The Hollow of the Hand


P.J. Harvey - 2015
    Harvey collected words, Murphy collected pictures, and together they have created an extraordinary chronicle of our life and times. The Hollow of the Hand marks the first publication of Harvey's powerful poetry, in conversation with Murphy's indelible images. It is a landmark project and will be published internationally in autumn 2015.As PJ Harvey says: "Gathering information from secondary sources felt too far removed for what I was trying to write about. I wanted to smell the air, feel the soil and meet the people of the countries I was fascinated with. Following our work on Let England Shake, my friend Seamus Murphy and I agreed to grow a project together lead by our instincts on where we should go."Seamus Murphy adds: "Polly is a writer who loves images and I am a photographer who loves words. Our relationship began a few years ago when she asked me if I would like to take some photographs and make some films for her last album Let England Shake. I was intrigued and the adventure began, now finding another form in this book. It is our look at home and the world."The Hollow of the Hand will be available in a hardback edition with highest quality photographic reproductions, as well as a reader's paperback version. A limited number of signed special editions will also be available.

The Beatles on the Roof


Tony Barrell - 2017
    Crowds gathered – At ground level and above. People climbed onto roofs and postboxes, skipped lunch to gather and listen: For the first time in more than two years, The Beatles were playing live.Ringing from the rooftops, disturbing the well-to-do ears of the tailors below, they upset the establishment and bewildered the police. It was filmed by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who hoped the footage would act as the finale to a celebratory TV special. When it finally surfaced, it was in the bleak, tumultuous documentary Let It Be. And The Beatles would never play live again.Tony Barrell examines the concert within the context of its time. He speaks to those who were there: the fans, film-makers, roadies, Apple Corps staff and police. He explores the politics of 1968, when peace gave way to protest, and how music promotion began to collide with cinéma vérité and reality TV. The Beatles on the Roof makes essential reading for anyone interested in the band’s reinventions and relationships, revealing why the rooftop concert happened at all, why it happened the way that it did, and why it would never happen again.

How to Be an Artist Without Losing Your Mind, Your Shirt, Or Your Creative Compass: A Practical Guide


JoAnneh Nagler - 2016
    Author JoAnneh Nagler wants you to welcome your creativity and continue to make art—but to do so with a plan. In this groundbreaking book, she provides step-by-step strategies to teach writers, sculptors, painters, musicians, designers, and other artists how tohave a well-supported, well-lived life—and make art at the same time.Learn how to:Answer your own artistic callings and get to your art workGive up starving and struggling and build a supported, creative daily lifeManage time, money, and day jobs with easy-to-learn, simple toolsDevelop rock-solid creative work ethics and motivational skillsNo matter what kind of creative person you are, this book has the tools you need to live the life you’ve always wanted to live—right now, and for your whole life long.

Staring at Sound: The True Story of Oklahoma's Fabulous Flaming Lips


Jim DeRogatis - 2006
    The album sold a million copies worldwide, introduced the Flaming Lips to a mass audience, and made them one of the best-known cult bands in rock history.Staring at Sound is the tale of the Flaming Lips's fascinating career (which, in reality, began in 1983) and the many colorful personalities in their orbit, especially Wayne Coyne, their charismatic and visionary founder. Based on hundreds of hours of interviews with the band, it follows the Flaming Lips through the thriving indie-rock underground of the 1980s and the alternative-rock movement of the early '90s, during which they found fans in such rock legends as Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Robert Plant, and Devo, and respected peers in such acts as the White Stripes, Radiohead, and Beck. It concludes with exclusive coverage of the creation of the group's latest album, At War with the Mystics.

What's New, Vol. 1: The Collected Adventures of Phil and Dixie


Phil Foglio - 1991
    Originally published by Palliard Press.

In the Key of Genius: The Extraordinary Life of Derek Paravicini


Adam Ockelford - 2007
    But he has an rare gift — he is a musical prodigy who amazes all who hear him play.

Withdrawn Traces: Searching for the Truth about Richey Manic


Leon Noakes - 2019
    On the eve of a promotional trip to America, he vanished from his London hotel room, his car later discovered near the Severn Bridge, a notorious suicide spot.Over two decades later, Richey’s disappearance remains one of the most moving, mysterious and unresolved episodes in recent pop culture history. For those with a basic grasp of the facts, Richey's suicide seems obvious and undeniable. However, a closer investigation of his actions in the weeks and months before his disappearance just don’t add up, and until now few have dared to ask the important questions.Withdrawn Traces is the first book written with the co-operation of the Edwards family, testimony from Richey’s closest friends and unprecedented and exclusive access to Richey’s personal archive. In a compelling real-time narrative, the authors examine fresh evidence, uncover overlooked details, profile Richey's state of mind, and brings us closer than ever before to the truth.

