Music

Looking for the best place in Europe to buy electronic music? Want to get lost in the racks of the world's biggest independent record store? Are you constantly in search of the undiscovered, the original, the cult, the lost classics? Around the World in 80 Records Stores offers a unique look at where music lovers need to go to feed their addiction for new records. Boasting a truly global outlook--with record stores everywhere from Iceland and India to the coolest cities in Europe, the US, UK, plus the mecca for crate diggers that is Japan--and showcasing the best places to buy house, indie, jazz, rock, hip-hop, afrobeat, and everything in between, this is an essential companion for all record junkies.

In the years after World War II, music was evolving from big-band jazz into rock 'n' roll--and these louder styles demanded revolutionary instruments. When Leo Fender's tiny firm marketed the first solid-body electric guitar, the Esquire, musicians immediately saw its appeal. Not to be out-maneuvered, Gibson, the largest guitar manufacturer, raced to build a competitive product. The company designed an "axe" that would make Fender's Esquire look cheap and convinced Les Paul--whose endorsement Leo Fender had sought--to put his name on it. Thus was born the guitar world's most heated rivalry: Gibson versus Fender, Les versus Leo.

While Fender was a quiet, half-blind, self-taught radio repairman, Paul was a brilliant but headstrong pop star and guitarist who spent years toying with new musical technologies. Their contest turned into an arms race as the most inventive musicians of the 1950s and 1960s--including bluesman Muddy Waters, rocker Buddy Holly, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Eric Clapton--adopted one maker's guitar or another. By 1969 it was clear that these new electric instruments had launched music into a radical new age, empowering artists with a vibrancy and volume never before attainable.

In "an excellent dual portrait" (The Wall Street Journal), Ian S. Port tells the full story in The Birth of Loud, offering "spot-on human characterizations, and erotic paeans to the bodies of guitars" (The Atlantic). "The story of these instruments is the story of America in the postwar era: loud, cocky, brash, aggressively new" (The Washington Post).

The first ever biography focused on the formative and highly influential early years of "rock's first supergroup" (Rolling Stone) Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young--when they were the most successful, influential, and politically potent band in America--in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Woodstock and the formation of the band itself.

1969 to 1974 were true golden years of rock n' roll, bookmarking an era of arguably unparalleled musical power and innovation. But even more than any of their eminent peers, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young channeled and broadcast all the radical anger, romantic idealism, and generational angst of their time. Each of the members had already made their marks in huge bands (The Hollies, Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds), but together, their harmonies were transcendent.

The vast emotional range of their music, from delicate acoustic confessionals to raucous counter-culture anthems, was mirrored in the turbulence of their personal lives. Their trademark may have been vocal harmony, but few--if any--of their contemporaries could match the recklessness of their hedonistic and often combative lifestyles, when the four tenacious, volatile, and prodigal songwriters pursued chemical and sexual pleasure to life-threatening extremes.

Including full color photographs, CSNY chronicles these four iconic musicians and the movement they came to represent, concentrating on their prime as a collective unit and a cultural force: the years between 1969, when Woodstock telegraphed their arrival to the world, and 1974, when their arch-enemy Richard Nixon was driven from office, and the band (to quote Graham Nash himself) "lost it on the highway."

Even fifty years later, there are plenty of stories left to be told about Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young--and music historian Peter Doggett is here to bring them to light in the meticulously researched CSNY, a quintessential and illuminative account of rock's first supergroup in their golden hour for die-hard fans, nostalgic flower-children, and music history aficionados alike.

A tell-all biography of the epic in-fighting of the Grateful Dead in the years following band leader Jerry Garcia's death in 1995.
The Grateful Dead rose to greatness under the inspired leadership of guitarist Jerry Garcia, but the band very nearly died along with him. When Garcia passed away suddenly in August of 1995, the remaining band members experienced full crises of confidence and identity. So long defined by Garcia's vision for the group, the surviving "Core Four," as they came to be called, were reduced to conflicting agendas, strained relationships, and catastrophic business decisions that would leave the iconic band in utter disarray. Wrestling with how best to define their living legacy, the band made many attempts at restructuring, but it would take twenty years before relationships were mended enough for the Grateful Dead as fans remembered them to once again take the stage.
Acclaimed music journalist and New York Times bestselling author Joel Selvin was there for much of the turmoil following Garcia's death, and he offers a behind-the-scenes account of the ebbs and flows that occurred during the ensuing two decades. Plenty of books have been written about the rise of the Grateful Dead, but this final chapter of the band's history has never before been explored in detail.
Culminating in the landmark tour bearing the same name, Fare Thee Well charts the arduous journey from Garcia's passing all the way up to the uneasy agreement between the Core Four that led to the series of shows celebrating the band's fiftieth anniversary and finally allowing for a proper, and joyous, sendoff of the group revered by so many.

George is the story of two extraordinary lives - the private man and the public legend.

Georgios Panayiotou was just eighteen when he decided to adopt the stage name of George Michael. Sometimes his two worlds would collide with shattering consequences.

Bestselling biographer Sean Smith has gone back to the neighbourhoods of North London to trace the astonishing journey of a sensitive but determined boy who grew up to be one of the biggest British pop stars of all time.

Along the way, he talks to those close to George, revealing the real man - funny, articulate, intelligent and generous spirited - who hid behind the powerful image he created.

He reveals the complex relationship with his high-achieving Greek-Cypriot father; the unconditional love of his mother; his teenage relationships with girls; and his first tragic love affair with another man.

