Johnny Green was a footloose slacker who loved punk rock, stumbled into being a roadie for the Sex Pistols, then tripped again into a job pushing sound equipment for the Clash and driving their beat-up van to performances in the mean industrial towns of England. Disaffected youth anointed the Clash as their spokesmen and made the group synonymous with punk itself in the late 1970s. Eventually becoming the band's road manager, Green had a unique vantage point from which to witness the burgeoning punk rock movement while helping the band in their perpetual search for women, booze, and drugs. Green was with the Clash when they conquered America, bringing with them their bad behavior and great music, and burning out after their third, too-long tour. Written in a tell-it-as-it-was style and accompanied by contemporaneous drawings by Ray Lowry, who tagged along with the Clash on their American tour as their official "war artist," A Riot of Our Own pierces the heart of the culture and music of punk rock and the people who lived it.

A Riot of Our Own: Night and Day with the Clash

Barker, Garry

Green, Johnny

Humor & Entertainment

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

A RIOT OF OUR OWN: NIGHT AND DAY WITH THE CLASH

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Phoenix

Interpreting Appalachia, Garry Barker observes, is a task that has too often fallen to outsiders, whether government missionaries, learned experts, or sensation mongers. Not surprisingly, he suggests, their accounts of the region have usually missed the essentials: "the subtle humor, quiet pain, intense pride, and bridled passion that are part of every native mountaineer." Those missing qualities are precisely the ones that Barker - who was born, reared, and educated in the mountains of Kentucky - brings to this thoughtful collection of essays. Written during the 1980s and early 1990s, these pieces are full of pointed insights into recent issues facing the region, but they are also deeply informed by a sense of the past and of the rich traditions that account for much of the Appalachian identity. Divided into four parts, "Learning," "Working," "Laughing," and "Looking," Barker's essays range from some provocative thoughts on federal arts subsidies to personal perspectives on the Appalachian crafts industries, from a moving account of a trip home for a funeral to a gently humorous definition of "head of the holler" ("It's as far back as you can go," Barker says). The result is one writer's portrait of himself and his region - a stimulating mix of opinion and reflection that always poses the pertinent question even when its answer proves elusive.

Notes From A Native Son: Essays Appalachian Experience

History

Americas

Univ Tennessee Press

A collection of short stories set in Appalachia. The author is from Bald Hill, Kentucky, one of nine children of a tenant farming family.

Fire on Mountain

Kentucky Imprints

Copperhead Summer is a novel set in Eastern Kentucky's rugged mountains; a legendary local basketball star comes home to a welcome far beyond what he had expected. Copperheads, driven by a drought, are moving in on the population, and they're getting help from an unbelievable source. Full of action, folklore, Appalachian culture, and action.

Copperhead Summer

Mountain Passage

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

All night dog

Kentucke Imprints

<div>'Hugely enjoyable ... Green's great achievement is to recapture exactly how those moments felt, but remain sufficiently detached about the whole thing to render the experience honestly' MOJO Johnny Green first met the Clash in 1977. A RIOT OF OUR OWN is his tale of three delirious years of rock 'n' roll madness as confidant and road manager of the Clash, from the early punk days to LONDON CALLING and touring America. Ray Lowry accompanied the band as official 'war artist' on the second American tour and designed the London Calling album cover. Together, in words and pictures, Green and Lowry give the definitive, inside story on one of the most magnificent rock 'n' roll bands ever.</div>

A Riot of Our Own

Weidenfeld&Nicolson

A collection of modern short stories from the heart of Appalachia.

Kentucky Waltz: Collected Short Fiction

United States

Wind Pubns

Garry Barker is a humorist in the tradition of Andy Griffith and Loyal Jones. He grew up in Elliott and Fleming Counties of Kentucky, graduated from Berea College, and worked as an arts administrator and writer until his retirement from Morehead State University.  Barker lives at Bald Hill in Fleming County and is publisher of the Flemingsburg Gazette. He is the author of 10 published books. His "Head of the Holler" newspaper column has run in regional newspapers since 1988.  The earlier columns collected here, whether wry observation or raucous hyperbole, fun or fanciful, angry or sentimental, are always true to his upbringing and clear and refreshing as a mountain stream.

Head of the Holler

Humor

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Books by Barker, Garry