To Be Someone


Ian Stone - 2020
    Everywhere around him, adults were behaving badly. His parents’ relationship was in freefall so he tried not to spend too much time at home. But outside, there was industrial unrest, football violence, racism and police brutality. As for the music, it was all ‘Save All Your Grandma’s Kisses For My Love Sweet Jesus’. It made him feel physically sick. Then The Jam appeared.This is Ian’s story of that time. Of weekend jobs so that he could go to gigs. Of bunking into the Hammersmith Odeon and ending up on the roof. Of going to see The Jam in Paris and somehow finding himself being interviewed for Melody Maker. Of attempting to keep out of the way of skinheads and trying (and failing) to work out how to talk to girls. And of devastation when in 1982 Paul Weller announced that the band were splitting up. There will never be another band like The Jam. For those who went on that journey with them, the love ran deep. And still does. They helped Ian and thousands like him to grow up – to be someone.

The Long Hard Road Out of Hell


Marilyn Manson - 1998
    "By turns moving, funny, appalling, disturbing. . . . There has never been anything like it".--"Rolling Stone". 80 b&w photos. 16-page color insert.In his twenty-nine years, rock idol Manson has experienced more than most people have (or would want to) in a lifetime. Now, in his shocking and candid memoir, he takes readers from backstage to gaol cells, from recording studios to emergency rooms, from the pit of despair to the top of the charts, and recounts his metamorphosis from a frightened Christian schoolboy into the most feared and revered music superstar in the country.

Chronicles: Volume One


Bob Dylan - 2004
    But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else." So writes Bob Dylan in Chronicles: Volume One, his remarkable book exploring critical junctures in his life and career. Through Dylan's eyes and open mind, we see Greenwich Village, circa 1961, when he first arrives in Manhattan. Dylan's New York is a magical city of possibilities -- smoky, nightlong parties; literary awakenings; transient loves and unbreakable friendships. Elegiac observations are punctuated by jabs of memories, penetrating and tough. With the book's side trips to New Orleans, Woodstock, Minnesota and points west, Chronicles: Volume One is an intimate and intensely personal recollection of extraordinary times.By turns revealing, poetical, passionate and witty, Chronicles: Volume One is a mesmerizing window on Bob Dylan's thoughts and influences. Dylan's voice is distinctively American: generous of spirit, engaged, fanciful and rhythmic. Utilizing his unparalleled gifts of storytelling and the exquisite expressiveness that are the hallmarks of his music, Bob Dylan turns Chronicles: Volume One into a poignant reflection on life, and the people and places that helped shape the man and the art.

The Missing of the Somme


Geoff Dyer - 2001
    "Brilliant--the Great War book of our time."--Observer.

Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making


Andrew Peterson - 2019
      Over the last twenty years, Andrew Peterson has performed thousands of concerts, published four novels, released ten albums, taught college and seminary classes on writing, founded a nonprofit ministry for Christians in the arts, and executive-produced a film—all in a belief that God calls us to proclaim the gospel and the coming kingdom using whatever gifts are at our disposal. He’s stumbled along the way, made mistake after mistake, and yet has continually encountered the grace of God through an encouraging family, a Christ-centered community of artists in the church, and the power of truth, beauty, and goodness in Scripture and the arts.   While there are many books about writing, none deal first-hand with the intersection of songwriting, storytelling, and vocation, along with nuts-and-bolts exploration of the great mystery of creativity. In Adorning the Dark, Andrew describes six principles for the writing life:  serving the workserving the audienceselectivitydiscernmentdisciplineand community  Through stories from his own journey, Andrew shows how these principles are not merely helpful for writers and artists, but for anyone interested in imitating way the Creator interacts with his creation.   This book is both a memoir of Andrew’s journey and a handbook for artists, written in the hope that his story will provide encouragement to others stumbling along in pursuit of a calling to adorn the dark with the light of Christ.

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea


Kim Cooper - 2005
    It includes a dozen rare images, most never before seen.