George's career began falteringly with a schoolboy band, exploded with Wham! before he became a solo phenomenon. But at the height of his fame, the world seemed to turn against him. Smith describes his despair at losing the two people who mattered most, how he sought consolation in drugs, his notorious 'coming out' and how he ended up in jail.

His health failed him and he died heartbreakingly alone on Christmas Day, 2016.

Affectionate yet honest and moving, George is both a celebration of George Michael's music and a lasting tribute to a decent and much-loved man.

It has been twenty-five years since Kurt Cobain died by his own hand in April 1994; it was an act of will that typified his short, angry, inspired life. Veteran music journalist Charles R. Cross fuses his intimate knowledge of the Seattle music scene with his deep compassion for his subject in this extraordinary story of artistic brilliance and the pain that extinguished it. Based on more than four hundred interviews; four years of research; exclusive access to Cobain's unpublished diaries, lyrics, and family photos; and a wealth of documentation, Heavier Than Heaven traces Cobain's life from his early days in a double-wide trailer outside of Aberdeen, Washington, to his rise to fame, success, and the adulation of a generation. Charles Cross has written a new preface for this edition, giving readers context for the time in which the book was written, six years after Kurt's death, and reminding everyone how fresh that cultural experience was when the interviews for the book were done. The new final chapter will update the story since, regarding investigations into Cobain's death, Nirvana's induction into the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame, and how their place in rock history has only risen over the decades.

What do George Clooney, Zooey Deschanel, Ryan Gosling and James Franco all have in common? Answer: they all play the ukulele and now, with this easy step-by-step guide, you can too! With just this book and your ukulele in hand, you'll learn basic music skills, how to care for your instrument, and how to play some simple tunes. Whether you're looking to impress your friends with spontaneous singalongs, or just want to strum solo, How to Play Ukulele is the perfect entryway to the wonderful world of ukulele.

This blazingly intimate biography of Janis Joplin establishes the Queen of Rock & Roll as the rule-breaking musical trailblazer and complicated, gender-bending rebel she was.

Janis Joplin's first transgressive act was to be a white girl who gained an early sense of the power of the blues, music you could only find on obscure records and in roadhouses along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast. But even before that, she stood out in her conservative oil town. She was a tomboy who was also intellectually curious and artistic. By the time she reached high school, she had drawn the scorn of her peers for her embrace of the Beats and her racially progressive views. Her parents doted on her in many ways, but were ultimately put off by her repeated acts of defiance.

Janis Joplin has passed into legend as a brash, impassioned soul doomed by the pain that produced one of the most extraordinary voices in rock history. But in these pages, Holly George-Warren provides a revelatory and deeply satisfying portrait of a woman who wasn't all about suffering. Janis was a perfectionist: a passionate, erudite musician who was born with talent but also worked exceptionally hard to develop it. She was a woman who pushed the boundaries of gender and sexuality long before it was socially acceptable. She was a sensitive seeker who wanted to marry and settle down--but couldn't, or wouldn't. She was a Texan who yearned to flee Texas but could never quite get away--even after becoming a countercultural icon in San Francisco.

Written by one of the most highly regarded chroniclers of American music history, and based on unprecedented access to Janis Joplin's family, friends, band mates, archives, and long-lost interviews, Janis is a complex, rewarding portrait of a remarkable artist finally getting her due.

Selected by Harper's Bazaar as one of the "Best New Books of 2017 (So Far)"
A Library Journal Fall Editors' Pick

"Nearly 50 years' worth of critical efforts to solve Mitchell's mysteries have now been rounded up in Barney Hoskyns's Joni: The Anthology....what comes through most consistently is a possessive impulse, a desire to really know an artist whose fierce privacy has often seemed at odds with the impression of intimacy conveyed by her music." --The Atlantic

Nine Grammys. More than ten million albums sold. Named one of the greatest singers and songwriters of all time by Rolling Stone. Joni: The Anthology is an essential collection of writings on Joni Mitchell that charts every major moment of the famed troubadour's extraordinary career, as it happened.

From album reviews, incisive commentary, and candid conversations, Joni: The Anthology includes, among other things, a review of Mitchell's first-ever show at LA's Troubadour in June of 1968, a 1978 interview by musician Ben Sidran on jazz great Charles Mingus, a personal reminiscence by Ellen Sander, a confidant of the Los Angeles singer-songwriter community, and a long "director's cut" version of editor Barney Hoskyns' 1994 MOJO interview. A time capsule of an icon, the anthology spans the entirety of Joni's career between 1967-2007, as well as thoughtful commentary on her early years.

In collecting materials long unavailable, rare, or otherwise difficult to find, Joni: The Anthology illuminates the evolution of modern rock journalism while providing an invaluable and accessible guide to appreciating the highs--and the lows--of a twentieth century legend.

"Once I crossed the border, I began to write and my voice changed. I no longer was imitative of the folk style. My voice was then my real voice and with a slight folk influence, but from the first album it was no longer folk music. It was just a girl with a guitar that made it look that way."--Joni Mitchell, 1994

Full of laughter and tears, this eye-opening, heartwarming memoir paints a picture of two stubborn, spirited country gals who'd be damned if they'd let men or convention tell them how to be. Set in the heady streets of the 1960s South, this nostalgia ride shows how Nashville blossomed into the city of music it is today. Tender and fierce, Me & Patsy Kickin' Up Dust is an up-close-and-personal portrait of a friendship that defined a generation and changed country music indelibly--and a meditation on love, loss and legacy.