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Searching, propulsive, and deeply spiritual, Accordion Eulogies is an odyssey to repair a severed family lineage, told through the surprising history of a musical instrument Growing up in Yakima, Washington, Noé Álvarez never knew his grandfather. Stories swirled around this mythologized, larger-than-life figure: That he had abandoned his family, and had possibly done something awful that put a curse on his descendants. About his grandfather, young Noé was sure of only one thing: That he had played the accordion. Now an adult, reckoning with the legacy of silence surrounding his family's migration from Mexico, Álvarez resolves both to take up the instrument and to journey into Mexico to discover the grandfather he never knew. Álvarez travels across the US with his accordion, meeting makers and players in cities that range from San Antonio to Boston. He uncovers the story of an instrument that's been central to classic American genres, but also played a critical role in indigenous Mexican history. Like the accordion itself, Álvarez feels trapped between his roots in Mexico and the U.S. As he tries to make sense of his place in the world--as a father, a son, a musician--he gets closer to uncovering the mystery of his origins.
With "virtuosic vulnerability" (The Atlantic), the iconic bassist and Red Hot Chili peppers co-founder pens a New York Times bestselling love letter to his wild Los Angeles youth in his raw and riveting coming-of-age memoir, now in paperback.
In Acid for the Children, Flea takes readers on a deeply personal and revealing tour of his formative years, spanning from Australia to the New York City suburbs to, finally, Los Angeles. Through hilarious anecdotes, poetical meditations, and occasional flights of fantasy, Flea deftly chronicles the experiences that forged him as an artist, a musician, and a young man. His dreamy, jazz-inflected prose makes the Los Angeles of the 1970s and 80s come to gritty, glorious life, including the potential for fun, danger, mayhem, or inspiration that lurked around every corner. It is here that young Flea, looking to escape a turbulent home, found family in a community of musicians, artists, and junkies who also lived on the fringe. He spent most of his time partying and committing petty crimes. But it was in music where he found a higher meaning, a place to channel his frustration, loneliness, and love. This left him open to the life-changing moment when he and his best friends, soul brothers, and partners-in-mischief came up with the idea to start their own band, which became the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Acid for the Children is the debut of a stunning new literary voice, whose prose is as witty, entertaining, and wildly unpredictable as the author himself. It's a tenderly evocative coming-of-age story and a raucous love letter to the power of music and creativity from one of the most renowned musicians of our time. New York Times BestsellerA #1 LA Times BestsellerA USA Today BestsellerOne of NPR's "Favorite Books of 2019"
In Acid for the Children, Flea takes readers on a deeply personal and revealing tour of his formative years, spanning from Australia to the New York City suburbs to, finally, Los Angeles. Through hilarious anecdotes, poetical meditations, and occasional flights of fantasy, Flea deftly chronicles the experiences that forged him as an artist, a musician, and a young man. His dreamy, jazz-inflected prose makes the Los Angeles of the 1970s and 80s come to gritty, glorious life, including the potential for fun, danger, mayhem, or inspiration that lurked around every corner. It is here that young Flea, looking to escape a turbulent home, found family in a community of musicians, artists, and junkies who also lived on the fringe. He spent most of his time partying and committing petty crimes. But it was in music where he found a higher meaning, a place to channel his frustration, loneliness, and love. This left him open to the life-changing moment when he and his best friends, soul brothers, and partners-in-mischief came up with the idea to start their own band, which became the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Acid for the Children is the debut of a stunning new literary voice, whose prose is as witty, entertaining, and wildly unpredictable as the author himself. It's a tenderly evocative coming-of-age story and a raucous love letter to the power of music and creativity from one of the most renowned musicians of our time. New York Times BestsellerA #1 LA Times BestsellerA USA Today BestsellerOne of NPR's "Favorite Books of 2019"
With "virtuosic vulnerability" (The Atlantic), the iconic bassist and Red Hot Chili peppers co-founder pens a love letter to a youth spent wild in Los Angeles in his raw and riveting coming-of-age memoir.