Small Victories: The True Story of Faith No More


Adrian Harte - 2018
    But I have to give credit where it is due, it’s a quality piece. The man has done his research and it shows. It provided me with more than a few revelations … and I’m in the band.’ — Bill Gould, Faith No MoreSmall Victories: The True Story of Faith No More is the definitive biography of one of the most intriguing bands of the late twentieth century. Written with the participation of the group’s key members, it tells how such a heterogeneous group formed, flourished, and fractured, and how Faith No More helped redefine rock, metal and alternative music. The book chronicles the creative and personal tensions that defined and fueled the band, forensically examines the band’s beginnings in San Francisco’s post-punk wasteland, and charts the factors behind the group’s ascent to MTV-era stardom.Small Victories strips away the mythology and misinformation behind their misanthropic masterpiece Angel Dust, explores the rationale behind the frequent hiring and firing of band members, and traces the unraveling of the band in the mid-1990s. It also examines the band’s breakup and hiatus, explores their unwelcome legacy as nu-metal godfathers, and gives a behind-the-scenes view of their rebirth. Based on meticulous research and hundreds of interviews with current and former band members and other key figures, Small Victories combines a fan’s passion with a reporter’s perspicacity.

Real Men Don't Rehearse


Justin Locke - 2005
    It is filled with dozens of humorous tales of musician antics and concert meltdowns. Outsiders are rarely allowed such access, but at last you can have your own personal tour of the mystical and magical realm of professional orchestras and the people who play in them. "Real Men Don't Rehearse" was written by Justin Locke, who spent 18 seasons as a professional freelance double bassist in Boston. He played with the Boston Symphony and the Boston Pops, as well as for ballets, operas, and Broadway shows. He is also well known in the symphonic world as the author of "Peter VS. the Wolf" and "The Phantom of the Orchestra," which are internationally acclaimed programs for orchestra family concerts. This is the perfect gift for your favorite music lover! This is a book no musical library should be without!

Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years, 1811-1847


Alan Walker - 1983
    This new perspective has created the need for a fresh, full-scale approach, biographical and critical, to the evaluation of the man and his music.For more than ten years Alan Walker, a leading authority on nineteenth-century music and the author of important studies of Chopin and Schumann, has traveled throughout Europe discovering unpublished material in museums and private collections, in the parish registries of tiny villages in Austria and Hungary, and in major archives in Weimar and Budapest, seeking out new information and corroborating or correcting the old. He has left virtually no source unexamined--from the hundreds of contemporary biographies (many of them more fiction than fact) to the scores of memoirs, reminisces, and diaries of his pupils and disciples (the list of his students from his Weimar masterclasses reads like a Burke's Peerage of pianists). Dr. Walker's efforts have culminated in a study that will stand as definitive for years to come. A feat of impeccable scholarship, it also displays a strong and compelling narrative impulse and a profound understanding of the complicated man Liszt was.In this, the first of three volumes, Dr. Walker examines in greater detail than has ever before been amassed Liszt's family background and his early years. We see "Franzi," a deeply religious and mystical child, whose extraordinary musical gifts lead to studies with the great Carl Czerny in Vienna and propel him into overnight fame in Paris--his youthful opera, Don Sanche, performed when he is fourteen--and in a disorderly and impulsive way of life by the time he is sixteen....We see Liszt drifting into obscurity after a nervous breakdown at the age of seventeen, then hearing Paganini for the first time and being so fired by the violinist's amazing technique that he sets for himself a titanic program of work, his aim no less than to create an entirely new repertoire for the piano....We see him, after years if successful touring, returning triumphantly to Hungary, his homeland, and publishing in the same year his "Transcendental" and "Paganini" studies. the signposts of his astonishing technical breakthrough....Finally, we see Liszt at the height of his artistic powers, giving well over a thousand concerts across Europe and Russia during the years 1839-47: "inventing" the modern piano recital, playing entire programs from memory, performing the complete contemporary piano repertoire, breaking down the barriers that had traditionally separated performing artists from their "social superiors," fostering the Romantic view of the artist as superior bring, because divinely gifted....until--his colossal career virtually impossible to sustain--he gives his last paid performance at the age of thirty-five.Alan Walker explores as well Liszt's relationships with Berlioz, Chopin, and Schumann; his long, tumultuous affair with Countess Marie d'Agoult (who abandoned husband, family and social standing in order to follow the twenty-one-year-old genius and who, later, in her thinly disguised roman à clef Nélida, depicted him as an artistically impotent painter, and herself as a callously abandoned noblewoman); and his close associations with Lamennais, Lamartaine, Victor Hugo, George Sand, and other leading figures of the Romantic era. Dr. Walker reveals the origin and development of the psychological and emotional influences that so strongly informed Liszt's art throughout his life; and he analyzes individual pieces of music and discusses, in considerable detail, Liszt's piano technique.Unparalleled in its completeness, its soundness of documentation, and in the quality of its writing, The Virtuoso Years is the first volume of what will unquestionably be the most important biography of Franz Liszt in English or any other language.