The Beautiful Ones


Prince - 2019
    Prince was a musical genius, one of the most talented, beloved, accomplished, popular, and acclaimed musicians in history. He was also a startlingly original visionary with an imagination deep enough to whip up whole worlds, from the sexy, gritty funk paradise of “Uptown” to the mythical landscape of Purple Rain to the psychedelia of “Paisley Park.” But his most ambitious creative act was turning Prince Rogers Nelson, born in Minnesota, into Prince, the greatest pop star of his era. The Beautiful Ones is the story of how Prince became Prince—a first-person account of a kid absorbing the world around him and then creating a persona, an artistic vision, and a life, before the hits and fame that would come to define him. The book is told in four parts. The first is composed of the memoir he was writing before his tragic death, pages that brings us into Prince’s childhood world through his own lyrical prose. The second part takes us into Prince’s early years as a musician, before his first album released, through a scrapbook of Prince’s writing and photos. The third section shows us Prince’s evolution through candid images that take us up to the cusp of his greatest achievement, which we see in the book’s fourth section: his original handwritten treatment for Purple Rain—the final stage in Prince’s self-creation, as he retells the autobiography we’ve seen in the first three parts as a heroic journey.The book is framed by editor Dan Piepenbring’s riveting and moving introduction about his short but profound collaboration with Prince in his final months—a time when Prince was thinking deeply about how to reveal more of himself and his ideas to the world, while retaining the mystery and mystique he’d so carefully cultivated—and annotations that provide context to each of the book’s images. This work is not just a tribute to Prince, but an original and energizing literary work, full of Prince’s ideas and vision, his voice and image, his undying gift to the world.

Kabuki Reflections


David W. Mack - 2010
    Ever wonder how David Mack does his artwork? How his pages and covers go from sketches and drawings to finished art? How he uses models and figure drawings? It's all in here with tons of extras Collects Kabuki Reflections #5-10.

Elements of Jazz: From Cakewalks to Fusion


Bill Messenger - 1995
    Now you can learn the basics of jazz and its history in a course as free-flowing and original as jazz itself. Taught by Professor Bill Messenger of the Peabody Institute, the lectures in this course are a must for music lovers. They will have you reaching deep into your own music collection and going straight out to a music store to add to it. Professor Messenger has spent his life in music as student, teacher, and professional musician. He has studied and lectured at the famed Peabody Institute and written an acclaimed book on music activities aimed at older adults. And as a pianist, he has: Played in ragtime ensembles, swing bands, Dixieland bands, and modern jazz groups Been a successful studio musician in the early days of rock 'n' roll Accompanied performers as renowned as Lou Rawls and Mama Cass Elliot Opened for Bill Haley and the Comets. So it is no wonder that the course he has created is so thorough and enjoyable. Lectures, Piano, and Guest Performers It's a rich mix of jazz, its elements, era, and practitioners. Professor Messenger frequently turns to his piano to illustrate his musical points, often with the help of guest performance artists and lots of original music. The lectures follow the story of jazz in its many shapes, including: Ragtime The blues The swing music of the big band era Boogie-woogie Big band blues The rise of modern jazz forms: bebop, cool, modal, free, and fusion. Cakewalks, Vaudeville, and Swing Beginning with the music and dance of the antebellum plantation, Professor Messenger reveals how the "cakewalks" of slave culture gave birth to a dance craze at the 19th century's end that was ignorant of its own humble roots. He considers how minstrel shows, deriving from Southern beliefs that held black culture to be decidedly inferior, eventually created a musical industry that African American musicians would dominate for decades to come. You will learn how and why jazz, a difficult genre to define, was central to the music they created. Roots in Ragtime Professor Messenger explains how jazz was born-or conceived-in the ragtime piano tunes of turn-of-the-century America. Together with the Dixieland funeral music of New Orleans, this new, "syncopated" music popularized a sound that took America's vaudeville establishments by storm. Professor Messenger notes that ragtime's most popular composer, Scott Joplin, at first resisted the new craze. But after becoming intrigued by that "ragged" sound at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, he became the writer of the most memorable rags ever, including "Maple Leaf Rag" and "The Entertainer." Drawing on the blues, an emotional but harmonically simple music, jazz was ensconced as a popular genre in the American psyche by the 1920s. The Surprising Origin of the "St. Louis Blues" One interesting story about the blues covered in the course concerns W. C. Handy, a man often referred to as the "father of the blues." As Professor Messenger reveals that, in truth, Handy didn't like the blues very much and wasn't convinced the public would buy it. It was only after he saw a band of blues players literally showered with money after a performance that he began writing the music in earnest. Handy was at the same World's Fair Joplin attended, and he heard a song he later arranged into what became the famous "St. Louis Blues." Professor Messenger points out, nothing about the song was original; it was a melting pot of many influences. The blues is, in his words, the "emotional germ of jazz." It is the place jazz always returns to when it veers too far into the abstract or academic. An Innovation that Changed Jazz Forever One of the most important events in the history of jazz, and all performance, was the invention of the microphone in 1924. Before the microphone, singers needed big voices to project their voices across large music halls, and the booming styles of performers such as Bessie Smith and Al Jolson met those requirements admirably. After the microphone, though, things were very different. The new invention did more than simply allow for the use of quieter instruments like the guitar and string bass. It also brought smaller-voiced singers-Bing Crosby, Mel Torme, Frank Sinatra, for instance-into the limelight. Into the 1930s and 40s, popular music became heavily arranged for bigger and bigger bands. By the time the swing era of America's big bands took hold around World War II, jazz had reached new popular heights. You will learn why swing became so popular-the syncopation and improvisation of early jazz, in the context of careful arrangements, combined planning and spontaneity in a unique way. Though not to be confused with the sound of competing society bands, swing music gave talents like Benny Goodman a chance to improvise within the framework of Top 40 hits.More than Swing The development of jazz into swing electrified popular music. You learn: How boogie-woogie, a precursor of rock 'n' roll that was primed with a heavy-handed, highly rhythmic style, found widespread success in the 1940s until its ubiquity forced it out of fashion How big band blues, where the simplicity of the blues standard was overlaid on the pop song, fused the worlds of folk art and high art How bebop-an austere, anxious music whose success was blazed by the genius of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker-worked against the commercial spread of swing How modern jazz spans everything-from the cool jazz of the 1950s to the fusion jazz of the 1990s, with several stops in between. Music for Today In recent decades many forms of modern jazz-including cool, modal, free, and fusion-have had their devoted following. All serve to prove that jazz is a generic music that comprises many varieties. True to its name, jazz has defied definition, category, and stagnation. And this course-in toe-tapping, finger-snapping ways-will feed your intellectual curiosity and appreciation.

