Music

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 delightful in equal measures. It documents a vital and influential scene from the inside, involving ukuleles and tears, citations and footnotes, analogue drum machines, and floods of cognac. Oh, and a crossword puzzle too.

The centre of the book is the secret history of these tuneful, acerbic, and sometimes heartbreaking songs of old love, new love, lost love, punk rock love, gay love, straight love, experimental music love, true love, blue love, and the utter lack of love that fill the album - as told by participants, fans, imitators, naysayers, and others.

Also included are a lexicon of words culled from the album's lyrics, recording details, performance notes from the full album shows in New York, Boston and London, plus rare and unpublished images, personal memorabilia, and much much more.

A Catholic high school near Boston in 1985. A time of suicides, gymnasium humiliations, smoking for beginners, asthma attacks, and incendiary teenage infatuations. Infatuations with a girl (Allison), with a band (The Smiths) and with an album, Meat is Murder, that was so raw, so vivid and so melodic that you could cling to it like a lifeboat in a storm.

In this brilliant novella Joe Pernice tells the story of an asthmatic kid's discovery of Meat is Murder.

Here is a short exceropt:

One morning as I was jogging my way past the bronze plaque commemorating the deaths of one student and one motorcyclist, my necktie flapping like a windsock, Ray floored the brake pedal of his Dodge as he closed in on me. Fifty mile an hour traffic came to a screeching, nearly murderous halt behind him. He leaned over and rolled down the passenger side window in one fluid motion. He dispensed with formalities while I marveled at the audacity of his driving and, tossing something at me, winked and said, Here. I'm going to kill myself. He pegged the gas, leaving a surprisingly good patch of rubber for such a shitty car. In the gutter, sugared with sand put down during the winter's last snow, I saw written in red felt ink on masking tape stuck to a smoky-clear cassette: Smiths: Meat.

Released in the U.S. in January 1968, The Who Sell Out was, according to critic Dave Marsh, a complete backfire--the album sold well, but not spectacularly [and was] ultimately a nostalgic in-joke: Who but a pop intellectual could appreciate such a thing? Further rarifying its in-joke status was its unapologetic Englishness; 13 tracks stitched together in a mock pirate radio broadcast, without a DJ, with cool, anglocentric commercials to boot. In the 36 years since its release, Sell Out, though still not the best selling release in The Who's catalog, has been embraced by a growing number of fans who regard it as the band's best work, one of the few recordings of the late 1960s that best represents the ambitious aesthetic possibilities of the concept album without becoming mired in a bog of smug, self-aggrandizing, high art aspirations. Sell Out, powerfully and ecstatically, articulates the nexus of pop music and pop culture.

As much as it is an expression of the band's expanding sonic palette, Sell Out also functions as a critique of the rock and roll lifestyle. Not the clichéd mantra of sex, drugs, and rock and roll but in the ways that commercial advertising fabricates a youth-oriented cultural reality by hawking pimple cream, deodorant, food, musical equipment, etc., and linking it with rock and roll. In this sense Sell Out is a reflective work, one that struggles with rock and roll as a cultural expression that aspires to aesthetic permanence while marketed as ephemera. From this conflict emerges a pop art masterpiece.

When Bruce Springsteen went back on the road in 1984, he opened every show by shouting out, one, two, one, two, three, four, followed by the droning synth chords of Born in the U.S.A. Max Weinberg hit his drums with a two-fisted physicality that cut through the swelling chords. With a rolled-up red kerchief around his head and heavy black boots under his faded jeans, Springsteen looked like the character of the song, and from the very first line (Born down in a dead man's town) he sang with the throat-scraping desperation of a man with his back against the wall.

When he reached the crucial lines, though, the guitars and bass dropped out and Weinberg switched to just the hi-hat. Springsteen's voice grew a bit more private and reluctant as he sang, Nowhere to run. Nowhere to go. It was as if he weren't sure if this were an admission of defeat or the drawing of a line in the sand. But when the band came crashing back at full strength-building a crescendo that fell apart in the cacophony of Springsteen's and Weinberg's wild soloing, paused and then came together again in the determined, marching riff-it was clear that the singer was ready to make a stand.

One of the finest hip-hop albums ever made, A Tribe Called Quest's debut record (featuring stone-cold classics like Can I Kick It? and Bonita Applebum) took the idea of the boasting hip-hop male and turned it on its head. For many listeners, when this non-traditional, surprisingly feminine album was released, it was like hearing an entirely new form of music.

In this book, Shawn Taylor explores the creation of the album as well as the impact it had on him at the time - a 17-year-old high-school geek who was equally into hip-hop, punk, new wave, skateboarding, and Dungeons & Dragons: all of a sudden, with this one album, the world made more sense. He has spent many years investigating this album, from the packaging to the song placement to each and every sample - Shawn Taylor knows this record like he knows his tattoos, and he's finally been able to write a fascinating and highly entertaining book about it.

The first authorized, comprehensive history of one of the biggest rock bands ever, with never-before-seen photos and memorabilia, on their 40th anniversary

Years after the death of their larger-than-life frontman Freddie Mercury, the music of mega-selling Queen endures. We've heard their songs in Wayne's World and Glee, and they helped give Lady Gaga her name. Their musical We Will Rock You has been seen by five million theatergoers in seven countries. Queen's had chart-topping success, and sold hundreds of millions of CDs, DVDs, and videos. They've broken records (biggest ever paying crowd, longest number of weeks on the charts) and received awards and accolades including induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001 and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2002.

40 Years of Queen is the first authorized band book, and includes an introduction by Brian May and Roger Taylor. It tells the unique story of a fantastically talented and popular group of musicians whose sound and performances changed rock music. Featuring 200 photographs--some rare and never-before-published--and removable memorabilia, 40 Years of Queen is the book fans have been waiting decades for.

LGBTQ musicians have been pushing for change since the 1920s, with singers such as Bessie Smith crooning about same-sex liaisons almost 100 years ago - long before Frankie Goes to Hollywood were telling everyone to 'Relax'. This book is a celebration of artists who became icons, and broke new ground through song. From legendary figures such as Freddie Mercury, Little Richard, and George Michael, to bands like Bronski Beat, The Scissor Sisters, The XX, and The Petshop Boys, and more contemporary figures including Frank Ocean, Beth Ditto, and Rufus Wainright, these are the people who made an unforgettable impact. Elegantly illustrated and packaged, these stories make utterly inspirational reading.