When Giants Walked The Earth

A revised edition of the classic Led Zeppelin biography, featuring rich and substantial new material

Mick Wall is the UK’s best-known rock writer, author and TV and radio programme maker, and is the author of numerous critically-acclaimed books, including definitive, bestselling titles on Led Zeppelin (When Giants Walked the Earth), Metallica (Enter Night), AC/DC (Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be), Black Sabbath (Symptom of the Universe) and Lou Reed (The Life).

A compilation of all 48 tracks ever recorded by the Laughing Clowns. Recorded between 1979 - 1984. Laughing Clowns are a post punk band who formed in Sydney in 1979. In five years, the band released: three LPs, two mini albums, and various singles and compilations. Laughing Clowns' sound is free jazz, bluegrass and krautrock influenced. The band formed to accommodate Ed Kuepper's growing interest expanding the brass-driven sounds created on The Saints third album, Prehistoric Sounds, and by adopting flattened fifth notes in a rock and roll setting while using a modern jazz styled band line-up. Along with The Birthday Party, The Go-Betweens, The Moodists and The Triffids, the Laughing Clowns also sought fame in Europe during the early '80s, and gained an international cult status. All four aforementioned groups have cited Laughing Clowns as an influence at some point in their respective careers.

They’re a link in a chain, these guys, most of whom hail from Long Island, but they’re also a pointer to the future. Listen to them slash and burn, watch them tear up the stage, feel their passion, and they’re invariably going to remind you of so many other great heavy rock bands that have come and gone over the past half-century. But there’s also something vibrant, vital and— this is important—young about WAKE THE SUN.All five of them are in their early twenties, so they weren’t around when giants like Zeppelin, Hendrix and Sabbath walked the Earth. Hell, they weren’t even born yet when Metallica and Pearl Jam started out!

Of all the continents on Earth, none preserves a more spectacular story of our planet's origins than Australia. NOVA's four-part "Australia's First 4 Billion Years" takes viewers on a rollicking adventure from the birth of the Earth to the emergence of the world we know today. With help from host and scientist Richard Smith, we meet titanic dinosaurs and giant kangaroos, sea monsters and prehistoric crustaceans, disappearing mountains and deadly asteroids.