Showing titles in Music

This selection of essays from K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004-2016) brings together the best of Fisher's political writing. In K-Punk: Music, Fisher seamlessly blends political theory with music analysis, discussing the impact of neoliberalism and related political ideologies on the music industry and major music events such as Glastonbury.

Allan Jones launched Uncut magazine in 1997 and for 15 years wrote a popular monthly column called Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before, based on his experiences as a music journalist in the 70s and 80s. By turns hilarious, cautionary, poignant and powerful, the Stop Me...stories collected here include encounters with some of rock's most iconic stars, including David Bowie, Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Elvis Costello, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Smiths, R.E.M. and Pearl Jam.

Frédéric Chopin is the pianist-composer par excellence. Regarded as one of the most mesmerizing performers of his day, he lives on in his music – his waltzes, mazurkas, études, preludes, nocturnes, three piano sonatas, two piano concertos, and much more. Here, his life, from his birth in Poland, his famous affair with the French writer George Sand, to his death at the age of 39 in Paris, is told with his music featuring prominently. We think of Chopin as a "frail, sheltered genius" but this forthright portrait demonstrates he was far more boisterous than that.

The legendary tale of industrial strength pranking, drumming, '70’s excess, big laughs, desperation, and The Who performed with gusto by Karl Howman. Set in London, LA, and on tour with one of the world’s greatest live rock bands, The Who.

Celebrate over 30 years of the world's most notorious rock band with the audiobook edition of The Dirt - the outrageous, legendary, no-holds-barred autobiography of Mötley Crüe. Fans have gotten glimpses into the band's crazy world of backstage scandals, celebrity love affairs, roller-coaster drug addictions, and immortal music in Mötley Crüe books like Tommyland and The Heroin Diaries, but now the full spectrum of sin and success by Tommy Lee, Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil, and Mick Mars is an open book in The Dirt.

A self-described orphan with parents, Bobby Hall began life as Sir Robert Bryson Hall II, the only child of an alcoholic, mentally ill mother on welfare and an absent, crack-addicted father. After enduring 17 years of abuse and neglect, Bobby ran away from home and - with nothing more than a discarded laptop and a ninth-grade education - he found his voice in the world of hip-hop and a new home in a place he never expected: the untamed and uncharted wilderness of the social media age. In the message boards and livestreams of this brave new world, Bobby became Logic.

Tom Petty has long been considered one of the great songwriters of American rock 'n' roll, as well as one of the key standard bearers of integrity in the music business.

The musician and hip-hop legend - hailed as “the greatest MC of all time” and compared to Thelonious Monk - reimagines the writing handbook in this memoir and guide that incorporates the soulful genius, confidence, and creativity of a master artist.

Paper Cuts is the inside story of the slow death of the British music press. But it's also a love letter to it, the tale of how music magazines saved one man's life. Ted Kessler left home and school around his 17th birthday, determined 'to be someone who listened to music professionally'. That dream appeared forlorn when he was later arrested for theft behind the counter of the record shop he managed during acid house's long hot summer of love.

Being John Lennon is not about the whitewashed Prince of Peace of 'Imagine' legend, because that was only a small part of him. Nor is it about the permanently angry young rebel of the movie Nowhere Boy, or even the ranting Beatles iconoclast of the Rolling Stone interviews. All three of those personae had a degree of truth in them. But the John Lennon depicted in these pages is a much more kaleidoscopic figure, sometimes almost a collision of different characters.

Although Greenwich Village takes up less than a square mile in downtown New York, rarely has such a concise area supported and nurtured so many groundbreaking artists and genres. Musician used the Village’s smokey coffeehouses and clubs to chronicle the tumultuous Sixties, rewrite jazz history, and take rock & roll into eclectic places it hadn’t been before. Based on new interviews with surviving participants, previously unseen and unheard archives, and author David Browne's years immersed in the scene, Talkin’ Greenwich Village lends the saga the epic, panoramic scope it has long deserved.

The Embrace Everything podcast series is an exploration and celebration of the music of Gustav Mahler. Throughout his life, Mahler insisted that music had to, literally, embrace everything. This makes his compositions unusually rich in what they offer both audience and musicians. Each season explores a different Mahler symphony and includes interviews with leading conductors, music scholars and musicians. Additionally, Mahler’s own words and those of his contemporaries are read by actors.

Without Churchill's inspiring leadership, Britain could not have survived its darkest hour and repelled the Nazi menace. Without his wife, Clementine, however, he might never have become Prime Minister. By his own admission, the Second World War would have been 'impossible without her'. Clementine was Winston's emotional rock and his most trusted confidante. Yet her ability to charm Britain's allies and her humanitarian efforts on the home front earned her deep respect.

Lost in Music is about growing up with pop music - about hearing it, buying it, loving it, and attempting to play it in public for money. A brilliant combination of the confessional and the unapologetic, this is a book for anyone who has ever treasured vinyl, or sung into a roll-on deodorant in front of the bedroom mirror and dreamed of playing Wembley.

The 20th century was a hotbed of musical exploration, innovation, and transformation unlike any other epoch in history. Ranging across the century in its entirety, these 24 lectures present a musical cornucopia of astounding dimensions - a major presentation and exploration of the incredible brilliance and diversity of musical art across a turbulent century. Far more than simply a series of lectures, the program comprises a huge and many-sided resource for discovering the endless riches of 20th-century concert music across the globe.

In 1980-1981 former COO of Apple Corp, Peter Brown and author Steven Gaines interviewed everyone in the Beatles' inner circle and included a small portion of the transcripts in their international bestselling book The Love You Make, which spent four months on the New York Times bestseller list. But left in their archives was a treasure trove of unique and candid interviews that they chose not to publish, until now.

In February 1969, the Beatles began working on what became their final album together. Abbey Road introduced a number of new techniques and technologies to the Beatles' sound and included "Come Together", "Something", and "Here Comes the Sun", which all emerged as classics. Womack's colorful retelling of how this landmark album was written and recorded is a treat for fans of the Beatles. Solid State takes listeners back to 1969 and into EMI's Abbey Road Studios, which boasted an advanced solid state transistor mixing desk.

Limited Edition of One is unlike any other music book you will ever have hear. Part the long-awaited memoir of Steven Wilson, whose celebrated band Porcupine Tree began as teenage fiction before unintentionally evolving into a reality that encompassed Grammy-nominated records and sold-out shows around the world, before he set out for an even more successful solo career.

In 1999, as the end of an old century loomed, five musicians entered a recording studio in Paris without a deadline. Their band was widely recognized as the best and most forward-thinking in rock, a rarefied status granting them the time, money, and space to make a masterpiece. But Radiohead didn't want to make another rock record. Instead, they set out to create the future.

Bon: The Last Highway is the original, forensic, unflinching and masterful biography Bon Scott has so richly deserved and music fans around the world have been waiting for. The legend of the man known around the world simply as 'Bon' only grows with each passing year - in death the AC/DC icon has become a god to millions of people - but how much of his story is myth or pure fabrication, and how much of the real man do we know?