As well as the sixties heavy-hitters, this book also offers wonderfully vivid portraits of a whole host of other musicians: everyone from the great jazzman Coleman Hawkins to the folk diva Sandy Denny, Lonnie Johnson to Eric Clapton, Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Fairport Convention.Record and film producer Joe Boyd was born in Boston in 1942 and graduated from Harvard in 1964. He went on to produce Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, R.E.M., and many others. He produced the documentary Jimi Hendrix and the film Scandal. In 1980 he started Hannibal Records and ran it for twenty years. He lives in London.

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    And I make my analogy through the slave citizen's music—through the music that is most closely associated with him: blues and a later, but parallel development, jazz... [If] the Negro represents, or is symbolic of, something in and about the nature of American culture, this certainly should be revealed by his characteristic music."So says Amiri Baraka in the Introduction to Blues People, his classic work on the place of jazz and blues in American social, musical, economic, and cultural history. From the music of African slaves in the United States through the music scene of the 1960's, Baraka traces the influence of what he calls "negro music" on white America—not only in the context of music and pop culture but also in terms of the values and perspectives passed on through the music. In tracing the music, he brilliantly illuminates the influence of African Americans on American culture and history.

    Among recordings by bands such as Sonic Youth, Black Flag, Husker Du, The Minutemen, and R.E.M. was an album called "Sorry Ma . . . Forgot to Take Out the Trash", recorded by a scruffy, flannel-clad quartet from Minneapolis called The Replacements. Now, for the first time, all of the hearsay, half-truths, legends, and allegations associated with this maelstrom of a rock & roll band are unraveled in this oral history by longtime Twin Cities music journalist Jim Walsh.Through interviews with family, friends, and fans; former manager Peter Jesperson; Twin/Tone record label cofounder Paul Stark; and musicians around the nation influenced by the band, Walsh lays bare with painful clarity a tale that unfolds like a tragic comedy in three perfect acts. Celebrated by national publications, "the Mats" often seemed more hell-bent on sabotaging their status as critical darlings than parlaying it. With their markedly apolitical stance amid their decidedly political peers, their uncool embrace of "classic rock" influences like KISS and The Faces, and their Dionysian appetites (and the resulting tendency to literally fall on their own faces), The Replacements lasted 12 years despite themselves.From the bands founding to their rise through the local and national club circuits, their major label deal in 1985, and the slow and painful implosion that followed, The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting lays down the gripping oral history behind the little band that could--but didn't.

    Throughout Shorter's extraordinary fifty-year career, his compositions have helped define the sounds of each distinct era in the history of jazz.Filled with musical analysis by Mercer, enlivened by Shorter's vivid recollections, and enriched by more than seventy-five original interviews with his friends and associates, this book is at once an invaluable history of music from bebop to pop, an intimate and moving biography, and a story of a man's struggle toward the full realization of his gifts and of himself.

    The tales of their tours were the most outrageous in the already excess-laden annals of modern music. The era of Led Zeppelin personified sex, drugs, and rock & roll.Based on interviews with the band's musicians, friends, employees, and lovers, Hammer of the Gods tells the shocking story of Led Zeppelin's successes and excesses in the 70s when Zeppelin reigned as the industry's biggest act.Exclusive sources. Documents. Interviews. Photos. Revelations about a band and an industry at its shameless peak. Read it all, and see why Hammer of the Gods is a classic of rock journalism in its own right."

    Interviewees include band members Gregg Allman, Dickey Betts, Jaimoe, Butch Trucks, Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks, Oteil Burbridge, Chuck Leavell, Jack Pearson, Jimmy Herring, David Goldflies, and the late Allen Woody; plus Eric Clapton, Tom Dowd, Phil Walden, Billy Gibbons, Dr. John, and many other band friends and associates. One Way Out is the most complete exploration of the Allman Brothers music yet written, tracking the band's career from its 1969 formation through its historic 40th-anniversary star-studded Beacon run, right on up to today. Filled with musical and cultural insights that only these insiders can provide, it includes the most in-depth look at the acrimonious 2000 parting with founding guitarist Dickey Betts; an intense discussion of Betts and Duane Allman's revolutionary guitar styles; and thorough behind-the-scenes information on the recording of At Fillmore East, Layla, Eat a Peach, and other classic albums. You will not find this information anywhere else. The book also includes a highly opinionated discography with short reviews of over 50 albums, plus a bonus list of essential Southern rock albums.

