Killers in Uniform


Adrian Vincent - 2016
    Yet here are over thirty true stories of real life murderers who abused the trust of the public, their patients, their friends and their colleagues, indulging in chilling killing sprees. Neville Heath, the charming RAF officer with uncontrollable urges. Susan Christie, the ‘Fatal Attraction’ killer from the Ulster Defence Regiment. Robert Erler, the so-called Super Cop who shot a mother and daughter seemingly on a whim. Genene Jones, the loving nurse who killed many of the children in her care. James Camb, the ship’s steward who charmed and then killed one of his passengers. What drove these people to commit such heinous acts and how did they utilise the confidence placed in those in uniform? Killers in Uniform is saturated with stark reminders that real-life killers are far from monsters of fiction. In providing a comprehensive history of some of the most shocking crimes on record, Adrian Vincent raises important questions about patterns of crime, the psychology of murder and regulation of systems where trust and exploitation can unfortunately go hand in hand. He also charts changes in the justice system and controversial judicial attitudes towards punishment: documenting the move away from the death penalty and punitive punishment towards rehabilitation and flexible sentencing terms, detailing crimes which ended in hanging and life-sentences to prisoners sent to psychiatric hospitals including Broadmoor. Adrian Vincent worked in Fleet Street for twenty-seven years, becoming managing editor of IPC’s educational magazines. He is the author of many books on art and antiques, novels and true crime.

Crossroads: In Search of the Moments that Changed Music


Mark Radcliffe - 2020
    Aged sixty, he had just mourned the death of his father, only to be handed a diagnosis of mouth and throat cancer.This momentous time in his life, and being at the most famous junction in music history, led Radcliffe to think about the pivotal tracks in music and how the musicians who wrote and performed them - from Woodie Guthrie to Gloria Gaynor, Kurt Cobain to Bob Marley - had reached the crossroads that led to such epoch-changing music.In this warm, intimate account of music and its power to transform our lives, Radcliffe takes a personal journey through these touchstone tracks, looking at the story behind the records and his own experiences as he goes in search of these moments.

The Last Good Year: Seven Games That Ended an Era


Damien Cox - 2018
    Before all the NHL's old barns were torn down to make way for bigger, glitzier rinks. Before expansion and parity across the league, just about anything could happen on the ice. And it often did. It was an era when huge personalities dominated the sport; and willpower was often enough to win games. And in the spring of 1993, some of the biggest talents and biggest personalities were on a collision course. The Cinderella Maple Leafs had somehow beaten the mighty Red Wings and then, just as improbably, the St. Louis Blues. Wayne Gretzky's Kings had just torn through the Flames and the Canucks. When they faced each other in the conference final, the result would be a series that fans still talk about passionately 25 years later. Taking us back to that feverish spring, The Last Good Year gives an intimate account not just of an era-defining seven games, but of what the series meant to the men who were changed by it: Marty McSorley, the tough guy who took his whole team on his shoulders; Doug Gilmour, the emerging superstar; celebrity owner Bruce McNall; Bill Berg, who went from unknown to famous when the Leafs claimed him on waivers; Kelly Hrudey, the Kings' goalie who would go on to become a Hockey Night in Canada broadcaster; Kerry Fraser, who would become the game's most infamous referee; and two very different captains, Toronto's bull in a china shop, Wendel Clark, and the immortal Wayne Gretzky. Fast-paced, authoritative, and galvanized by the same love of the game that made the series so unforgettable, The Last Good Year is a glorious testament to a moment hockey fans will never forget.

Are We Still Rolling?: Studios, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll - One Man's Journey Recording Classic Albums


Phill Brown - 2010
    "In the form of a diary, he takes us through the crazy journey that is making music. His excellent recollections of the excesses of morons and geniuses involved in creating melodies and rhythms for us to enjoy are sheer entertainment." - Musician Robert Palmer (from his foreword for the book). From the author's first glimpse of a magical recording studio in the mid-1960s up through a busy career that continues to the present day, this rollicking story can only be told by those that were there. As the young tape operator on sessions for The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and Joe Cocker at the famed Olympic Sound Studios in London, Phill learned the ropes from experienced engineers and producers such as Glyn Johns and Eddie Kramer. Phill soon worked his way up engineering sessions for Mott the Hoople, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley and many other lendary rockers. He eventually became a freelance engineer/producer and worked with Roxy Music, Go West, Talk Talk, and Robert Plant. But more than a recollection of participating in some of the most treasured music of the past 40 years, this is a man's journey through life as Phill struggles to balance his home and family with a job where drug abuse, chaos, rampant egos, greed, lies and the increasingly invasive record business take their toll. It's also a cautionary tale, where long workdays and what once seemed like harmless indulgences become health risks, yet eventually offer a time to reflect back on.

William the Conqueror


Edward Augustus Freeman - 2011
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Living with Music: Jazz Writings


Ralph Ellison - 2001
    Now, jazz authority Robert O’Meally has collected the very best of Ellison’s inspired, exuberant jazz writings in this unique anthology.

Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest


Hanif Abdurraqib - 2019
    Seventeen years after their last album, they resurrected themselves with an intense, socially conscious record, We Got It from Here . . . Thank You 4 Your Service, which arrived when fans needed it most, in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib digs into the group's history and draws from his own experience to reflect on how its distinctive sound resonated among fans like himself. The result is as ambitious and genre-bending as the rap group itself.Abdurraqib traces the Tribe's creative career, from their early days as part of the Afrocentric rap collective known as the Native Tongues, through their first three classic albums, to their eventual breakup and long hiatus. Their work is placed in the context of the broader rap landscape of the 1990s, one upended by sampling laws that forced a reinvention in production methods, the East Coast-West Coast rivalry that threatened to destroy the genre, and some record labels' shift from focusing on groups to individual MCs. Throughout the narrative Abdurraqib connects the music and cultural history to their street-level impact. Whether he's remembering The Source magazine cover announcing the Tribe's 1998 breakup or writing personal letters to the group after bandmate Phife Dawg's death, Abdurraqib seeks the deeper truths of A Tribe Called Quest; truths that--like the low end, the bass--are not simply heard in the head, but felt in the chest.

