During the recording process, Jimi Hendrix at last had time and creative freedom to pursue the sounds he was looking for. In this remarkable and entertaining book, John Perry gets to the heart of Hendrix's unique talent - guiding the reader through each song on the album, writing vividly about Hendrix's live performances, and talking to several of Hendrix's peers and contemporaries.ExcerptNatural wit, sharpness of ear and a pervasive sense of fun prevented Hendrix from sticking just to the wah-wah pedal's literal use (and it's worth remembering that Hendrix off-stage was a natural mimic, whose imitations of Little Richard or of Harlem drag-queens made his friends howl). In fact, he found a use for the pedal without even using guitar. By turning his amp up high and treading the pedal he found he could modulate the natural hiss of amplifier valves, producing sounds of gentle breezes, howling storms or the susurration of waves on a beach; sounds that are all over "1983" and "Moon Turn The Tides." Hendrix had an ear and (though it's often overlooked) he also had a fine, sly sense of humour that - with characteristic lightness of touch - he was able to express in music.

    Charting Queen's flamboyant, hit-making musical history, this book also chronicles the life stories of members including the beloved lead singer and his battle with AIDS. Features a comprehensive discography and videography, plus eight pages of color photos. .

    Welcome to Weezer’s weird world, steered by brainchild Rivers Cuomo — perhaps the world’s most unlikely rock star. Exhaustively researched, Rivers’ Edge documents the rise of the band from Cuomo’s beginnings as a failure on Hollywood’s hair metal scene to his reinvention of himself as the undeniable ruler of Weezer. Luerssen uncovers what really happened during Weezer’s strange hiatus and subsequent re-emergence in 2000, which was one of the most successful comebacks in music history. Through key interviews with friends, associates, members of Weezer, and bandmates in their solo projects, Rivers’ Edge is a must-own for any Weezer fan.

    Except it wasn’t that simple. Self-confessed latch-key kids, theirs was far from an easy ride.Inspired by both the energy of British punk bands like the Sex Pistols and Buzzcocks and cult American bands such as Dead Kennedys and Husker Du, Green Day formed in 1989. The band gigged relentlessly across the US, quickly selling out every underground club that booked them, and their 1994 major label debut Dookie was a 10-million-selling worldwide hit album that seized the zeitgeist while rock music was still reeling from the death of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain. They toured the world, headlined all the big festivals, won countless awards and released multi-million selling albums.In 2004 Green Day reached a career pinnacle with the concept album American Idiot, a sophisticated commentary on modern life—not least dissatisfaction with their president and America’s continued cultural and economic imperialism. The No. 1 success of the Grammy-winning album extended Green Day's fan base even further—from pre-teen kids to previously skeptical critics.This book is the world’s first full biography on Green Day. An authority on punk and hardcore, author Ben Myers charts the band members’ difficult childhoods, the context of the band within the US and world punk scene and their glittering rise to success. Myers has also interviewed the band for various magazines at different stages of their career.

    These best friends are there for each other through thick and thin, from unsuccessful auditions and failed pilots to Selena’s starring role on Disney Channel’s Wizards of Waverly Place and Demi’s breakout performance in Disney Channel’s Camp Rock, her tour with the Jonas Brothers, and their release of her debut album.

    Unexpurgated personal journals and tour diaries documenting the turbulent life and misadventures of Peter Doherty, transcribed and edited by Nina Antonia.

    Vertigo, and Timbuktu. He has also published a number of highly original non-fiction works: The Invention of Solitude, Hand to Mouth, and The Art of Hunger. In The Red Notebook, Auster again explores events from the real world large and small, tragic and comic—that reveal the unpredictable, shifting nature of human experience. A burnt onion pie, a wrong number, a young boy struck by lightning, a man falling off a roof, a scrap of paper discovered in a Paris hotel room—all these form the context for a singular kind of ars poetica, a literary manifesto without theory, cast in the irreducible forms of pure story telling.

    Nowhere else is the man and musician so convincingly deconstructed and so compellingly humanized.

    Looking beyond the legend of the self-taught and emotionally damaged recluse who burst onto the international musical scene in the mid-1950s but was dead at fifty, he presents a balanced portrait of a complex figure who, while uniquely gifted and genuinely eccentric, was also the product of his upbringing and surroundings. Bazzana explores the lasting effects on Gould of his sheltered middle-class Toronto upbringing, his unusual musical education, his brief but colourful concert career and his relations with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Columbia Records and Steinway and Sons. Drawing on candid recollections by Gould's friends and colleagues as well as newly available private papers, he provides fresh insights into Gould's famous eccentricities, his sometimes bizarre stage manner, his highly selective repertoire, his control mania, his private and sexual life, his hypochondria, and his abrupt retirement from concert performance to communicate solely through recorded performance and print.