In Acid for the Children, Flea takes readers on a deeply personal and revealing tour of his formative years, spanning from Australia to the New York City suburbs to, finally, Los Angeles. Through hilarious anecdotes, poetical meditations, and occasional flights of fantasy, Flea deftly chronicles the experiences that forged him as an artist, a musician, and a young man. His dreamy, jazz-inflected prose makes the Los Angeles of the 1970s and 80s come to gritty, glorious life, including the potential for fun, danger, mayhem, or inspiration that lurked around every corner. It is here that young Flea, looking to escape a turbulent home, found family in a community of musicians, artists, and junkies who also lived on the fringe. He spent most of his time partying and committing petty crimes. But it was in music where he found a higher meaning, a place to channel his frustration, loneliness, and love. This left him open to the life-changing moment when he and his best friends, soul brothers, and partners-in-mischief came up with the idea to start their own band, which became the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Acid for the Children is the debut of a stunning new literary voice, whose prose is as witty, entertaining, and wildly unpredictable as the author himself. It's a tenderly evocative coming-of-age story and a raucous love letter to the power of music and creativity from one of the most renowned musicians of our time. New York Times BestsellerA #1 LA Times BestsellerA USA Today BestsellerOne of NPR's "Favorite Books of 2019"
In Acid for the Children, Flea takes readers on a deeply personal and revealing tour of his formative years, spanning from Australia to the New York City suburbs to, finally, Los Angeles. Through hilarious anecdotes, poetical meditations, and occasional flights of fantasy, Flea deftly chronicles the experiences that forged him as an artist, a musician, and a young man. His dreamy, jazz-inflected prose makes the Los Angeles of the 1970s and 80s come to gritty, glorious life, including the potential for fun, danger, mayhem, or inspiration that lurked around every corner. It is here that young Flea, looking to escape a turbulent home, found family in a community of musicians, artists, and junkies who also lived on the fringe. He spent most of his time partying and committing petty crimes. But it was in music where he found a higher meaning, a place to channel his frustration, loneliness, and love. This left him open to the life-changing moment when he and his best friends, soul brothers, and partners-in-mischief came up with the idea to start their own band, which became the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Acid for the Children is the debut of a stunning new literary voice, whose prose is as witty, entertaining, and wildly unpredictable as the author himself. It's a tenderly evocative coming-of-age story and a raucous love letter to the power of music and creativity from one of the most renowned musicians of our time. New York Times BestsellerA #1 LA Times BestsellerA USA Today BestsellerOne of NPR's "Favorite Books of 2019"
What is the difference between an echo and a reverberation? How do you calculate the most resonant note to whistle in a toilet? Where do you best place microphones for that perfect recording? In this fascinating little book, musician Steve Marshall explores the subject of acoustics. From decibels to dolphins, stereo to surround, this book will appeal to singers, musicians, architects, biologists, and anyone who ever wanted to know more about the wonderful world of sound.
The riotous and unbridled confessions of a debauched rock and roller, this is a music memoir that chronicles his adventures in excess while touring Middle America on the '80's hair-metal nostalgia circuit.
The Unband emerged from the suburbs of late '80's New England and drank, drugged, crashed, and burned their way across the United States until, on the brink of the new century and with the help of their dominatrix manager, a drug-dealing patron bent on revolution, and a willful record executive or two, the band got their Big Break, in a collapsing music industry where boy-band pop ruled and rock music had been declared dead. Equal parts This Is Spinal Tap and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Adios, Motherfucker is the candid and hilarious behind the music account of that experience, now updated and expanded from the version published in 2004 as Gentlemanly Repose.
In this epic, funny rock biography and intoxicated memoir, Unband bassist Michael Ruffino takes readers along on a raucous tear across a surrealistic landscape populated with crack-smoking Girl Scouts, beer-drinking chimps, two-fisted femmes fatales, and murderous headbangers by the horde, while on tour with giants of heavy metal including Ronnie James Dio, Lemmy Kilmister, Def Leppard, Anthrax, and a veritable Who Was Who of reunited '80's hair bands.
Into that volatile mix, The Unband brought do-it-yourself pyrotechnics, a giant inflatable hand (for making giant inflatable gestures), a high tolerance for substance abuse of all kinds, and an infectious love of rock and roll and everything it stands for. Chronicling everything from the drug-fueled chaos in the underground caverns of California to shotgun-toting barmaids on Hamburg's Reeperbahn, Adios, Motherfucker is a reader's all-access pass to the rock and roll lifestyle, a comic odyssey through the netherworld of heavy rock.
This is the all-access, uncensored tour diary of a band that lived to tell the tale--barely.
