Böcker av Brian Carney

It's 1988 and thinks could be looking up for The Smiling Reptiles. The North of England Battle of the Bands competition could be just the break needed for: Frontman Stevo, a drug-fuelled egomaniac, meglomaniac sex maniac. Vinny, a pot smoking guitarist with a rare talent...for plagiarism. Scat, a timid ex-Punk bassist, ill at ease with his new-found funk tendancies. Narcissistic pretentious knob-twiddling synth player Lexxo, and drummer/plumber Raggerty, a no-nonsense skin pounder with more than a passing fondness for the amber nectar. On the other hand, the contest could turn out to be just another dead-end smalltown gig, but not for the shadowy figure trailing their every move; for him it's a matter of life and death...

From the anarchic Dead Fly Studios to the hedonistic super clubs of Ibiza, and the Belgian underground rock scene. When his band of 12 years, 'Poisoned Electrick Head' split up, Brian Carney naturally assumed his life would take on a less colourful hue. It didn't. Part travel biography, part memoir and part musical documentary, this light-hearted account recounts what happens when you take the road less travelled.

Where Frank L Baum meets Stephen King in the land where the one-armed man is king...If you meet a man with one arm, you may wonder how he came to be that way. Maybe it was some sort of industrial accident, or perhaps an amputation due to an illness or a disease. Or maybe it was because of something you could never in your darkest, most horrible nightmares imagine.And how do I know so much about one-armed men you may ask?Because I met one. His name was X.

A man on the brink of suicide is offered a bizarre alternative...A Cuban showband finds itself in a disaster-movie of its own making...A redundant factory worker rediscovers his hippie mojo from an unlikely source...Solzhenitsyn's Soviet labour camp is reimagined as a call centre. These are strange stories. These are tales from under the floorboards...