The Black Keys are an American rock band formed in Akron, Ohio, in 2001. The group consists of Patrick Carney; the duo began as an independent act, recording music in basements and self-producing their records, before they emerged as one of the most popular garage rock artists during a second wave of the genre's revival in the 2010s. The band's raw blues rock sound draws from Auerbach's blues influences, including Junior Kimbrough, Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson. Friends since childhood and Carney founded the group after dropping out of college. After signing with indie label Alive, they released their debut album, The Big Come Up, which earned them a new deal with Fat Possum Records. Over the next decade, the Black Keys built an underground fanbase through extensive touring of small clubs, frequent album releases and music festival appearances, broad licensing of their songs, their third album, Rubber Factory, received critical acclaim and boosted the band's profile leading to a record deal with major label Nonesuch Records in 2006.

After self-producing and recording their first four records in makeshift studios, the duo completed Attack & Release in a professional studio and hired producer Danger Mouse, who subsequently became a frequent collaborator with the band. The group's commercial breakthrough came in 2010 with Brothers, which along with its popular single "Tighten Up", won three Grammy Awards, their 2011 follow-up El Camino received strong reviews and peaked at number two on the Billboard 200 chart, leading to the first arena concert tour of the band's career, the El Camino Tour. The album and its hit single. In 2014, they released their eighth album, Turn Blue, their first number-one record in the US, Australia. After completing the Turn Blue Tour in 2015, the duo took a hiatus for several years to work on side projects and produce other artists, they returned in 2019 with Let's Rock. Guitarist/vocalist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney first met when they were eight or nine years old while living in the same neighborhood of Akron, Ohio.

Auerbach and Carney both come from musical backgrounds. Auerbach is the cousin of guitarist Robert Quine, a "veteran of New York's avant-rock scene." Carney is the nephew of saxophonist Ralph Carney. While attending Firestone High School, they became friends, though they were part of different crowds—Auerbach was captain of the high school soccer team, while Carney was a social outcast. Encouraged by their brothers, the duo began jamming together in 1996, as Auerbach was learning guitar at the time and Carney owned a four-track recorder and a drum set. After graduating, both attended the University of Akron before dropping out. Auerbach attempted to make a living from performing at small bars in town, but realized he would not be able to book shows in other cities without a demo. To record one, he asked for help from Carney, who agreed to provide recording equipment and allow his basement to be used if Auerbach recruited the other musicians. However, none of Auerbach's backing band showed up on the recording date.

Instead and Auerbach jammed leading to the duo forming a band in mid-2001. Together, they recorded a six-song demo consisting of "old blues rip-offs and words made up on the spot" with minimal equipment. After sending the demo to a dozen record labels, they accepted an offer in 2002 from a small indie label in Los Angeles named Alive, because it was "the only label that would sign without having to see first". According to an interview on NPR's Fresh Air, the group's name "the Black Keys" came from an acquaintance diagnosed with schizophrenia, Alfred McMoore, he would leave incoherent messages on their answering machines referring to their fathers as "black keys" such as "D flat" when he was upset with them. On March 20, 2002, the duo played their first live show at Cleveland's Beachland Ballroom and Tavern to an audience of eight people; the band's debut album, The Big Come Up, was recorded in Carney's basement on an 8-track tape recorder in lo-fi and was released in May 2002, three months after they signed to Alive.

The album, a mix of eight original tracks and five cover songs, forged a raw blues rock sound for the group. Two tracks, covers of the traditional blues standard "Leavin' Trunk" and The Beatles' song "She Said, She Said", were released as a single on Isota Records; the track "I'll Be Your Man" would be used as the theme song for the HBO series Hung. In order to help fund a tour and Carney took jobs mowing lawns for a landlord. Despite modest sales for The Big Come Up, it gained a cult following and attracted attention from critics landing the group a record deal with Fat Possum Records. Within days of signing to Fat Possum, the Black Keys completed Thickfreakness, it was recorded in Carney's basement in a single 14-hour session in December 2002, an approach necessitated because the group spent its small advance payment from Fat Possum on rent. The group had recorded sessions with producer Jeff Saltzman in San Francisco but aborted them, as they were unhappy that the results sounded too much like "modern-rock radio".