    Drawing on experience, psychological insight, and wisdom ancient and modern, Westney shows how to trust yourself and set your own musicality free. He offers healthy alternatives for lifelong learning and suggests significant change in the way music is taught. For example, playing a wrong note can be constructive, useful, even enlightening. The creator of the acclaimed Un-Master Class(R) workshop also explores the special potential of group work, outlining the basics of his revelatory workshop that has transformed the music experience for participants the world over. Practicing, in Westney's view, is a lively, honest, adventurous, and spiritually rewarding enterprise, and it can (and should) meet with daily success, which empowers us to grow even more. Teachers, professionals, and students of any instrument will benefit from this unique guide, which brings artistic vitality, freedom, and confidence within everyone's reach

     “Crime Squad takes readers on an unforgettable ride as Mike, an innocent lad from the Yorkshire Dales, learns to grow up fast and stay alive on the mean streets of London.” Weebly “A great read… gave a great feel of policing in the 80's and 90's in London, particularly with the change in drug culture and guns.” Netgalley “Well-written and informative, giving an insight into the workings of the police force in London in 1980s. Recommended.” Wendy Rhodes - Reviewer “A rollercoaster read of life on the front line.” Sir Hugh Orde OBE QPM “An accurate and fascinating picture of police work at the sharp end.” Detective Superintendent John Jones (rtd) “Gripping from first to last.” Andy Trotter OBE QPM London 1988: PC Mike Pannett, fresh out of training school, had suspected life in the Metropolitan Police was going to be a bit different from rural North Yorkshire, but the 23-year-old had no idea by just how much. Sent south of the river to Battersea, then top of London’s crime league tables, Mike was thrown straight into the deep end – during his first drugs raid he ended up staring down the wrong end of a double-barrelled shotgun. Mike’s arrival in London coincided with the explosion in crack cocaine use. In the early 1990s, Yardies – criminal gangs from Jamaica and the USA - flooded into the capital, starting in Battersea, where they brought all manner of guns with them, along with a live-fast die-young attitude. Rivals were ruthlessly eliminated and whole neighbourhoods fell under the control of drug gangs. Mike and his police colleagues fought back with extraordinary valour and inventiveness and with the support of the local community they started to turn the tide – but then came the unthinkable crime: the murder in 1993 of PC Patrick Dunne, one of Mike’s colleagues, by Gary Nelson, aka ‘Tyson’, a criminal the national press described as ‘the most dangerous man ever to walk to the streets of Britain.’ Mike was drawn into the long and exceptionally dangerous hunt for Nelson that would go on to cost the life of another police officer. Crime Squad takes readers on an unforgettable ride as Mike, an innocent lad from the Yorkshire Dales, learns to grow up fast and stay alive on the mean streets of London.

    Revealing the band's wilder, freer incarnation as seen in the Zoo TV tour, this biography offers stunning photos and never-before-published interviews, anecdotes, and stories.

    It situates different musics in their cultural and historical context, and analyses them in terms of cultural aesthetics. Paul Hegarty argues that noise is a judgement about sound, that what was noise can become acceptable as music, and that in many ways the idea of noise is similar to the idea of the avant-garde.While it provides an excellent historical overview, the book's main concern is in the noise music that has emerged since the mid 1970s, whether through industrial music, punk, free jazz, or the purer noise of someone like Merzbow. The book progresses seamlessly from discussions of John Cage, Erik Satie, and Pauline Oliveros through to bands like Throbbing Gristle and the Boredoms. Sharp and erudite, and underpinned throughout by the ideas of thinkers like Adorno and Deleuze, Noise/Music is the perfect primer for anyone interested in the louder side of experimental music.

    But behind the kindly, serene front Rutherford presented to the world lay a life of trauma and repeated nervous breakdown - the legacy of the legacy of family tragedy that saw her father murder her grandfather during a bout of mental illness and her depressive mother later kill herself. Andy Merriman's acclaimed biography intrigued and shocked readers with these revelations when it was published in hardback. Now out in paperback, it is also a portrait of one of our most individual actresses. Rutherford appeared in such thoroughly English classics as Blithe Spirit, The importance of Being Earnest, Passport to Pimlico and I'm All Right, Jack! But above all she was Miss Marple, in four films - and entirely created for the screen the role of Agatha Christie's elderly and fearless private detective that subsequent actresses like Joan Hickson and Geraldine McEwan have continued. Rutherford first played Miss Marple at the age of 70, and insisted on wearing her own clothes to feel right in the part. Above all, this was a vulnerable woman whom no-one failed to like and respect, notable again and again for quiet acts of kindness, whose life story has great appeal to everyone who appreciates both classic English comedy and simple human decency.

    The rocker settled in Berlin, where he would make his “Berlin Trilogy”—the albums Low, Heroes, and Lodger, which are now considered some of the most critically acclaimed and innovative of the late twentieth century. But Bowie’s time in Berlin was about more than producing new music. As Tobias Rüther describes in this fascinating tale of Bowie’s Berlin years, the musician traveled to West Berlin—the capital of his childhood dreams and the city of Expressionism—to repair his body and mind from the devastation of drug addiction, delusions, and mania.             Painting a vivid picture of Bowie’s life in the Schöneberg area of the city, Rüther describes the artist’s friendships and collaborations with his roommate, Iggy Pop, as well as Brian Eno and Tony Visconti. Rüther illustrates Bowie’s return to painting, days cycling to the Die Brücke museum, and his exploration of the city’s nightlife, both the wild side and the gay scene. In West Berlin, Bowie also met singer and actress Romy Haag; came to know Hansa Studios, where he would record Low and Heroes; and even landed the part of a Prussian aristocrat in Just a Gigolo, starring alongside Marlene Dietrich. Eventually Rüther uses Bowie and his explorations of the cultural and historical undercurrents of West Berlin to examine the city itself: divided, caught in the Cold War, and how it began to redefine itself as a cultural metropolis, turning to the arts to start a new history. Tying in with an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, in September, 2014, Heroes tells the fascinating story of how the music of the future arose from the spirit of the past. It is an unforgettable look at one of the world’s most renowned musicians in one of its most inspiring cities.