Music-History & Criticism

Radical subcultures in an unlikely place Told in personal interviews, this is the collective story of a punk community in an unlikely town and region, a hub of radical counterculture that drew artists and musicians from throughout the conservative South and earned national renown....

The complete story of iconic English post-punk band Echo and the Bunnymen from its founding in 1978, lavishly illustrated with numerous never-before-published photographs Echo and the Bunnymen combine the rawness and venom of New York punk with the moody textures of groups like the...

A musical genre forever outside the lines With a claim on artists from Jimmie Rodgers to Jason Isbell, Americana can be hard to define, but you know it when you hear it. John Milward's Americanaland is filled with the enduring performers and vivid stories...

Here is an inside look behind the scenes of The Band and how they recovered from the suicide of vocalist and pianist Richard Manuel in 1986. Joe Forno Jr. writes about the history of Woodstock, where he was born and raised, and how the...

DC Represent!There's a party over here, there's a party over there! In go-go the party never stops, and neither does the beat. The bands, the stars, the clubs, the spots, the sweat, the late nights and the passion are the sound of the city--all...

Since the dawn of modernism, visual and music production have had a particularly intimate relationship. From Luigi Russolo's 1913 Futurist manifesto L'Arte dei Rumori (The Art of Noise) to Marcel Duchamp's 1925 double-sided discs Rotoreliefs, the 20th century saw ever more fertile exchange between...

The indispensable consumers' guide to the music of Frank Zappa. A thorough analysis of every officially released album by Frank Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention, from the groundbreaking albums of the Sixties through Zappa's experimental, avant-garde work, to the most recent posthumous releases....

Few people in recent memory have dedicated themselves as devotedly to the story of twentieth- century American music as Rob Kapilow, the composer, conductor, and host of the hit NPR music radio program, What Makes It Great? Now, in Listening for America, he turns...

(Book). This third in a series of hardcover books joins the award-winning titles The Stratocaster Chronicles and The Soul of Tone by author/historian Tom Wheeler. In nearly 600 pages, The Dream Factory features hundreds of full-color photos of incredibly rare, collectible, and limited-edition handcrafted...

By pulling Kid A from its canonical status and grounding the album in various contexts, Marvin Lin explains not only why Radiohead suddenly adopted a new songwriting methodology, but also how properties like "genre" and "authenticity" distracted us from understanding our reactions to it....

Art Pepper (1925-1982) was called the greatest alto saxophonist of the post-Charlie Parker generation. But his autobiography, Straight Life, is much more than a jazz book--it is one of the most explosive, yet one of the most lyrical, of all autobiographies. This edition is...

From the beloved host and creator of NPR's All Songs Considered and Tiny Desk Concerts comes an essential oral history of modern music, told in the voices of iconic and up-and-coming musicians, including Dave Grohl, Jimmy Page, Michael Stipe, Carrie Brownstein, Smokey Robinson, and...

Warren Zevon songs are like chapters in a great American novel. Its story lies in the heart of his - and our - psyche. The lines are blurred. We never seem to know if we are looking in a mirror or peering through a...

Lavishly illustrated with color photos throughoutAuthor: Tony BaconISBN-10: 1617130087ISBN-13: 9781617130083Publisher: Backbeat BooksLanguage: EnglishPublished: 06/01/2011Pages: 144Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.36lbsSize: 10.98h x 8.60w x 0.43d

A fully illustrated oral history of the Magnetic Fields' 1999 triple album, 69 Love Songs - an album that was afforded "classic" status by many almost as soon as it was released. LD Beghtol's book is chatty, incestuous, funny, dark, digressive, sexy, maddening, and...

This sequel to Grammy-nominated bestseller Under the Big Black Sun continues the up-close and personal account of the L.A. punk scene--and includes fifty rare photos. Picking up where Under the Big Black Sun left off, More Fun in the New World explores the years...