In March 2003, the group played at one of its first music festivals, South by Southwest in Austin, after driving for nearly 24 hours from Akron. Much as they did for the festival and Auerbach spent their early tour days driving themselves from show to show in a 1994 Chrysler van they nicknamed the "Gray Ghost". Thickfreakness was released on Apr

Peter Richard "Pete" McCracken is an Australian composer and singer-songwriter and working in the Melbourne area. He has been a member of indie band The Plums, pop-rock band Deadstar and country-tinged duo The Tulips, he married band mate Caroline Kennedy-McCracken. By 2005, the couple had two children. Peter Richard McCracken completed post-graduate studies in composition at the University of Melbourne in 2008, having studied music at La Trobe University. In 2006 he studied composition at Mannes College in New York, he has composed works for solo piano, guitar ensemble and piano, chamber ensemble. His instrumental work is post-minimalist. In 1992 McCracken, on bass guitar, joined The Plums, an indie guitar pop four-piece group in Melbourne, with his future wife Caroline Kennedy-McCracken on lead vocals and guitar, Steve Moffat on guitar and Shamus Goble on drums; the band were signed to Mushroom's Temptation label soon after they recorded their first extended play Au Revoir Sex Kitten, issued by that label in November 1992.

The Plums recorded another EP, Read All Over, followed with a studio album, Gun, picked up and played by national radio broadcaster, JJJ. Their last recording was an EP, released in June 1995 and the band broke up in August. Around this time McCracken had formed the punk-pop band Dangersharks, members of which included at various times Sam Maughan, Stan Dunsten, David Nelson, bassist Daniel Elhay, saxophonist Charlie Todd, James Todd and Juz Siedle; the band gathered a loyal following of fans and gained a reputation as a somewhat lunatic underground "collective", releasing Bare Foot Head, a seven-track EP. In 1997 McCracken joined Melbourne pop-rock band, replacing previous bass guitarist Nick Seymour. McCracken appeared on the third Deadstar studio album, Somewhere Over the Radio. In 1998 he toured with The Caroline Kennedy Conspiracy with Kennedy-McCracken, Tim "Teddy" Cleaver on guitar and Goble. In 2001, McCracken, now on lead guitar, Kennedy-McCracken formed Kicksilvers, Goble soon joined and they recruited McCracken's sister Jane McCracken on bass guitar.

That year the group issued a self-titled three-track EP on their own label, produced by the band and Cleaver. In April 2002 the band performed in New South Wales with Graeme Cameron on drums. In 2002, The Tulips was formed as a country group with McKracken on lead guitar and Kennedy-McCracken, they issued an eponymous EP. Other early members of The Tulips were Jane McCracken and Cameron. On 17 May 2003 they released a studio album, as a duo on Belmore Records. In 2005 they recorded Free Like a Bird with Tony Cohen, never commercially released. By 2005, McCracken was married to Kennedy-McCracken and the couple had two children

