Herman Poole "Sonny" Blount (1914–1993), has been hailed as "one of the great big-band leaders, pianists, and surrealists of jazz" (New York Times) and as "the missing link between Duke Ellington and Public Enemy" (Rolling Stone). Composer, keyboardist, bandleader, philosopher, poet, and self-proclaimed extraterrestrial from Saturn, Sun Ra led his "Intergalactic Arkestra" of thirty-plus musicians in a career that ranged from boogie-woogie and swing to be-bop, free jazz, fusion, and New Age music. This definitive biography reveals the life, philosophy, and musical growth of one of the twentieth century's greatest avant-garde musicians.

    Includes 16 pages of photos."A refreshingly candid read...a Doors bio worth opening." --Entertainment WeeklyNo other band has ever sounded quite like the Doors, and no other frontman has ever transfixed an audience quite the way Jim Morrison did. Ray Manzarek, the band's co-founder and keyboard player, was there from the very start--and until the sad dissolution--of the Doors. In this heartfelt and colorfully detailed memoir, complete with 16 pages of photographs, he brings us an insider's view of the brief, brilliant history...from the beginning to the end."An engaging read." --Washington Post Book World

    It was such a radical idea that almost no one thought it would actually succeed, much less become a force in the worlds of music, television, film, fashion, sports, and even politics. But it did work. MTV became more than anyone had ever imagined.I Want My MTV tells the story of the first decade of MTV, the golden era when MTV's programming was all videos, all the time, and kids watched religiously to see their favorite bands, learn about new music, and have something to talk about at parties. From its start in 1981 with a small cache of videos by mostly unknown British new wave acts to the launch of the reality-television craze with The Real World in 1992, MTV grew into a tastemaker, a career maker, and a mammoth business. Featuring interviews with nearly four hundred artists, directors, VJs, and television and music executives, I Want My MTV is a testament to the channel that changed popular culture forever.

    In 1985, Kristin Hersh was just starting to find her place in the world. After leaving home at the age of fifteen, the precocious child of unconventional hippies had enrolled in college while her band, Throwing Muses, was getting off the ground amid rumors of a major label deal. Then everything changed: she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and found herself in an emotional tailspin; she started medication, but then discovered she was pregnant. An intensely personal and moving account of that pivotal year, Rat Girl is sure to be greeted eagerly by Hersh's many fans.

    chart hit. The band followed it with 40 further albums of consistently challenging, distinctive and innovative music. Drawing on hours of new interviews, and encouraged by Crimson supremo Robert Fripp, the author traces the band’s turbulent history year by year, track by track.

    Fast and frenetic in their leather jackets and torn jeans, the Ramones gave voice to the disaffected youth of the seventies and eighties, influenced countless bands, and inspired the counterculture for decades to come. Born Jeffry Hyman of Queens, New York, Joey Ramone was the quirky, extraordinary lead singer and cofounder of the band. Hiding his face behind signature sunglasses and a mop of dark hair, he helped define punk's early image, and his two-decade-plus tenure as the Ramones' front man made him unforgettable. Told by Joey's brother, Mickey Leigh, "I Slept with Joey Ramone" provides an intimate look at the turbulent life of one of America's greatest -- and unlikeliest -- music icons.With honesty, humor, and grace, Mickey shares the fascinating, sometimes troubling story of growing up with an emotionally distressed brother who becomes a rock star and the effect it had on their family. He shows how Joey used music to cope with mental illness; embraced the glam nightlife of the New York scene; launched CBGB alongside bands like the Talking Heads and Blondie; and brought punk to Britain, clashing with the Sex Pistols and changing music history.Ultimately, betrayal and infighting would end the band. While the music lives on for new generations to discover, "I Slept with Joey Ramone" is the enduring portrait of a man who struggled to find his voice and of the brother who loved him.

    From the seed first planted by slave dances held in Congo Square and nurtured by early ensembles led by Buddy Belden and Joe King Oliver, jazz began its long winding odyssey across America and around the world, giving flower to a thousand different forms--swing, bebop, cool jazz, jazz-rock fusion--and a thousand great musicians. Now, in The History of Jazz, Ted Gioia tells the story of this music as it has never been told before, in a book that brilliantly portrays the legendary jazz players, the breakthrough styles, and the world in which it evolved. Here are the giants of jazz and the great moments of jazz history--Jelly Roll Morton (the world's greatest hot tune writer), Louis Armstrong (whose O-keh recordings of the mid-1920s still stand as the most significant body of work that jazz has produced), Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club, cool jazz greats such as Gerry Mulligan, Stan Getz, and Lester Young, Charlie Parker's surgical precision of attack, Miles Davis's 1955 performance at the Newport Jazz Festival, Ornette Coleman's experiments with atonality, Pat Metheny's visionary extension of jazz-rock fusion, the contemporary sounds of Wynton Marsalis, and the post-modernists of the Knitting Factory. Gioia provides the reader with lively portraits of these and many other great musicians, intertwined with vibrant commentary on the music they created. Gioia also evokes the many worlds of jazz, taking the reader to the swamp lands of the Mississippi Delta, the bawdy houses of New Orleans, the rent parties of Harlem, the speakeasies of Chicago during the Jazz Age, the after hours spots of corrupt Kansas city, the Cotton Club, the Savoy, and the other locales where the history of jazz was made. And as he traces the spread of this protean form, Gioia provides much insight into the social context in which the music was born. He shows for instance how the development of technology helped promote the growth of jazz--how ragtime blossomed hand-in-hand with the spread of parlor and player pianos, and how jazz rode the growing popularity of the record industry in the 1920s. We also discover how bebop grew out of the racial unrest of the 1940s and '50s, when black players, no longer content with being entertainers, wanted to be recognized as practitioners of a serious musical form. Jazz is a chameleon art, delighting us with the ease and rapidity with which it changes colors. Now, in Ted Gioia's The History of Jazz, we have at last a book that captures all these colors on one glorious palate. Knowledgeable, vibrant, and comprehensive, it is among the small group of books that can truly be called classics of jazz literature.

