There he stumbled into the elaborate world of Mingering Mikea soul superstar of the 1960s and '70s who released an astonishing 50 albums and at least as many singles in just 10 years. But Hadar had never heard of him, and he realized why on closer inspection: every album in the crates was made of cardboard. Each package was intricately crafted, complete with gatefold interiors, extensive liner notes, and grooves drawn onto the "vinyl." Some albums were even covered in shrinkwrap, as if purchased at actual record stores. The crates contained nearly 200 LPs and 45s by Mingering Mike, as well as other artists like Joseph War, the Big "D," and Rambling Ralph, on labels such as Sex Records, Decision, and Ming/War. There were also soundtracks to imaginary films, a benefit album for sickle cell anemia, and a tribute to Bruce Lee. Hadar put his detective skills to work and soon found himself at the door of the elusive man responsible for this alternate universe of funk. Their friendship blossomed and Mike revealed the story of his life and his many albums, hit singles, and movie soundtracks. A solitary boy raised by his brothers, sisters, and cousins, Mike lost himself in a world of his own imaginary superstardom, basing songs and albums on his and his family's experiences. Early teenage songs obsessed with love and heartache soon gave way to social themes surrounding the turbulent era of civil rights protests and political upheavalbrought even closer to home when Mike himself went underground dodging the Vietnam War.In Mingering Mike, Hadar tells the story of a man and his myth: the kid who dreamed of being a star and the fantastical "careers" of the artists he created. All of Mingering Mike's best albums and 45s are presented in full color, finally bringing to the star the adoring audience he always imagined he had.

    But the artistically fertile relationship between rock and country music has--since their first encounter in the 1950s--been uneasy and often explosive.

    The Seattle quintet has recorded eleven studio albums; sold some 85 million records; played over a thousand shows, in fifty countries; and had five different albums reach number one. But Pearl Jam's story is about much more than music. Through resilience, integrity, and sheer force of will, they transcended several eras, and shaped the way a whole generation thought about art, entertainment, and commerce. Not for You: Pearl Jam and the Present Tense is the first full-length biography of America's preeminent band, from Ten to Gigaton. A study of their role in history – from Operation Desert Storm to the Dixie Chicks; "Jeremy" to Columbine; Kurt Cobain to Chris Cornell; Ticketmaster to Trump – Not for You explores the band's origins and evolution over thirty years of American culture. It starts with their founding, and the eruption of grunge, in 1991; continues through their golden age (Vs., Vitalogy, No Code, and Yield); their middle period (Binaural, Riot Act); and the more divisive recent catalog. Along the way, it considers the band's activism, idealism, and impact, from “W.M.A.” to the Battle of Seattle and Body of War. More than the first critical study, Not for You is a tribute to a famously obsessive fan base, in the spirit of Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch. It's an old-fashioned – if, at times, ambivalent – appreciation; a reflection on pleasure, fandom, and guilt; and an essay on the nature of adolescence, nostalgia, and adulthood. Partly social history, partly autobiography, and entirely outspoken, discursive, and droll, Not for You is the first full-length treatment of Pearl Jam's odyssey and importance in the culture, from the '90s to the present.

    It follows Holzman on his journey from overseein

    But radio came roaring back with a whole new concept. The war was over, the baby boom was on, the country was in clover, and a bold new beat was giving the syrupy songs of yesteryear a run for their money. Add transistors, 45 rpm records, and a young man named Elvis to the mix, and the result was the perfect storm that rocked, rolled, and reinvented radio.Visionary entrepreneurs like Todd Storz pioneered the Top 40 concept, which united a generation. But it took trendsetting “disc jockeys” like Alan Freed, Murray the K, Wolfman Jack, Cousin Brucie, and their fast-talking, too-cool-for-school counterparts across the land to turn time, temperature, and the same irresistible hit tunes played again and again into the ubiquitous sound track of the fifties and sixties. The Top 40 sound broke through racial barriers, galvanized coming-of-age kids (and scandalized their perplexed parents), and provided the insistent, inescapable backbeat for times that were a-changin’.Along with rock-and-roll music came the attitude that would literally change the “voice” of radio forever, via the likes of raconteur Jean Shepherd, who captivated his loyal following of “Night People”; the inimitable Bob Fass, whose groundbreaking Radio Unnameable inaugurated the anything-goes free-form style that would come to define the alternative frontier of FM; and a small-time Top 40 deejay who would ultimately find national fame as a political talk-show host named Rush Limbaugh.From Hunter Hancock, who pushed beyond the limits of 1950s racial segregation with rhythm and blues and hepcat patter, to Howard Stern, who blew through all the limits with a blue streak of outrageous on-air antics; from the heyday of summer songs that united carefree listeners to the latter days of political talk that divides contentious callers; from the haze of classic rock to the latest craze in hip-hop, Something in the Air chronicles the extraordinary evolution of the unique and timeless medium that captured our hearts and minds, shook up our souls, tuned in–and turned on–our consciousness, and went from being written off to rewriting the rules of pop culture.