A revelatory and redemptive memoir from the lead guitarist of the legendary band Def Leppard--the first book ever written by one of its members--chronicling the band's extraordinary rise to superstardom and how they've maintained it for three decades. Meet Phil Collen. You may know him as the lead guitarist in Def Leppard, whose signature song "Pour Some Sugar on Me" is still as widely enjoyed as when it debuted in 1988. Maybe you've heard of him as the rock star who gave up alcohol and meat more than twenty-five years ago. Most likely you've seen him shirtless--in photos or in real life--flaunting his impeccably toned body to appreciative female fans. But it wasn't always like this. Collen worked his way up from nothing, teaching himself guitar from scratch as a teenager by imitating his heroes. He slogged it out in London-based pub bands for years, long before Def Leppard formed and transformed from unknowns to icons (all thanks to a little album called Pyromania), from playing openers in near-empty arenas to headlining in those same stadiums and selling them out every night. But as Collen discovered, true overnight success is a myth. Like the other band members, he had to struggle and fight his way to the top; in the end, he says, "our work ethic saved us." Just as it still does. This is Collen's story, starting with his first real taste of success and wild rock and roll excess as a member of the seminal glam rock outfit Girl. But once he joins Def Leppard, it's also an amazing underdog tale featuring a bunch of ordinary working-class lads who rose to mega-stardom, overcoming incredible obstacles--such as drummer Rick Allen losing an arm in a car crash and the tragic death of guitarist Steve Clark, Phil's musical soul mate, who lost his fight with alcoholism. Featuring personal, never-before-seen photos of Collen and his band mates on stage and off, Adrenalized is a fascinating account of the failures, triumphs, challenges, and rock-hard dedication it takes to make dreams come true.
(Faber Piano Adventures ). Whether the adult student has just completed Book 1 or is returning to the piano after formerly playing, great pieces await in Adult Piano Adventures Book 2. This convenient "All-In-One" volume offers carefully sequenced instruction in note reading, music theory and piano technique. Its appealing new design clearly introduces concepts such as triad inversions, 3/8 and 6/8 time signatures, 16th-note rhythms, connected pedaling, and major and minor scales, plus a special focus on chord playing with lead sheets of familiar songs. Audio and video files are included on CD and DVD at the back of this perfect-bound book, or may be accessed online hours of instructional videos and accompaniment tracks that inspire rhythmic vitality and artistic expression. Song highlights: 'O Sole Mio! * Sloop John B * Brahms' Lullaby * The Lion Sleeps Tonight * Hava Nagila * Give My Regards to Broadway * Scarborough Fair * Malaguena * Pachelbel's Canon * and more.
A Telegraph Book of the Year As a renowned recording-studio maven, Trevor Horn has been dubbed 'the man who invented the '80s'. His production work since the glory days of ZTT represents a veritable 'who's who' of intelligent modern pop, including the likes of ABC, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Paul McCartney, Rod Stewart, Pet Shop Boys, Seal, Simple Minds, Grace Jones and Yes - among many others. This book is Trevor's story in his own words, as told through the prism of twenty-three of his most important songs - from the ones that inspired him to the ones that defined him. This play-by-play memoir transports readers into the heart of the studio to witness the making of some of music's most memorable moments, from the Buggles' ground-breaking 'Video Killed the Radio Star' to Band Aid's perennial 'Do They Know It's Christmas?', via hits such as 'Relax', 'Poison Arrow', 'Owner of a Lonely Heart' and 'Crazy'. Offering unrivaled access to the dark arts of the producer's world and the even darker arts of the music business itself, prepare for some adventures in modern recording...
This no-holds-barred memoir of the primary architect of hip hop and one of the culture's most revered music icons is both a tale of his life and legacy and a testament to dogged determination.
A riveting cautionary tale about the ecstasy and dangers of loving Marvin Gaye, a performer passionately pursued by all--and a searing memoir of drugs, sex, and old school R&B from the wife of legendary soul icon Marvin Gaye.
After her seventeenth birthday in 1973, Janis Hunter met Marvin Gaye--the soulful prince of Motown with the seductive liquid voice whose chart-topping, socially conscious album What's Going On made him a superstar two years earlier. Despite a seventeen-year-age difference and Marvin's marriage to the sister of Berry Gordy, Motown's founder, the enchanted teenager and the emotionally volatile singer began a scorching relationship.
One moment Jan was a high school student; the next she was accompanying Marvin to parties, navigating the intriguing world of 1970s-'80s celebrity; hanging with Don Cornelius on the set of Soul Train, and helping to discover new talent like Frankie Beverly. But the burdens of fame, the chaos of dysfunctional families, and the irresistible temptations of drugs complicated their love.
Primarily silent since Marvin's tragic death in 1984, Jan at last opens up, sharing the moving, fervently charged story of one of music history's most fabled marriages. Unsparing in its honesty and insight, illustrated with sixteen pages of black-and-white photos, After the Dance reveals what it's like to be in love with a creative genius who transformed popular culture and whose artistry continues to be celebrated today.
