John Coltrane


Bill Cole - 1976
    By experimenting with new concepts of time, integrating Eastern philosophies into Western music, and exploring multiphonics and other new sounds on his saxophone, he opened avenues of expression that influenced musicians and composers from jazz to rock to avant-garde.Bill Cole focuses on two aspects of John Coltrane in this provocative study: Coltrane the musician and Coltrane the religious person. Deeply interrelated, both aspects are bound up with Coltrane's identification as an African- American. Coltrane accepted the traditional African belief in the magical powers of sound and connected his music to its African roots via a devout religiosity. Cole shows how Coltrane's influences extended from tribal tone languages to speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr. -- he even adapted King's rhythmic inflections into a saxophone solo.Bill Cole offers a lengthy musical analysis of Coltrane's career; it also includes a detailed discography with recording data and personnel and over two dozen photographs. Cole draws on quotes from Coltrane himself, transcriptions of his improvisations, analyses of his music, research into West African religion, and his own personal reminiscences of the man, to offer a stimulating perspective on Coltrane's music, life, and thought.

Ruthless: A Memoir


Jerry Heller - 2006
    In the battle of his life over the ragingly successful music label he had helped found, Ruthless Records, Heller had seen death threats, strong-arming, and beatings. Now the violence had come home when his enemies burglarized his house, jacked his Corvette, and left behind this sneering piece of graffito.Heller didn't get mad; he got even. "Ruthless" tells the explosive story of Jerry Heller's alliance with Eric Wright, aka Eazy-E, one of the legends of rap music and a founding member of N.W.A., "the world's most dangerous band." As a longtime music industry superagent, Heller had the skill and insight necessary to guide N.W.A.'s cometlike rise to the top of the charts. Along the way there were raucous nationwide tours, out-of-control MTV pool parties, and X-rated business meetings. Heller held on through the brutal shocks and reversals of the Ruthless Records era, which saw the label being targeted by the FBI, and its principal artists locked in bitter conflict, until a final turnaround placed Ruthless at the top of the heap once more. Always in the middle of the whirlwind were Jerry and Eazy, an odd-couple pairing that represents one of the deepest and most appealing stories in American music.You don't have to be an N.W.A. fan to love "Ruthless," Heller turns the music industry inside out, exposing its strange logic and larger-than-life personalities. "Ruthless" provides keen insight into the popular music scene, with an unforgettable portrait of its rollicking excesses, life-churning drama, and multimillion-dollar highs.

Busted Flush


Brad Smith - 2005
    Renovating the home, Dock stumbles upon a treasure trove of Civil War memorabilia squirreled away in an old root cellar, including pictures and possibly even a recording of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. As he's forced to defend his new find from the onslaught of collectors, history buffs, and media hounds, Dock discovers that, much like Honest Abe himself, he's the right man for the fight--independent, funny, loyal, and stubborn as a Missouri mule. When the scallywags and opportunists--including an easy-on-the-eyes television reporter with one hell of an attitude--start crawling out of the woodwork, he'll need all of that and a bit more.

Sex Pistols: The Inside Story


Fred Vermorel - 1978
    The complete account of the Sex Pistols saga.

Dive Beneath the Sun


R. Cameron Cooke - 2016
     A secret cargo is headed for Japan. The Japanese High Command has entrusted it to a veteran destroyer captain - the best in the Imperial Navy - and he will stop at nothing to see that it reaches its final destination... Carrier-based dive bombers could not stop it, nor could the guerilla-commandos of the Philippine Islands. Now, the submarine Wolffish is the last ditch hope of the Allied Command. Still shaken by a recent tragedy, and desperately low on fuel, torpedoes, and morale, the war-weary submarine and her eighty-man crew must pull together to track down and destroy the cargo before it reaches Japan, and changes the course of the war...

Elise: A small town in Cornwall. A well hidden secret. But the past is never far behind. An uplifting, intriguing new page-turner from the author of the ... to Cornwall series. (Connections Book 1)


Katharine E. Smith - 2021
    

Sikhs: The Untold Agony Of 1984


Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay - 2015
    She claimed the police had inserted a stick inside her… Swaranpreet realised that she had been cruelly violated; He spoke a single sentence but repeated it twice in chaste Punjabi: ‘Please give me a turban? I want nothing else…’ These are voices begging for deliverance in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination in October-November 1984 in which 2,733 Sikhs were killed, burnt and exterminated by lumpens in the country. Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay walks us through one of the most shameful episodes of sectarian violence in post Independent India and highlights the apathy of subsequent governments towards Sikhs who paid a price for what was clearly a state-sponsored riot. Poignant, raw and most importantly, macabre, the personal histories in the book reveal how even after three decades, a community continues to battle for its identity in its own country.

Pocket Havamal


Sæmundr fróði - 2017
     *This is the 2nd edition of the Amazon Best Seller, with a brand new design and completely reformatted interior. **Note: This is a SMALL paperback book that fits in your pocket for easy take along use.

