motel 6 and tour buses, there is the tour van. The mobile circus that serves as transportation, bunk bed, dinner table, and rec room for hundreds of hungry young musicians.
2009, music photographer Adam PW Smith flew to England to spend a week touring with the Vancouver-based celtic-gypsy-polka-cider-punk band The Dreadnoughts in the middle of their first European tour. Smith was in the thick of it, suffering all the standard indignities but one. The result is a book that reveals much about life as a young, touring band who bring real meaning back to the DIY ethic, and a few things about what it's like to be a 43 year old trying to survive in that environment.
This Place Is Awesome is Smith's first book. Packed with comical stories, insightful reflections, and a selection of his highly-regarded photographs, it brings new perspective and a splash of cold reality to the rock bio/tour diary genre.
Editorial Reviews
Review
"His wry commentary, accompanied by a wealth of atmospheric photos, offers a rare glimpse into the deprivations - and depredations - of a touring band on the lower end of the music industry food chain."
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"If you want a window into our lives, this book is it. I couldn't get through more than one page of this book without bursting into laughter. It is hilarious, candid, beautiful and REAL."
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"An oddly touching and eye-opening look at life near the bottom of the rock and roll food chain."
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"...part photo doc, part travel diary rife with witty and wry insights and observations."
About the Author
Adam has been involved with the Canadian independent music scene from the time he was old enough to hoist a Fender amp into the back of a Ford Econoline van. He started out taking live music photographs of bands like The Cult, Sex Gang Children, and Deja Voodoo in the early 1980s. After a long hiatus from photography he got back into it in 2000 and has been intensely photographing parts of the Vancouver independent music scene for the past five years, as well as shooting events in the United States and Britain. His photographs have appeared in the Georgia Straight, Guitar Player Magazine, Seattle Weekly, SF Weekly, The Globe and Mail, and countless daily newspapers around the world, and have been featured on the BBC and CBC Web sites. More importantly to him, his photographs are a familiar sight on the Myspace, Facebook, and Web site pages of many of Vancouver's best live indie bands.
Champion of the musical underdog, lover of gin, and award-winning bad poet, he values music, integrity, and respect over money. Which is good, because that's order in which those things are to be found in his life.