A familiar narrative goes: Bob Dylan, the voice of sixties counterculture, disappeared in the 1970s, then released arguably the worst music of his career in the 1980s--only to be resurrected in 2016, when he was controversially awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Dylan's concerts once began with an announcer intoning a deadpan version of just such a narrative.
That is not this story.
Here, instead, is Dylan's second thirty years. Across an abecedarium of chapters surveying his albums, performances, films, and books since 1991--since that rainy February night in New York City when Dylan, then forty-nine, accepted a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, signaling in effect that his extraordinary vocation as a vital and indispensable creative force had ended, was over--After the Flood reveals Dylan's creative output during the last three decades as his most ambitious and accomplished yet.
Drawing on thousands of pages from Dylan's newly opened archive in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and anatomizing hundreds of published and unpublished lyrics, liner notes, and more, celebrated poet and biographer Robert Polito demonstrates how Dylan evolved a late musical style that has equally embodied and resisted its era, interweaving folk process and American and world history, and transforming spectral cultural memory into devastating inspiration. Polito thus establishes Dylan as an intensely literary songwriter whose recent writings, especially, are dynamic, intricate, and far-reaching collages.
Between Good as I Been to You (1992) and Shadow Kingdom (2023), across Desert Storm, 9/11, and COVID-19, Polito shows that Dylan revitalized lines and contexts from sources as diverse as classical Greece and Rome, the American Civil War, and film noir, tipping Henry Timrod, poet laureate of the Confederacy, into Muddy Waters; slanting Herman Melville, John Winthrop, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow into Stephen Foster, Dan Emmett, and Al Jolson; and secreting Marcel Proust into his own literal California backyard--to touch on just a few of the storerooms inside Dylan's astonishing "memory palace."
Imaginatively researched, boldly arranged, and with elegiac insights into the cunning behind his songs, After the Flood is an essential revision and continuation of the Dylan saga, and a must-read for all Dylan enthusiasts.
That is not this story.
Here, instead, is Dylan's second thirty years. Across an abecedarium of chapters surveying his albums, performances, films, and books since 1991--since that rainy February night in New York City when Dylan, then forty-nine, accepted a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, signaling in effect that his extraordinary vocation as a vital and indispensable creative force had ended, was over--After the Flood reveals Dylan's creative output during the last three decades as his most ambitious and accomplished yet.
Drawing on thousands of pages from Dylan's newly opened archive in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and anatomizing hundreds of published and unpublished lyrics, liner notes, and more, celebrated poet and biographer Robert Polito demonstrates how Dylan evolved a late musical style that has equally embodied and resisted its era, interweaving folk process and American and world history, and transforming spectral cultural memory into devastating inspiration. Polito thus establishes Dylan as an intensely literary songwriter whose recent writings, especially, are dynamic, intricate, and far-reaching collages.
Between Good as I Been to You (1992) and Shadow Kingdom (2023), across Desert Storm, 9/11, and COVID-19, Polito shows that Dylan revitalized lines and contexts from sources as diverse as classical Greece and Rome, the American Civil War, and film noir, tipping Henry Timrod, poet laureate of the Confederacy, into Muddy Waters; slanting Herman Melville, John Winthrop, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow into Stephen Foster, Dan Emmett, and Al Jolson; and secreting Marcel Proust into his own literal California backyard--to touch on just a few of the storerooms inside Dylan's astonishing "memory palace."
Imaginatively researched, boldly arranged, and with elegiac insights into the cunning behind his songs, After the Flood is an essential revision and continuation of the Dylan saga, and a must-read for all Dylan enthusiasts.
An in-depth look at how Mumford & Sons rose from the West London folk scene to worldwide emulation. This book details their debut EP Love Your Ground and their performances in small venues in the UK and the US which exposed enthusiastic audiences to their music and built support for an eventual album.
Looks at how their debut album Sigh No More scored chart success in multiple countries and the band's numerous awards including two Grammy nominations.
Fully chronicles the lives of bandmembers Marcus Mumford, Ben Lovett, Country Winston Marshall and Ted Dwayne; a must-read for fans new and old.
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Looks at how their debut album Sigh No More scored chart success in multiple countries and the band's numerous awards including two Grammy nominations.
Fully chronicles the lives of bandmembers Marcus Mumford, Ben Lovett, Country Winston Marshall and Ted Dwayne; a must-read for fans new and old.
