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She's a Rainbow: The Extraordinary Life of Anita Pallenberg: The Black Queen
Simon Wells - 2020
She almost single-handedly engineered a cultural revolution in London by bringing together the Stones and the jeunesse dorée…The Stones came away with a patina of aristocratic decadence that served as a perfect counterfoil to the raw roots blues of their music. This…transformed the Stones from pop stars into cultural icons." —Marianne Faithfull. Pallenberg epitomised the hedonistic counter-culture world of sex, drugs and rock ‘n' roll during the sixties and seventies; muse to the Rolling Stones and star of enduring cult movies like Barbarella and Performance, this is Anita's incredible story of excess, art, motherhood and her often unknown influence on one of the greatest rock bands of all time.
Lou Reed: The Last Interview and Other Conversations
Lou Reed - 2015
In conversation with legendary rock critics and authors he respected, Reed’s interviews are as pithy and brilliant as the man himself.
They Might Be Giants' Flood (33 1/3)
S. Alexander Reed - 2013
Neither the band’s hip origins in the Lower East Side scene nor Flood’s platinum certification can cover up the record's singular importance at the geek fringes of culture.Flood’s significance to this audience helps us understand a certain way of being: it shows that geek identity doesn’t depend on references to Hobbits or Spock ears, but can instead be a set of creative and interpretive practices marked by playful excess—a flood of ideas. The album also clarifies an historical moment. The brainy sort of kids who listened to They Might Be Giants saw their own cultural options grow explosively during the late 1980s and early 1990s amid the early tech boom and America’s advancing leftist social tides. Whether or not it was the band's intention, Flood’s jubilant proclamation of an identity unconcerned with coolness found an ideal audience at an ideal turning point. This book tells the story.
Chrysler's Turbine Car: The Rise and Fall of Detroit's Coolest Creation
Steve Lehto - 2010
They built a fleet of turbine cars--automobiles with jet engines--and loaned them out to members of the public. The fleet logged over a million miles; the exercise was a raging success. These turbine engines would run on any flammable liquid--tequila, heating oil, Chanel #5, diesel, alcohol, kerosene. If the cars had been mass produced, we might have cars today that do not require petroleum-derived fuels. The engine was also much simpler than the piston engine--it contained one-fifth the number of moving parts and required much less maintenance. The cars had no radiators or fan belts and never needed oil changes. Yet Chrysler crushed and burned most of the cars two years later; the jet car's brief glory was over. Where did it all go wrong? Controversy still follows the program, and questions about how and why it was killed have never been satisfactorily answered. Steve Lehto has interviewed all the surviving members of the turbine car program--from the metallurgist who created the exotic metals for the interior of the engine to the test driver who drove it at Chrysler’s proving grounds for days on end. Lehto takes these first-hand accounts and weaves them into a great story about the coolest car Detroit ever produced.
Starting Over: The Making of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Double Fantasy
Ken Sharp - 2010
The most acclaimed singer/songwriter of his generation, first a Beatle and then a boundary-pushing solo artist, was senselessly silenced forever at age forty; immediately, his final musical statement, an intimate, pop-infused collection called Double Fantasy, released only weeks before his death, skyrocketed to #1 worldwide, as did its poignantly titled single, "(Just Like) Starting Over." His first studio recording since 1975’s Rock ’n’ Roll—and his first musical endeavor of any kind since taking a much-needed hiatus to raise Sean, his son with Yoko Ono—Double Fantasy represents more than a comeback album to Lennon fans and music critics alike. It captures a cultural icon at the pinnacle of his creative success and personal fulfillment; thirty years later it remains a musical touchstone and an affecting reminder of what could have been.Starting Over is an oral history of the making of Double Fantasy and the definitive account of John Lennon’s last days. From early demos to sessions at New York City’s The Hit Factory, from the electrifying chemistry of the studio band to keeping the project under wraps to the album’s release and critical reception, here is fascinating, insightful commentary from all of the key players involved in its extraordinary creation: Yoko Ono, David Geffen, producer Jack Douglas, engineers, arrangers, session musicians, music journalists, and even Lennon himself via archival interviews.Featuring never-before-seen photos of John and Yoko in the studio, candid images taken by David M. Spindel and Roger Farrington, Starting Over is the essential portrait for anyone who hears both a beginning and ending in the tracks of Double Fantasy.
Trackers
Peter Haran - 2000
A war veteran tells his story with vivid and compelling immediacy, blending the terror of hunting and encountering the elusive Vietcong with the tender relationship between a naive young Australian soldier and his larrikin labrador-kelpie cross, Caesar.