Buck Em: The Autobiography of Buck Owens


Randy Poe - 2013
    Born in Texas and raised in Arizona, Buck eventually found his way to Bakersfield, California. Unlike the vast majority of country singers, songwriters, and musicians who made their fortunes working and living in Nashville, the often rebellious and always independent Owens chose to create his own brand of country music some 2 000 miles away from Music City - racking up a remarkable twenty-one number one hits along the way. In the process he helped give birth to a new country sound and did more than any other individual to establish Bakersfield as a country music center. In the latter half of the 1990s, Buck began working on his autobiography. Over the next few years, he talked into the microphone of a cassette tape machine for nearly one hundred hours, recording the story of his life. With his near-photographic memory, Buck recalled everything from his early days wearing hand-me-down clothes in Texas to his glory years as the biggest country star of the 1960s; from his legendary Carnegie Hall concert to his multiple failed marriages; from his hilarious exploits on the road to the tragic loss of his musical partner and best friend, Don Rich; from his days as the host of a local TV show in Tacoma, Washington, to his co-hosting the network television show Hee Haw; and from his comeback hit, "Streets of Bakersfield " to his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In these pages, Buck also shows his astute business acumen, having been among the first country artists to create his own music publishing company. He also tells of negotiating the return of all of his Capitol master recordings, his acquisition of numerous radio stations, and of his conceiving and building the Crystal Palace, one of the most venerated musical venues in the country. Buck 'Em! is the fascinating story of the life of country superstar Buck Owens - from the back roads of Texas to the streets of Bakersfield. Click here to watch a video extra on YouTube for Buck 'Em.

Bad Moon Rising: The Unofficial History of Creedence Clearwater Revival


Hank Bordowitz - 1998
    Based on first-hand interviews with surviving band members, this title tells the story of the chequered career of top 1960s band Creedence Clearwater Revival.

4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land


Daniel Wolff - 2005
    But behind this archetypal small-town landscape lies a complicated past.Starting with the town's founding as a religious promised land, music journalist and poet Daniel Wolff plots a course through 130 years of entwined social and musical history, touching on John Philip Sousa, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, and Frankie Lymon on the way to the town Bruce was born to run from. Out of the details of local history-the boardwalk in the Gilded Age; the celebrities who passed through, from Stephen Crane to Martin Luther King; sensational murder trials; the birth of Mob control; and a devastating mid-century "race riot"-emerges a universal story of one small town's fortunes. Told with grace and full of fascinating detail, Daniel Wolff's tour across thirteen decades of the Fourth of July in Asbury Park captures all the allure and heartbreak of the American dream reduced to blight and decay, with gentrification as the one hope for a return to its glory days.

One Direction - Up All Night Songbook


One Direction - 2013
    This album marks the first time a British band topped the Billboard 200 chart with its debut release thanks in no small part to their blockbuster single "What Makes You Beautiful." Our matching folio features piano/vocal/guitar arrangements of all of their catchy songs, including that megahit and: Everything About You * Gotta Be You * I Want * I Wish * More Than This * One Thing * Same Mistakes * Save You Tonight * Stole My Heart * Taken * Tell Me a Lie * Up All Night.

Zero Hour for Gen X: How the Last Adult Generation Can Save America from Millennials


Matthew Hennessey - 2018
    Soon Gen Xers will be the only cohort of Americans who remember life as it was lived before the arrival of the Internet. They are, as Hennessey dubs them, “the last adult generation,” the sole remaining link to a time when childhood was still a bit dangerous but produced adults who were naturally resilient. More than a decade into the social media revolution, the American public is waking up to the idea that the tech sector’s intentions might not be as pure as advertised. The mountains of money being made off our browsing habits and purchase histories are used to fund ever-more extravagant and utopian projects that, by their very natures, will corrode the foundations of free society, leaving us all helpless and digitally enslaved to an elite crew of ultra-sophisticated tech geniuses. But it’s not too late to turn the tide. There’s still time for Gen X to write its own future. A spirited defense of free speech, eye contact, and the virtues of patience, Zero Hour for Gen X is a cultural history of the last 35 years, an analysis of the current social and historical moment, and a generational call to arms.

Wagner's Ring: Turning the Sky Around. An Introduction to The Ring of the Nibelung


Mark Owen Lee - 1990
    "Anyone, whether knowledgeable or not, will profit by reading it..." - Opera Quarterly

Bali: Sekala and Niskala : Essays on Religion, Ritual, and Art (Bali--Sekala & Niskala)


Fred B. Eiseman Jr. - 1989
    The essays cover a wide range of topics, from magic and trance healing to cockfighting and seaweed farming. The author, who has lived on Bali for 28 years, is widely recognized as a self-taught guru of Balinese folk traditions.