Showing results by author "Mike Barnes" in All Categories

Music journalist Mike Barnes (MOJO, The Wire, Prog, and author of the acclaimed biography Captain Beefheart) goes back to the birth of progressive rock and surveys the cultural conditions and attitudes that fed into, and were in turn affected by, this remarkable musical phenomenon.

Drawing on the author’s seven years of caring for his mother through Alzheimer's, Be With: Letters to a Caregiver is what its title promises: four dispatches to an anonymous long-term caregiver. In brief passages that cast fresh light on what it means to live with dementia, Barnes shares trials, insights, solace - and, ultimately, inspiration.

At a psychiatric hospital in the '80s, patients formed what they called The Adjustment League to protect themselves against the depredations of a corrupt and abusive staff. Many years later, the leader of this group - a man known only as "The Super" - receives a letter leading to the discovery of a pornographic ring in need of "adjustment".