Colonel Sanders and the American Dream
Josh Ozersky - 2012
But only one of them was ever a real person—Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken/KFC. From a 1930s roadside café in Corbin, Kentucky, Harland Sanders launched a fried chicken business that now circles the globe, serving “finger lickin’ good” chicken to more than twelve million people every day. But to get there, he had to give up control of his company and even his own image, becoming a mere symbol to people today who don’t know that Colonel Sanders was a very real human being. This book tells his story—the story of a dirt-poor striver with unlimited ambition who personified the American Dream.Acclaimed cultural historian Josh Ozersky defines the American Dream as being able to transcend your roots and create yourself as you see fit. Harland Sanders did exactly that. Forced at age ten to go to work to help support his widowed mother and sisters, he failed at job after job until he went into business for himself as a gas station/café/motel owner and finally achieved a comfortable, middle-class life. But then the interstate bypassed his business and, at sixty-five, Sanders went broke again. Packing his car with a pressure cooker and his secret blend of eleven herbs and spices, he began peddling the recipe for “Colonel Sanders’ Kentucky Fried Chicken” to small-town diners in exchange for a nickel for each chicken they sold. Ozersky traces the rise of Kentucky Fried Chicken from this unlikely beginning, telling the dramatic story of Sanders’ self-transformation into “The Colonel,” his truculent relationship with KFC management as their often-disregarded goodwill ambassador, and his equally turbulent afterlife as the world’s most recognizable commercial icon.
How to Play the Guitar and Y
Elvis Costello - 2021
"This isn't strictly speaking an instructional manual, but a work of comedic philosophy."Elvis Costello—songwriter, singer, author, and Fender Jazzmaster known to his admirers as "The Little Hands of Concrete"—spins his tale with wit, grit, and spit to spare.How to Play the Guitar and Y, Costello’s new entry into Audible’s Words + Music series, combines recitation, impersonation, and musical illustration to show you how to turn a three-chord trick into a four-chord caper and let your curiosity take you where it will.Part madcap musical method, part comic chronicle, How to Play the Guitar and Y is accompanied by the author throughout on a number of different instruments with his 10 wandering fingers.So gather round your favorite listening device to hear a storyteller and musician at his most captivating as he reminds you not to be afraid to fail and to never forget to play.
A Cure For Gravity: A Musical Pilgrimage
Joe Jackson - 1999
. . . This is an intelligent, thoughtful look into the mind of an artist."--New York Times Book Review Since the release of his first best-selling album Look Sharp in 1979, Joe Jackson has forged a singular career in music through his originality as a composer and his notoriously independent stance toward music-business fashion. He has also been a famously private person, whose lack of interest in his own celebrity has been interpreted by some as aloofness. That reputation is shattered by A Cure for Gravity, Jackson's enormously funny and revealing memoir of growing up musical, from a culturally impoverished childhood in a rough English port town to the Royal Academy of Music, through London's Punk and New Wave scenes, up to the brink of pop stardom. Jackson describes his life as a teenage Beethoven fanatic; his early piano gigs for audiences of glass-throwing skinheads; and his days on the road with long-forgotten club bands. Far from a standard-issue celebrity autobiography, A Cure for Gravity is a smart, passionate book about music, the creative process, and coming of age as an artist.Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award Finalist
Let Fury Have the Hour: The Punk Rock Politics of Joe Strummer
Antonino D'Ambrosio - 2004
The quintessential Rude Boy, punker, rebel musician, artist and activist, Strummer wrote some of the most important and influential music of the last century including "Guns of Brixton," "The Washington Bullets," "Spanish Bombs," "White Man in Hammersmith Palace," "London's Burning," "Lost in the Supermarket," and "Garageland." Effectively melding raw creativity with radical politics, Strummer transformed punk rock from its early associations with reactionary, right wing and nihilistic politics into a social movement. From Rock Against Racism to the Anti-Nazi League Festival to supporting the H-Block protests, Strummer and The Clash led the charge for human rights. Let Fury Have the Hour collects articles, interviews, essays and reviews that chronicle Strummer's life both as a musician and a political activist. Included in this collection are essays and interviews by Antonino D'Ambrosio, alongside contributions from Peter Silverton, Barry Miles, Anya Philips, Sylvia Simmons, Vic Garbarini, Caroline Coons, Todd Martens, Joel Schalit and others. This book also includes original lyrics, photography, art, posters, and flyers, and offers the first serious examination of the life of this extraordinary man.