PROSE Award- Music and Performing Arts Category Winner A framework for understanding the deep archive of Black performance in the digital era In an era of Big Data and algorithms, our easy access to the archive of contemporary and historical Blackness is unprecedented. That...

Punk rock culture in a preeminently average town Synonymous with American mediocrity, Peoria was fertile ground for the boredom- and anger-fueled fury of punk rock. Jonathan Wright and Dawson Barrett explore the do-it-yourself scene built by Peoria punks, performers, and scenesters in the 1980s...

This first comprehensive history of musical instruments, this book ranges from prehistoric times to the 20th century. It traverses five continents and every stage of evolution, from primitive rattles and bull-roarers to the electric organ. Author Curt Sachs, one of the world's most distinguished...

Have you ever wanted to learn more about hymns, but weren't sure where to start? In this follow-up to his bestselling original book, pastor Robert J. Morgan shares the incredible stories behind 150 beloved traditional hymns of faith.Each week millions of Christians around the...

Under the Big Black Sun explores the nascent Los Angeles punk rock movement and its evolution to hardcore punk as it's never been told before. John Doe of the legendary band X and co-author Tom DeSavia have woven together an enthralling story of the...

Prof. Hugh Miller's History of Music was first published in 1947, and quickly became a reference for students of music history worldwide. This thorough revision incorporates new knowledge on music, an updated 20th century section, and a brand new section about vernacular music. The...

The first half of the 1970s was an especially fertile period for British progressive rock, laying claim to classics such as Tarkus, Selling England by the Pound, Larks' Tongues in Aspic, The Dark Side of the Moon, and Thick as a Brick. Collectively these...

This famous book has the rare distinction of having been written by one family of distinguished violin-makers and experts -- the Hill family of London -- about another -- the legendary Guarneri family of Mantua, Cremona, and Venice. The Hills were unrivaled connoisseurs with...

Never Enough is the definitive biography of classic post-punk survivors The Cure. Author Jeff Apter traces their roots from middle-class Crawley, Sussex, documenting in detail their gradual rise to fame. On the way he reveals how their first "major" album, Pornography, almost ended the...

Non-fans regard C line Dion as ersatz and plastic, yet to those who love her, no one could be more real, with her impoverished childhood, her (creepy) manager-husband's struggle with cancer, her knack for howling out raw emotion. There's nothing cool about C line...

Dismantles the Woody Guthrie we have been taught--the rough-and-ready rambling' man--to reveal an artist who discovered how intimacy is crucial for political struggle Woody Guthrie is often mythologized as the classic American "rambling' man," a real-life Steinbeckian folk hero who fought for working-class interests...

Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry Winner of the 2017 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry Winner of the 2017 Book Award from the Society of Midland Authors for Poetry 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for poetry 2017 PEN/Jean Stein Book...

One of the Best Books of the Year* The Economist * The Christian Science Monitor * Financial Times * Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the most unfathomable composers in the history of music. How can such sublime work have been produced by a...

For many Beatles fans, the group's two-disc set from November 1968 is their favorite Beatles album. It was titled "The Beatles," but became known as "The White Album" for its pure white cover. At over 90 minutes long, it is filled with 30 incredible...

HAMMOND ORGAN - BEAUTY IN THE B - 2ND EDITIONAuthor: Mark VailISBN-10: 0879307056ISBN-13: 9780879307059Publisher: Backbeat BooksLanguage: EnglishPublished: 04/01/2002Pages: 320Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.93lbsSize: 10.87h x 8.33w x 0.80d

BTS did it again Map of the Soul: 7 is a capstone of a 2-album project intended to reveal the inner landscape of the human soul that is packed with rich symbolism and woven together with BTS's signature sound and moves. Starting with the...

Johnny Cash seemed like the stuff of legend when he was alive, and even more so as he achieved something close to sainthood in death. The interviews collected here bring us closer to the actual man: brilliant, falliable, introspective, and longing for redemption. Mythmaker,...