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Author and industry insider Paul Morley explores the musical and cultural legacies left behind by "The Man Who Fell to Earth." Respected arts commentator and author Paul Morley, an artistic advisor to the curators of the highly successful retrospective exhibition David Bowie is for the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, constructs a definitive story of Bowie that explores how he worked, played, aged, structured his ideas, influenced others, invented the future, and entered history as someone who could and would never be forgotten. Morley captures the greatest moments from across Bowie's life and career; how young Davie Jones of South London became the international David Bowie; his pioneering collaborations in the recording studio with the likes of Tony Visconti, Mick Ronson, and Brian Eno; to iconic live, film, theatre, and television performances from the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, as well as the various encounters and artistic relationships he developed with musicians from John Lennon, Lou Reed, and Iggy Pop to Trent Reznor and Arcade Fire. And of course, discusses in detail his much-heralded and critically acclaimed finale with the release of Blackstar just days before his shocking death in New York. Morley offers a startling biographical critique of David Bowie's legacy, showing how he never stayed still even when he withdrew from the spotlight, how he always knew his own worth, and released a dazzling plethora of personalities, concepts, and works into the world with a single-minded determination and a voluptuous imagination to create something the likes of which the world had never seen before--and likely will never see again.
A larger-than-life new biography of country music legend and philanthropist Dolly Parton.
In Ain't Nobody's Fool: The Life and Times of Dolly Parton, Martha Ackmann chronicles the life of an American Original. From her impoverished childhood in the Smoky Mountains to international stardom as a singer, songwriter, actress, businesswoman, and philanthropist, Dolly Parton has exceeded everyone's expectations except her own. During a time when the Beatles set the standard for contemporary music, Dolly appeared on a local country music television show that her high school classmates thought was pure cornpone. The day after her high school graduation, she boarded a bus for Nashville, but record executives turned her down. One said her voice sounded like a screech owl.
"Air Guitar" is Dave Hickey's "memoir without tears"--a journey through the vernacular cultural landscape of the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. Looking back from the vantage-point of his adopted hometown of Las Vegas, Nevada, Hickey speculates on everything from jazz and rock-and-roll to basketball and professional wrestling--from magic and psychedelia to gambling and the culture of "little stories"--from automotive design to series television to Saturday-morning cartoons. The emphasis in these twenty-three essays is on the way "the arts" function in the drift of everyday life, outside the venues of official culture, and on singular "lives in the arts, " lived outside those venues, with meditations on the careers of Liberace, Hank Williams, Chet Baker, Andy Warhol, Johnny Mercer, Norman Rockwell, magicians Siegfield & Roy, and wrestler Lady Godiva. Underlying Hickey's writing is an abiding belief that cultural life in a democracy can, and occasionally does function in a democratic manner, sustained by the whims of affection and the commerce of opinion.
The definitive biography of Alan Lomax-from John Szwed,"the best music biographer in the business" (L.A. Weekly).
One of the most remarkable figures of the twentieth century, Alan Lomax was best known for bringing legendary musicians like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Muddy Waters, Lead Belly, and Burl Ives to the radio and introducing folk music to a mass audience. Now John Szwed, the acclaimed biographer of Miles Davis and Sun Ra, presents the first biography of Lomax, a man who was as influential as he was controversial-trailed for years by the FBI, criticized for his folk- song-collecting practices, denounced by some as a purist and by others as a popularizer. This authoritative work reveals how Lomax changed not only the way everyone in the country heard music but also the way they viewed America itself.
(Richmond Music Folios). 45 songs complete with a biography, discography, and list of books on Wilder are included in this updated collection. Includes four new songs never before in print: Blackberry Winter * I'll Be Around * It's So Peaceful in the Country * and While We're Young; as well as over 40 standards: Dear World * Everywhere I Look * Good-Bye, John * If Someday Comes Ever Again * The Lady Sings the Blues * Photographs (Me in Love with You) * Soft As Spring * Trouble Is a Man * and more. Arrangements are for piano and voice.
The Alexander Technique for Musicians is a unique guide for all musicians, providing a practical, informative approach to being a successful and comfortable performer. Perfect as an introduction to the Alexander Technique, or to supplement the reader's lessons, the book looks at daily and last-minute practice, breathing, performance and performance anxiety, teacher-pupil relationships, ensemble skills, and the application of the Alexander Technique to instrumental and vocal work.
Complete with diagrams and photographs to aid the learning process, as well as step-by-step procedures and diary entries written by participating students, The Alexander Technique for Musicians gives tried-and-tested advice, drawn from the authors' twenty-plus years of experience working with musicians, providing an essential handbook for musicians seeking the most from themselves and their art.