Perfect Circle: The Story of R.E.M.
Tony Fletcher - 1989
However, R.E.M. – being R.E.M. – were disinclined to reveal this at the time the book was first published in 1989 and Tony was thus obliged to keep this under his hat. All such restrictions have since been lifted for newer editions, of which there have been several, and this latest incarnation of the book – now retitled Perfect Circle – brings the story to its natural conclusion with R.E.M.’s decision to disband in September, 2011. Discussing fame, fortune and sexuality with the same keen eye he casts on the group's astonishing musical catalogue, Perfect Circle is neither blind fan worship nor jaundiced critical cynicism, but a balanced and thorough telling of one of the most compelling rock stories of our time. Drawing on dozens of interviews with friends, associates and the band members themselves, this is not just the story of one group's rise through cult status, but the story of American alternative rock.
Trespass: A History Of Uncommissioned Urban Art
Carlo McCormick - 2010
Yet unsanctioned public art remains the problem child of cultural expression, the last outlaw of visual disciplines. It has also become a global phenomenon of the 21st century. Made in collaboration with featured artists, Trespass examines the rise and global reach of graffiti and urban art, tracing key figures, events and movements of self-expression in the city's social space, and the history of urban reclamation, protest, and illicit performance. The first book to present the full historical sweep, global reach and technical developments of the street art movement, Trespass features key works by 150 artists, and connects four generations of visionary outlaws including Jean Tinguely, Spencer Tunick, Keith Haring, Os Gemeos, Jenny Holzer, Barry McGee, Gordon Matta-Clark, Shepard Fairey, Blu, Billboard Liberation Front, Guerrilla Girls and Banksy, among others. It also includes dozens of previously unpublished photographs of long-lost works and legendary, ephemeral urban artworks. Also includes: • Unpublished images of street art by Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat • Unpublished photographs by Subway Art luminary Martha Cooper • Unpublished photos from the personal archives of selected artists • Incisive essays by Anne Pasternak (director of public arts fund Creative Time) and civil rights lawyer Tony Serra • Special feature: exclusive preface by Banksy
Skeleton Key
David Shenk - 1994
Along the way, Deadheads have built an original and authentic American subculture, with vivid jargon and rich love, and its own legends, myths, and spirituality.Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads is the first map of what Jerry Garcia calls "the Grateful Dead outback," as seen through the eyes of the faithful, friends, and family, including Bill Walton, Elvis Costello, Tipper Gore, Al Franken, Bob Bralove, Dick Latvala, Blair Jackson, David Gans, Bruce Hornsby, Rob Wasserman, and Robert Hunter. Skeleton Key puts you on the Merry Pranksters' bus behind the real Cowboy Neal, uncovers the origins of Cherry Garcia, follows the dancing bear on its trip from psychedelic artifact to trademarked icon, and unlocks the Dead's own tape vault.Informative reading for the new fan or the most grizzled "tourhead," Skeleton Key shines throughout with Deadheads' own stories, wit, insiders' knowledge, sincere appreciation of the music of the "band beyond description," and the diverse and soulful culture it inspires.
Britpop!: Cool Britannia And The Spectacular Demise Of English Rock
John Harris - 2003
Founded on rock music, celebrity, boom-time economics, and fleeting political optimism, this was "Cool Britannia." Records sold in the millions, a new celebrity elite emerged, and Tony Blair's Labour Party found itself returned to government. Drawing on interviews from all the major bands including Oasis, Blur, Elastica, and Suede, and from music journalists, record executives, and those close to government, Britpop! charts the rise and fall of the Britpop moment. In this wonderfully engaging, page-turning narrative, John Harris, currently the hottest young music journalist in the UK, argues that the high point of British music's cultural impact also signaled its effective demise. After all, if rock stars were now friends of government, how could they continue to matter?"Cool Britannia was an empty promise that was bound to end in tears. John Harris captures the moment when New Labour, desperately wanting to seem hip, invited Britpop into Downing Street. Irresistible."-Billy Bragg
Understanding Air France 447
Bill Palmer - 2013
Written by A330 Captain, Bill Palmer, this book opens to understanding the actions of the crew, how they failed to understand and control the problem, and how the airplane works and the part it played. All in easy to understand terms.Addressed are the many contributing aspects of weather, human factors, and airplane system operation and design that the crew could not recover from. How each contributed is covered in detail along with what has been done, and needs to be done in the future to prevent this from happening again.Also see the book's companion website: UnderstandingAF447.com for supplemental materials referred to in the book or to contact the author.