Showing results for "Ballad" in Anthologies

Real musicians don’t sign autographs, date models, or fly in private jets. They spend their lives in practice rooms and basement clubs or toiling in the obscurity of coffee-shop gigs, casino jobs, and the European festival circuit. The 10 linked stories in Power Ballads are devoted to this unheard virtuoso: the working musician. From the wings of sold-out arenas to hip-hop studios to polka bars, these stories are born out of a nocturnal world where music is often simply work, but also where it can, in rare moments, become a source of grace and transcendence, speaking about the things we never seem to say to one another.

The Ballad of Tommy Atkins was first published as “Tommy” in Kipling’s timeless Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses, in the 1890s. ‘Tommy Atkins’, or simply Tommy was a generic name applied to British soldiers from as early as the 18th century, but came into popular parlance during the First World War when troops were simply referred to as “Tommies”. The ballad exposes the bitterness felt by the British soldier to the public’s treatment of their forces in times of peace, and how that alters in wartime.

The twists and turns in a bizarre story of attempted murder, a charming tale of virtue rewarded and the study of a man condemned to die are told by Mr. Wilde with verve and compassion.