Raucous, sensual and sublime: how twelve pioneering female artists rewrote the rules of pop. From Kate Bush to Nicki Minaj, from Janet Jackson to TLC and Taylor Swift, pop's greatest female pioneers are simply strange smashing notions of taste and decorum, and replacing them...

Choosing Death is widely recognized as the definitive history of extreme music subgenres. For this revised and expanded edition, author Albert Mudrian (editor-in-chief of Decibel magazine) reveals there is life after death metal; the book now flaunts a whopping 100 additional pages in three...

(Book). A Martin acoustic guitar is the beloved instrument of millions of fans and famous players worldwide. Starting with the early days in New York circa 1833, this fabled story comes to life in the long-awaited revision of the seminal Martin History book. Originally...

The frank, funny, and unforgettable autobiography of a living legend of Chicago blues. Simply put, Billy Boy Arnold is one of the last men standing from the Chicago blues scene's raucous heyday. What's more, unlike most artists in this electrifying melting pot, who were...

From Afro Sheen to Theaster Gates and from Soul Train to Chance the Rapper, Black Chicago draws sustenance from a culture rooted in self-determination, aspiration, and hustle. In Energy Never Dies, Ayana Contreras embarks on a journey to share the implausible success stories and...

This "Bible of the Beatles" captures the iconic band's magical and mysterious journey from adorable teenagers to revered cultural emissaries. In this fully updated version, each of their 241 tracks is assessed chronologically from their first amateur recordings in 1957 to their final "reunion"...

The basis for the new hit documentary 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything, now streaming on Apple TV+. A rollicking look at 1971, rock's golden year, the year that saw the release of the indelible recordings of Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, the Who,...

How Boston radio station WBCN became the hub of the rock-and-roll, antiwar, psychedelic solar system. While San Francisco was celebrating a psychedelic Summer of Love in 1967, Boston stayed buttoned up and battened down. But that changed the following year, when a Harvard Law...

In Janelle Monáe's full-length debut, the science fiction concept album The ArchAndroid, the android Cindi Mayweather is on the run from the authorities for the crime of loving a human. Living in 28th century Metropolis, Cindi fights for survival, soon realizing that she is...

Of all the recordings to emerge from the Athens-via-Denver collective called Elephant 6, Neutral Milk Hotel's second album is the one that has worked its way under the most skins. Magnet magazine named it the best album of the 1990s, and Creative Loafing recently...

"Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn." -- Charlie Parker"What is jazz? The rhythm -- the feeling." -- Coleman Hawkins"The best sound usually comes the first time you do something....

Archival material from the 1990s underground movement that served as a "gateway drug to feminist history" for so many. (--Kathleen Hanna, Bikini Kill)Before the rise of the Internet or desktop publishing, the zine and music culture of the Riot Grrrl movement empowered young women...

Whether they listen to Mozart or Duke Ellington, Aaron Copland invites readers to ask two basic questions: Are they hearing everything that is going on? Are they really being sensitive to it? With his provocative suggestions, Aaron Copland guides readers through a deeper appreciation...

The definitive, unauthorized biography of The Eagles by the New York Times bestselling biographer To the Limit is the unauthorized account of the group from its earliest years through the breakup, solo careers, and reunions. Blending the country and folk music of the late...

This book explores the relationships between rock and roll, social protest, and authenticity to consider how rock and roll could function as social protest music. The author begins by discussing the nature and origins of rock and roll and the nature of social protest...

"The coolest class on campus" - The New York TimesWhen the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan in 2016, a debate raged. Some celebrated, while many others questioned the choice. How could the world's most prestigious book prize be awarded to...

Discover country stars in their own voice!Discover country music stars' most insightful, unguarded comments, told to award-winning writer Tom Alesia, during an exhilarating quarter century. More than 100 of the genre's biggest acts--including Garth Brooks, Kenny Chesney, Carrie Underwood, Miranda Lambert and Eric Church--offer...