Good Night and Good Riddance: How Thirty-Five Years of John Peel Helped to Shape Modern Life


David Cavanagh - 2015
    But Peel's influence goes much deeper than this. Whether he was championing punk, reggae, jungle or grime, he had a unique relationship with his audience that was part taste-maker, part trusted friend.The book focuses on some 300 shows between 1967 and 2004, giving a thorough overview of Peel's broadcasting career and placing it in its cultural and social contexts. Peel comes alive for the reader, as do the key developments that kept him at the cutting edge - the changes in his tastes; the changes in his thinking. Just like a Peel show, Goodnight and Good Riddance is warm, informative and insightful, and wears its enthusiasm proudly.

Kulosaarentie 8/Majavatie 11/Mariankatu 26


Henrik Tikkanen - 1975
    The books are about the educated Swedish-speaking Finns (especially the writer himself and his family) who lived in the years 1920-1970 in Helsinki.Original books are written in Swedish.

Two-Dimensional Man


Paul Sahre - 2017
    Sahre explores his mostly vain attempts to escape his "suburban Addams Family" upbringing and the death of his elephant-trainer brother. He also wrestles with the cosmic implications involved in operating a scanner, explains the disappearance of ice machines, analyzes a disastrous meeting with Steely Dan, and laments the typos, sunsets, and poor color choices that have shaped his work and point of view. Two-Dimensional Man portrays the designer's life as one of constant questioning, inventing, failing, dreaming, and ultimately making.

Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk


John Doe - 2016
    Authors John Doe and Tom DeSavia have woven together an enthralling story of the legendary west coast scene from 1977-1982 by enlisting the voices of people who were there. The book shares chapter-length tales from the authors along with personal essays from famous (and infamous) players in the scene. Additional authors include: Exene Cervenka (X), Henry Rollins (Black Flag), Mike Watt (The Minutemen), Jane Wiedlin and Charlotte Caffey (The Go-Go’s), Dave Alvin (The Blasters), Jack Grisham (TSOL), Teresa Covarrubias (The Brat), Robert Lopez (The Zeros, El Vez), as well as scencesters and journalists Pleasant Gehman, Kristine McKenna, and Chris Morris. Through interstitial commentary, John Doe “narrates” this journey through the land of film noir sunshine, Hollywood back alleys, and suburban sprawl—the place where he met his artistic counterparts Exene, DJ Bonebrake, and Billy Zoom—and formed X, the band that became synonymous with, and in many ways defined, L.A. punk.Under the Big Black Sun shares stories of friendship and love, ambition and feuds, grandiose dreams and cultural rage, all combined with the tattered, glossy sheen of pop culture weirdness that epitomized the operations of Hollywood’s underbelly. Readers will travel to the clubs that defined the scene, as well as to the street corners, empty lots, apartment complexes, and squats that served as de facto salons for the musicians, artists, and fringe players that hashed out what would become punk rock in Los Angeles.

Britney: Inside the Dream: The Biography


Steve Dennis - 2009
    . . Baby One More Time,” Britney Spears quickly became an international pop idol. At just 27 years of age, she has racked up five number-one albums, seven top-10 singles, and seven sold-out world tours. For all of her success, however, over the past decade Britney’s private life has been a difficult one. She has endured numerous failed relationships as well as a very public divorce and custody battle, all in the full glare of the international media. Drawing on exclusive interviews with those closest to her, this is an engrossing portrait of fascinating superstar.

Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community


Martin Duberman - 1972
    Dutton edition originally published in 1972 a celebration of a fine (and poignantly nostalgic) college that endured from 1933 to 1956. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.