    Their smash hits "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit" virtually invented the era's signature pulsating psychedelic music and, during one of the most tumultuous times in American history, came to personify the decade's radical counterculture. In this groundbreaking biography of the band, veteran music writer and historian Jeff Tamarkin produces a portrait of the band like none that has come before it. Having worked closely with Jefferson Airplane for more than a decade, Tamarkin had unprecedented access to the band members, their families, friends, lovers, crew members, fellow musicians, cultural luminaries, even the highest-ranking politicians of the time. More than just a definitive history, Got a Revolution! is a rock legend unto itself. Jann Wenner, editor-in-chief and publisher of Rolling Stone, wrote, "The classic [Jefferson] Airplane lineup were both architects and messengers of a psychedelic age, a liberation of mind and body that profoundly changed American art, politics, and spirituality. It was a renaissance that could only have been born in San Francisco, and the Airplane, more than any other band in town, spread the good news nationwide."

    Left to run wild with his sister, his father off in some parallel universe of his own invention, Everett's upbringing was 'ridiculous, sometimes tragic and always unsteady'. But somehow he manages to not only survive his crazy upbringing and ensuing tragedies; he makes something of his life, striking out on a journey to find himself by channelling his experiences into his, eventually, critically acclaimed music with the Eels. But it's not an easy path. Told with surprising candour, Things The Grandchildren Should Know is an inspiring and remarkable story, full of hope, humour and wry wisdom.

    8-page color insert.

    Illustrated with previously unseen photographs and drawing on over 300 hours of interviews with band members, producers, friends, former lovers and associates, this biography traces the artist's life from his Minneapolis roots through controversial stardom to his rejection of the Prince persona.

    It has been out of print since at least 1977 and was never published outside the USA.

    The band aimed to build on previous sales and critical acclaim with its boldest and most ambitious album yet, but was instead urged by skittish Reprise execs to make the record more “radio friendly.” When Wilco wouldn’t give, they found themselves without a label. Instead, they used the Internet to introduce the album to their fans, and eventually sold the record to Nonesuch, another division of Warner. Wilco was vindicated when the album debuted at No. 13 on the Billboard charts and posted the band’s strongest sales to date. Wilco: Learning How to Die traces the band’s story to its deepest origins in Southern Illinois, where Jeff Tweedy began growing into one of the best songwriters of his generation. As we witness how his music grew from its punk and alt-country origins, some of the key issues and questions in our culture are addressed: How is music of substance created while the gulf between art and commerce widens in the corporate consolidation era? How does the music industry make or break a hit? How do working musicians reconcile the rewards of artistic risk with the toll it exacts on their personal life? This book was written with the cooperation of Wilco band members past and present.  It is also fully up to date, covering the latest changes in personnel and the imminent release of the band’s fifth album, A Ghost Is Born, sure to be one of the most talked-about albums of 2004.

    Arranged chronologically by album and packed with color and black and white photographs and illustrations, A Hard Day's Write is hard to put down. Look up one song and you find yourself stopping to read about the others as the mini-stories recount how private incidents influenced the Beatles, collectively and as individual artists. A longtime Beatles admirer, Turner tracked down and interviewed the real-life subjects of the songs, probed public records, and newspaper archives, and spoke in depth to the personalities closest to the Beatles. The result is a book no Beatles fan should be without.

    More recently, Rolling Stone named it the twenty-fifth greatest album of all time and the hit TV series Glee devoted an entire episode to songs from "Rumours," introducing it to a new generation. Now, for the first time, Ken Caillat, the album's co-producer, tells the full story of what really went into making "Rumours"--from the endless partying and relationship dramas to the creative struggles to write and record "You Make Loving Fun," "Don't Stop," "Go Your Own Way," "The Chain," and other timeless tracks.Tells the fascinating, behind-the-music story of the making of Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours," written by the producer who saw it all happen Filled with new and surprising details, such as Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham's screaming match while recording "You Make Loving Fun," how the band coped with the pressures of increasing success, how the master tape nearly disintegrated, and the incredible attention paid to even the tiniest elements of songs, from Lindsey playing a chair to Mick breaking glass Includes eighty black-and-white photographs