    In this richly textured anthology, well-known scholar David Brackett brings together more than 100 readings from a wide range of sources and by writers who have played an integral part in the development of popular music criticism. Brackett includes articles from mainstream and specialized magazines, newspapers, and scholarly journals, as well as interviews and autobiographies of musicians and other music industry insiders. Organized into broad time periods, the chapters are divided into sections by genre, and these sections are organized chronologically. The chapter divisions parallel those found most frequently in textbooks on popular music. Representing a wide variety of time periods, styles, and genres--and including groundbreaking criticism on disco, hip-hop, rap, and techno--the selections introduce students to important social and cultural issues raised by the study of popular music. Topics covered include the role of race, class conflict, gender roles, regional differences in the reception of popular music, and the relative value of artistry versus commerce. Extensive editorial introductions and headnotes supply context for the selections, provide links between different eras and genres, clarify the issues raised by the documents, and explain their historical significance. The second edition of this captivating anthology features eleven new source readings and introductions, further reading and discography selections for each chapter, and a companion website containing student and instructor resources.

    Now, more people are listening to more music from a greater variety of sources than at any time in history. And big corporations such as Viacom, Clear Channel, and Sony are no longer the sole gatekeepers and distributors, their monopoly busted by a revolution -- an uprising led by bands and fans networking on the Internet. "Ripped" tells the story of how the laptop generation created a new grassroots music industry, with the fans and bands rather than the corporations in charge. In this new world, bands aren't just musicmakers but self-contained multimedia businesses; and fans aren't just consumers but distributors and even collaborators.As the Web popularized bands and albums that previously would have been relegated to obscurity, innovative artists -- from Prince to Death Cab for Cutie -- started coming up with, and stumbling into, alternative ways of getting their music out to fans. Live music took on an even more significant role. TV shows and commercials emerged as great places to hear new tunes. Sample-based composition and mash-ups leapfrogged ahead of the industry's, and the law's, ability to keep up with them. Then, in 2007, Radiohead released an album exclusively on the Internet and allowed customers to name their own price, including $0.00. Radiohead's "it's up to you" marketing coup seized on a concept the old music industry had forgotten: the customer is always right.National radio host and critically acclaimed music journalist Greg Kot masterfully chronicles this story of how we went from $17.99 to $0.00 in less than a decade. It's a fascinating tale of backward thinking, forward thinking, and the power of music.

    Now, because powerful people like Doug Morris and Tommy Mottola failed to recognize the incredible potential of file-sharing technology, the labels are in danger of becoming completely obsolete. Knopper, who has been writing about the industry for more than ten years, has unparalleled access to those intimately involved in the music world's highs and lows. Based on interviews with more than two hundred music industry sources—from Warner Music chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr. to renegade Napster creator Shawn Fanning—Knopper is the first to offer such a detailed and sweeping contemporary history of the industry's wild ride through the past three decades. From the birth of the compact disc, through the explosion of CD sales in the '80s and '90s, the emergence of Napster, and the secret talks that led to iTunes, to the current collapse of the industry as CD sales plummet, Knopper takes us inside the boardrooms, recording studios, private estates, garage computer labs, company jets, corporate infighting, and secret deals of the big names and behind-the-scenes players who made it all happen.With unforgettable portraits of the music world's mighty and formerly mighty; detailed accounts of both brilliant and stupid ideas brought to fruition or left on the cutting-room floor; the dish on backroom schemes, negotiations, and brawls; and several previously unreported stories, Appetite for Self-Destruction is a riveting, informative, and highly entertaining read. It offers a broad perspective on the current state of Big Music, how it got into these dire straits, and where it's going from here—and a cautionary tale for the digital age.

    We'll hear of the great love stories ranging from Johnny Cash and June Carter in the 1960s to Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, who married in 2005. We'll get the truth of the tragedies that led to the loss of three stars all in the same month, starting the rumor of the "Opry Curse." We'll learn how after being stabbed, shot, and maimed, Trace Adkins calls his early honky-tonk years "combat country," and we'll find inspiration from DeFord Bailey, an African American harmonica player in 1927 crippled by childhood polio who rose to fame as one of the first Opry stars. Our hearts will break for Willie Nelson, who lost his only son on Christmas Day, and soar for Amy Grant and Vince Gill, who found true love. Based on over 150 firsthand interviews with the stars of The Grand Ole Opry, these are stories that tell the heart of country--the lives that are lived and inspire the songs we love.

    In 2001 he completely revised and reworked this hugely acclaimed book, adding new sections, substantially reworking text, and bringing the story up-to-date with Dylan's explosive career in 2000.Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited follows the story of Dylan from his humble beginnings in Minnesota to his arrival in New York in 1961, his subsequent rise in the folk pantheon of Greenwich Village in the early '60s, and his cataclysmic folk-rock metamorphosis at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. In the succeeding eighteen months, Dylan released Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, and embarked on the legendary 1966 World Tour that culminated with an unforgettable concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Heylin details it all, along with the true story of Dylan's motorcycle accident, his remarkable reemergence in the mid-'70s, the only exacting account of his controversial conversion to born-again Christianity, the Neverending Tour, and yet another incredible Dylan resurgence with his 1997 Grammy Album of the Year Award-winning Time Out of Mind.Deemed by The New Yorker as "the most readable and reliable" of all Dylan biographies, this book will give fans what they have always wanted -- a chance to get to know the man behind the shades.