After the Voyage: An Irish American Story


Brenda Murphy - 2016
    From different counties in Ireland, Maggie Qualter and Richard Terrett both sail to America as young adults in 1870 after surviving Ireland’s Great Hunger as children. Maggie works as a maid for a wealthy family. Richard finds work in a tannery. After the death of the young wife he loves passionately, Richard marries Maggie with the help of a deceptive go-between who brews trouble in their marriage that never goes away. They raise three children in the midst of Irish American culture, the Catholic Church, and Richard’s battles for the workingman in the Knights of Labor. Their daughter Mary dreams of being a nun, while Josie seeks the freedom of big-city life in Boston. Neither reckons on the future she will face, Mary as a wife and mother of nine children and Josie as a single working woman. Tom escapes factory life by joining the Navy, manages to see the world in the midst of two wars, and comes home to marry his sweetheart and start a new life. Their stories are both remarkable and familiar to everyone whose ancestors made their way to and in America.The events in the Terretts’ lives are as they emerge from the public record. But their inner lives, their thoughts, their relationships, their words are imagined as a route to understanding these five complicated and fascinating people

Journey to the Centre of the Cramps


Dick Porter - 2015
    In addition to unseen interview material from Ivy, Lux and other former band members, Journey To The Centre Of The Cramps also sees the Cramps' story through to its conclusion, recounting Lux's unexpected death in 2009, the subsequent dissolution of the group and their enduring legacy. The Cramps' history, influences and the cast of characters in and around the group are likewise explored in far greater depth. Features unseen first-hand interview material from Lux Interior and Poison Ivy. A wealth of new interview material with former band members and other key players in the band's history and never before seen/rare photographs and ephemera to help illustrate the book.

A Wizard a True Star: Todd Rundgren in the studio


Paul Myers - 2010
    If you don't know what you want, I'll do it for you."Few record producers possess the musical facility to back up such a bold promise, but in over forty-plus years behind the glass, Todd Rundgren has willed himself into becoming a not only a rock guitar virtuoso, an accomplished lead vocalist and vocal arranger and visionary keyboard player, not to mention a serviceable drummer. But arguably, Rundgren's greatest instrument of all is the recording studio itself. After learning his craft with Nazz, Rundgren engineered The Band's Stage Fright album and soon became the producer of a string of noteworthy albums for Sparks, Grand Funk, The New York Dolls, Badfinger, Hall & Oates, Meat Loaf, Patti Smith Group, Cheap Trick, The Psychedelic Furs and XTC. Meanwhile, Rundgren played almost every instrument on his solo albums such as Something/Anything?, A Wizard A True Star and Hermit Of Mink Hollow while collaborating on a series of albums by his band, Utopia. A Wizard A True Star: Todd Rundgren In The Studio by Paul Myers is a fascinating and authoritative trip through the land of flickering red lights inhabited by a studio wizard - and true star - who has rarely enjoyed a proper victory lap along the many trails that he has blazed. Researched and written with the participation and cooperation of Rundgren himself.

Beatles Forever


Nicholas Schaffner - 1977
    Beatles.

The Good Life


Tony Bennett - 1998
    The renowned recording artist shares a half-century of personal memories, from his childhood in Depression-era Queens, to the New York jazz scene of the 1940s, to his successes with a new generation of fans in the 1990s.

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.

Swinging at The Savoy. The Memoir of a Jazz Dancer


Norma Miller - 1996
    Dancer, award-winning choreographer, show producer, stand-up comedienne, TV/film actress and author, Norma Miller shares her memoir of Harlem's legendary Savoy Ballroom and the phenomenal music and dance.

All Gates Open: The Story of Can


Rob Young - 2018
    It consists of two books.In Book One, Rob Young gives us the full biography of a band that emerged at the vanguard of what would come to be called the Krautrock scene in late sixties Cologne. With Irmin Schmidt and Holger Czukay - two classically trained students of Stockhausen - at the heart of the band, CAN's studio and live performances burned an incendiary trail through the decade that followed: and left a legacy that is still reverberating today in hip hop, post rock, ambient, and countless other genres. Rob Young's account draws on unique interviews with all founding members of CAN, as well as their vocalists, friends and music industry associates. And he revisits the music, which is still deliriously innovative and unclassifiable more than four decades on. All Gates Open is a portrait of a group who worked with visionary intensity and belief, outside the system and inside their own inner space.Book Two, Can Kiosk, has been assembled by Irmin Schmidt, founding member and guiding spirit of the band, as a 'collage - a technique long associated with CAN's approach to recording. There is an oral history of the band drawing on interviews that Irmin made with musicians who see CAN as an influence - such as Bobby Gillespie, Geoff Barrow, Daniel Miller, and many others. There are also interviews with artists and filmmakers like Wim Wenders and John Malkovitch, where Schmidt reflects on more personal matters and his work with film. Extracts of Schmidt's notebook and diaries from 2013-14 are also reproduced as a reflection on the creative process, and the memories, dreams, and epiphanies it entails. Can Kiosk offers further perspectives on a band that have inspired several generations of musicians and filmmakers in the voices of the artists themselves.CAN were unique, and their legacy is articulated in two books in this volume with the depth, rigour, originality, and intensity associated with the band itself. It is illustrated throughout with previously unseen art, photographs, and ephemera from the band's archive.