The Smart Set Anthology is an anthology of selections from The Smart Set literary magazine, edited by Burton Rascoe and Groff Conklin. It was first published in hardcover by Reynal & Hitchcock in 1934, reprinted as The Smart Set Anthology of World Famous Authors by Halcyon House in the same year, it was reissued by Grayson as The Bachelor's Companion in 1944. The book has the distinction of being the first anthology with which Conklin was involved in an editorial capacity; the book comprises a representative sample of the best pieces that had appeared in The Smart Set magazine, collecting works of fiction, articles and miscellaneous pieces by various authors, together with an introduction by Rascoe. For pieces published in the magazine issue dates are provided below. "'Smart Set' History" "Orphant Annie" - Jun 1923 "The Sensible Convict" - Dec 1917 "How the Lost Causes Were Removed from Valhalla" - Oct 1919 "Notes on the American Gentlewoman" - Nov 1921 "How I Discovered Bernard Shaw" - Jul 1915 "Ophelia" - Oct 1921 "The End of Ilsa Menteith" - Aug 1916 "Narcissus" - Jun 1914 "Benediction" - Feb 1920 "The Three Hermits" - Sep 1913 "Ballade of Youth to Swinburne" - May 1913 "From the Memoirs of a Private Detective" - Mar 1923 "Summer Rain" - Apr 1916 "Los Angeles the Chemically Pure" - Mar 1913 "Afterwards" - Oct 1906 "A Shepherdess of Fauns" - Oct 1913 "Over the Telephone" - Apr 1923 "The Great Woods" - Sep 1923 "On Cornell" - May 1922 "Carnival" - Mar 1924 "I’m a Stranger Here Myself" - Aug 1916 "Spoof River Anthology" - Mar 1916 "The Mowers" - Nov 1913 "Such a Pretty Little Picture" - Dec 1922 "The Morals of the Mormons" - Jun 1917 "The Shadow" - Dec 1913 "Some Ladies and Jurgen" - Jul 1918 "Crêpe de Chine" - Jul 1918 "Bagatelle" - Jul 1911 "The Eternal Masculine" - May 1919 "Whitemail" - Mar 1914 "The Rabbit-Hutch" - Sep 1919 "Threnody upon a Decadent Art" - Jan 1921 "The Commonsense of Monsieur Lebel" - Apr 1917 "Caste" - May 1921 "Summer Thunder" - Sep 1920 "Model Ballad of the Cook and the Clairvoyant" - Nov 1930 "To a Broadway Hotel" - Mar 1918 "Blissful Interlude" - Aug 1921 "Maxims of Methuselah" - Jun 1911 "Donkies" - Dec 1922 "The Man Who Understood Women" - Sep 1917 "A Flood" - Nov 1913 "Freedom" - Mar 1919 "An Epilogue to Love" - Feb 1918 ""All for One and One for All'" - Jul 1904 "Rose Garland" - Nov 1910 "Resurrection" - Dec 1915 "One Day More" - Feb 1914 "Kisses in the Train" - Oct 1913 "Fifty Years Spent" - Dec 1913 "Autumn in the Subway" - Sep 1917 "The Story Ashland Told at Dinner" - Feb 1919 "A Song" - Mar 1923 "Earth and Sea" - Feb 1923 "Drought" - Jun 1913 "The Fruit of Misadventure" - Jul 1915 "The Fire Is Out in Acheron" - Jan 1921 " Humoresque in Ham" - Apr 1918 "Répétition Générale" - Jun 1919 "Réveil" - Oct 1915 "The Secret of Success" - Nov 1921 "The Renunciatory Gesture" - Sep 1921 "The Peripatetic Prince" - Jun 1913 "The Treasure" - Oct 1915 "The Girl Who Couldn’t Go Wrong" - Jul 1913 "Lilith" - Jun 1913 "Saturday Night Blues" - Oct 1920 "The Lotus and the Bottle" - Jan 1902 "A Declaration" - Dec 1923 "Sonnet" - Apr 1923 "The Green Elephant" - Oct 1923 "An Incident of the Cosmos" - Jun 1923 "Rum and Rebellion" - Nov 1921 "Miss Thompson" - Apr 1921 "Rope" - Nov 1923 "And Minstrels Flown with Pride" - Oct 1920 "Little Girl" - Apr 1915 "The Long Voyage Home" - Oct 1917 "The Whole Art of the Wooden Leg" - Mar 1923 "The Blue Sphere" - Dec 1914 "The Death of Sir Launcelot" - Sep 1915 "Just Him and Her" (Ruth Suck