    Together with Yoko Ono Lennon, they have also made available the full transcripts (including all the outtakes) of the television and video series The Beatles Anthology. Through painstaking compilation of sources worldwide, John Lennon's words are equally represented in this remarkable volume. Furthermore, The Beatles have opened their personal and management archives specifically for this project, allowing the unprecedented release of photographs which they took along their ride to fame, as well as fascinating documents and memorabilia from their homes and offices. What a book The Beatles Anthology is! Each page is brimming with personal stories and rare vintage images. Snapshots from their family collections take us back to the days when John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Richard Starkey were just boys growing up in Liverpool. They talk in turn about those early years and how they came to join the band that would make them known around the world as John, Paul, George and Ringo. Then, weaving back and forth, they tell the astonishing story of life as The Beatles: the first rough gigs, the phenomenon of their rise to fame, the musical and social change of their heyday, all the way through to their breakup. From the time Ringo tried to take this drum kit home on the bus to their much anticipated audience with Elvis, from the making of the Sgt. Pepper album to their last photo session together at John's house, The Beatles Anthology is a once-in-a-lifetime collection of The Beatles' own memories.Interwoven with these are the recollections of such associates as road manager Neil Aspinall, producer George Martin and spokesman Derek Taylor. And included in the vast array of photographs are materials from both Apple and EMI, who also opened their archives for this project. This, indeed, is the inside story, providing a wealth of previously unpublished material in both word and image.Created with their full cooperation, The Beatles Anthology is, in effect, The Beatles' autobiography. Like their music has been a part of so many of our lives, it's warm, frank, funny, poignant and bold. At last, here is The Beatles' own story.

    Marcus Gray furnishes thumbnail sketches of each member, as well as chapters on the band's recording history, politics, album packaging, and regional accent. The author is also fearless enough to venture into the black hole of Michael Stipe's lyrics. He doesn't, to be sure, make sense of Stipe's associative rambles, and the singer himself lets Gray off the hook by confessing that "three-quarters of my lyrics probably come from overheard conversations. I steal a lot, basically. Someone will say something really interesting, and I'll write it down." Okay. But we'd still like to know what a moral kiosk is.

    By temperament, he was a high-strung and sensitive romantic, a towering figure whose tempestuous personal life found powerfully coherent expression in the ever-shifting textures of his music. Now, acclaimed music critic Gene Santoro strips away the myths shrouding Jazz's Angry Man, revealing Mingus as more complex than even his lovers and close friends knew. A pioneering bassist and composer, Mingus redefined jazz's terrain. He penned over 300 works spanning gutbucket gospel, Colombian cumbias, orchestral tone poems, multimedia performance, and chamber jazz. By the time he was 35, his growing body of music won increasing attention as it unfolded into one pioneering musical venture after another, from classical-meets-jazz extended pieces to spoken-word and dramatic performances and television and movie soundtracks. Though critics and musicians debated his musical merits and his personality, by the late 1950s he was widely recognized as a major jazz star, a bellwether whose combined grasp of tradition and feel for change poured his inventive creativity into new musical outlets. But Mingus got headlines less for his art than for his volatile and often provocative behavior, which drew fans who wanted to watch his temper suddenly flare onstage. Impromptu outbursts and speeches formed an integral part of his long-running jazz workshop, modeled partly on dramatic models like Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. Keeping up with the organized chaos of Mingus's art demanded gymnastic improvisational skills and openness from his musicians-which is why some of them called it the Sweatshop. He hired and fired musicians on the bandstand, attacked a few musicians physically and many more verbally, twice threw Lionel Hampton's drummer off the stage, and routinely harangued chattering audiences, once chasing a table of inattentive patrons out of the FIVE SPOT with a meat cleaver. But the musical and mental challenges this volcanic man set his bands also nurtured deep loyalties. Key sidemen stayed with him for years and even decades. In this biography, Santoro probes the sore spots in Mingus's easily wounded nature that helped make him so explosive: his bullying father, his interracial background, his vulnerability to women and distrust of men, his views of political and social issues, his overwhelming need for love and acceptance. Of black, white, and Asian descent, Mingus made race a central issue in his life as well as a crucial aspect of his music, becoming an outspoken (and often misunderstood) critic of racial injustice. Santoro gives us a vivid portrait of Mingus's development, from the racially mixed Watts where he mingled with artists and writers as well as mobsters, union toughs, and pimps to the artistic ferment of postwar Greenwich Village, where he absorbed and extended the radical improvisation flowing through the work of Allen Ginsberg, Jackson Pollock, and Charlie Parker. Indeed, unlike Most jazz biographers, Santoro examines Mingus's extra-musical influences--from Orson Welles to Langston Hughes, Farwell Taylor, and Timothy Leary--and illuminates his achievement in the broader cultural context it demands. Written in a lively, novelistic style, Myself When I Am Real draws on dozens of new interviews and previously untapped letters and archival materials to explore the intricate connections between this extraordinary man and the extraordinary music he made.