    Formed in 1969 by ex-members of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention, Little Feat created groove-heavy music that was an irresistible mix of rock, blues, R&B, country, jazz, soul, and funk.Fronted by the charismatic but doomed vocalist and brilliant slide guitarist Lowell George, the band recorded such classic studio albums as Sailin’ Shoes and Dixie Chicken, as well as Waiting for Columbus, which many consider to be one of the best live albums of all time.Acclaimed journalist Ben Fong-Torres—working with Little Feat’s surviving members, their friends, and associates—wrote Willin’ based on hours of brand new interviews with the key players. The result? The first definitive biography of this beloved rock ’n’ roll institution.

    Whiskeytown led the wave of insurgent-country bands that came of age with No Depression magazine in the mid-1990s, and for many people it defined the era. Adams was an irrepressible character, one of the signature personalities of his generation, and as a singer-songwriter he blew people away with a mature talent that belied his youth. David Menconi witnessed most of Whiskeytown’s rocket ride to fame as the music critic for the Raleigh News & Observer, and in Ryan Adams, he tells the inside story of the singer’s remarkable rise from hardscrabble origins to success with Whiskeytown, as well as Adams’s post-Whiskeytown self-reinvention as a solo act. Menconi draws on early interviews with Adams, conversations with people close to him, and Adams’s extensive online postings to capture the creative ferment that produced some of Adams’s best music, including the albums Strangers Almanac and Heartbreaker. He reveals that, from the start, Ryan Adams had an absolutely determined sense of purpose and unshakable confidence in his own worth. At the same time, his inability to hold anything back, whether emotions or torrents of songs, often made Adams his own worst enemy, and Menconi recalls the excesses that almost, but never quite, derailed his career. Ryan Adams is a fascinating, multifaceted portrait of the artist as a young man, almost famous and still inventing himself, writing songs in a blaze of passion.

    Songwriter. Swamp child. Soul man. Tex Perkins is a true rock'n'roll animal. In this loud, uncut, no-holds-barred, laugh-out-loud and take-no-prisoners memoir, the enigmatic king of the Australian music underground lays bare an extraordinary life lived on the road, on the stage and on the edge.Raised a bible-thumping Catholic and beaten bloody on the streets of Brisbane for being a "cow-punk", skinny Gregory Perkins flees to Sydney and mutates into "Tex", rogue leader of the Dums Dums, Thug and Salamander Jim before finding a strange kind of success, celebrity, sex symboldom and icon status as Tex Perkins, snake-hipped, honey-voiced, often bloodied frontman of influential Aussie bands the Cruel Sea, Beasts of Bourbon and Tex, Don & Charlie... and inventor of "Zoneball".Gigs. Albums. Tours. Fights. Feuds. Arrests. Drugs. High times. Low roads. This is a wild ride of a life written loudly, proudly and full of punk energy.

    Including exclusive interviews with Wenger, former and current players, family, colleagues, and observers from across Japan, France, and England, this completely authorized and definitive biography is a testament to his success and dedication in the field—and to the loyalty of players and fans. This incisive account of the man famous for bringing free-flowing soccer to "boring, boring Arsenal" reveals Wenger as a standout in an industry of disposable contracts and ruthless politics, and is essential reading for fans of the game.

    Author Mark Wilkerson interviewed Townshend himself and several of Townshend's friends and associates for this biography.

    This hugely unique and influential album deserves close analysis from a fan, rather than a musicologist. Novelist Alan Warner details the concrete music we hear on the album, how it was composed, executed and recorded--including the history of the album in terms of its release, promotion and art work. This tale of Tago Mago is also the tale of a young man obsessed with record collecting in the dark and mysterious period of pop music before Google. Warner includes a backtracking of the history of the band up to that point and also some description of Can's unique recording approach taking into account their home studio set up.Interviews with the three surviving members: drummer Jaki Liebezeit, keyboardist Irmin Schmidt and bassist Holger Czukay make this a hilariously personal and illuminating picture of Can.

    . . from Plymouth Rock to Pearl Harbor-the history of America in bite-size chunks How did the conquistadors first stumble across America-and what were the Spanish looking for anyway? What was the Dred Scott Supreme Court case and how did it affect the Civil War? And while some of us may indeed remember the Alamo, why were we once urged to "Remember the Maine"? Here, in chronological order, is a rollicking tour of American history from Columbus's arrival through Nixon's resignation, including details about the early colonists, Manifest Destiny, the Civil War-from Southern secession to the surrender at Appomattox-and the nation's plunge into World War I and the end of U.S. isolationism. It's the perfect refresher for all the things we learned in school but may have forgotten since. In concise, highly readable chapters, Remember the Alamo!""tells the most exciting story in the world: the story of America-home of Ben Franklin and Al Capone, Abe Lincoln and Rosa Parks, a nation with a passion and a gift for making history to this day.

    From the "a-ha" moment in junior high school that inspired his very first guitar, Taylor has been living the American dream, crafting quality products with his own hands and building a successful, sustainable business. In Guitar Lessons, he shares the values that he lives by and that have provided the foundation for the company's success. Be inspired by a story of guts and gumption, an unwavering commitment to quality, and the hard lessons that made Taylor Guitars the company it is today.

    Icons of anti-celebrity rock, who bacame huge celebrity rock stars, they were, according to the story, the first U.S. post new-wave band who were both commercially successful and cool. Drawing on exclusive interviews with Mike Mills, Peter Buck and other members of R.E.M.'s nuclear family, Fiction re-evaluates the music and career of a group who sold almost no records for the first half of their existence, then became 'the biggest rock group in the world' in the second half.

    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.