Morning Glory on the Vine: Early Songs and Drawings


Joni Mitchell - 2019
    For this stunningly beautiful book, Joni hand-wrote an exquisite selection of her own lyrics and poems and illustrated them with more than thirty of her original pictures. Handcrafted, signed, and numbered in Los Angeles, the existing copies of this labor of love have rarely been seen in the past half-century.      Now, during Joni’s seventy-fifth birthday year, Morning Glory on the Vine: Early Songs and Drawings will be widely available for the first time. In this faithfully reproduced edition, Joni’s best-loved lyrics and poems spill across the pages in her own elegant script. The lively, full-color drawings depict a superb array of landscapes, still lifes, portraits of friends, self-portraits, innovative abstractions, and more. All the artwork from the original book is included, along with several additional pictures that Joni drew of her friends from the same period. Finally, the refreshed volume features an original introduction written by Joni. Morning Glory on the Vine is a gorgeous and intimate keepsake and an invitation to explore anew the dazzling, visionary world of Joni Mitchell.

Long Time Relationship


Julie Doucet - 2001
    The book is divided into six chapters, each focusing on a theme; one is a series of eerily compelling portraits based on a dozen family photographs Doucet found discarded in a garbage can in Berlin. In another series, Doucet explores gender issues as no one else can with twenty hilarious, somewhat unflattering portraits of the "modern man." She deftly explores other themes, ranging from fortune cookies to female sexuality (go figure ), and everything is neatly encompassed in this sharply-designed art book. Julie Doucet is internationally renowned for her wry, sexually-charged work, a sort of "female R. Crumb" of comics. She is the author of four books, including the 2000 Firecracker Award-Winner "My New York Diary. "

Things To Do Instead Of Killing Yourself


Tara Booth - 2019
    

Picturing Prince: An Intimate Portrait


Steve Parke - 2017
    At least half of the images in the book are exclusively published here for the first time; most other images in the book are rare to the public eye.Alongside these remarkable images are fifty engaging, poignant and often funny written vignettes by Parke, which reveal the very human man behind the reclusive superstar: from shooting hoops to renting out movie theatres at 4am; from midnight requests for camels to meaningful conversations that shed light on Prince as a man and artist.STEVE PARKE started working with Prince in 1988, after a mutual friend showed Prince some of Steve's photorealistic paintings. He designed everything from album covers and merchandise to sets for Prince's tours and videos. Somewhere in all of this, he became Paisley Park's official art director. He began photographing Prince at the request of the star himself, and continued to do so for the next several years. The images in this book are the arresting result of this collaboration.Biographical Notes STEVE PARKE is photo editor for Faerie Magazine. He worked as art director for Prince at Paisley Park for fourteen years. As a photographer, his clients have included Prince, David Bowie, Bon Jovi, Bob Dylan, Sheila E., AC/DC and more. He lives in Baltimore, USA.

The True Lives of My Chemical Romance: The Definitive Biography


Tom Bryant - 2014
    Inspirational, original, stunningly creative, they forged an extraordinary connection with their fans. Author Tom Bryant was given unparalleled access to the band over the years and now he draws on interviews with Gerard Way and his brother Mikey, Ray Toro and Frank Iero, as well as friends and associates, to bring their stories to life. In this unauthorized biography, he takes us behind the scenes from their very first gig in front of thirty kids in New Jersey - the Ways downing beer to calm their nerves - to international arena-storming superstardom. He sheds light on the personal demons the bandmates battled and the haunted recording session that resulted in the brilliance of "The Black Parade". He also explores the genesis of their music, the constant reinvention that culminated in the visual splendour of "Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys", and the strains that led to their split in 2013.Insightful and revealing, "The True Lives of My Chemical Romance" is the definitive biography of the most adored rock band this century, a story of self-belief and the pursuit of dreams.