Funny. Leaving no stone unturned." . . . So say the publishers about this book I've written. What I say is that this is the story of my life, told as clear as a Texas sky and in the same rhythm that I lived it. It's a story of restlessness and the purity of the moment and living right. Of my childhood in Abbott, Texas, to the Pacific Northwest, from Nashville to Hawaii and all the way back again. Of selling vacuum cleaners and encyclopedias while hosting radio shows and writing song after song, hoping to strike gold. It's a story of true love, wild times, best friends, and barrooms, with a musical sound track ripping right through it. My life gets lived on the road, at home, and on the road again, tried and true, and I've written it all down from my heart to yours. Signed,Willie Nelson

    And yet, while his music has retained the steadfast devotion of modern listeners, much remains unknown about the man who penned and played these timeless tunes. Few people alive today actually remember what Johnson was really like, and those who do have largely upheld their silence-until now.In Brother Robert, nonagenarian Annye Anderson sheds new light on a real-life figure largely obscured by his own legend: her kind and incredibly talented stepbrother, Robert Johnson. This book chronicles Johnson's unconventional path to stardom-from the harrowing story behind his illegitimate birth, to his first strum of the guitar on Anderson's father's knee, to the genre-defining recordings that would one day secure his legacy. Along the way, readers are gifted not only with Anderson's personal anecdotes, but with colorful recollections passed down to Anderson by members of their family-the people who knew Johnson best. Readers also learn about the contours of his working life in Memphis, never-before-disclosed details about his romantic history, and all of Johnson's favorite things, from foods and entertainers to brands of tobacco and pomade. Together, these stories don't just bring the mythologized Johnson back down to earth; they preserve both his memory and his integrity.For decades, Anderson and her family have ignored the tall tales of Johnson "selling his soul to the devil" and the speculative to fictionalized accounts of his life that passed for biography. Brother Robert is here to set the record straight. Featuring a foreword by Elijah Wald and a Q&A with Anderson, Lauterbach, Wald, and Peter Guralnick, this book paints a vivid portrait of an elusive figure who forever changed the musical landscape as we know it.

    From there he joined the ever-popular Move, then helped form the groundbreaking Electric Light Orchestra. After co-founder Roy Wood left in 1972, Lynne turned what had been a struggling rock and classical fusion into one of Britain s most consistently successful and popular acts. Following a run of hit singles, albums, and sell-out concerts throughout the world, he laid the group to rest in 1986 and combined a solo career as an artist and producer with membership of the ultimate supergroup, the Traveling Wilburys. His production credits include Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, Del Shannon, George Harrison, and even the Beatles on their two final singles in the mid- 90s. Jeff Lynne: The Electric Light Orchestra, Before and After is the first-ever biography of one of the most prolific and highly regarded performers of the last fifty years. Rich in backstage anecdotes of overheated orchestras, frontmen rivalries, tour mishaps, cross-group partnerships, unlikely collaborations, and self-imposed exile from the stage in the quest for inspiration, this book will leave fans and general readers delighted and inspired by a career at the epicentre of twentieth-century rock. ** This electronic edition contains 35 photographs **

    After discovering LSD, they took to Timothy Leary’s mantra of “Turn on, tune in, and drop out” and resolved to make that vision a reality by becoming the biggest group of acid dealers and hashish smugglers in the nation, and literally providing the fuel for the psychedelic revolution in the process. Just days after California became the first state in the union to ban LSD, the Brotherhood formed a legally registered church in its headquarters at Mystic Arts World on Pacific Coast Highway in Laguna Beach, where they sold blankets and other countercultural paraphernalia retrieved through surfing safaris and road trips to exotic locales in Asia and South America. Before long, they also began to sell Afghan hashish, Hawaiian pot (the storied “Maui Wowie”), and eventually Colombian cocaine, much of which the Brotherhood smuggled to California in secret compartments inside surfboards and Volkswagen minibuses driven across the border. They also befriended Leary himself, enlisting him in the goal of buying a tropical island where they could install the former Harvard philosophy professor and acid prophet as the high priest of an experimental utopia. The Brotherhood’s most legendary contribution to the drug scene was homemade: Orange Sunshine, the group’s nickname for their trademark orange-colored acid tablet that happened to produce an especially powerful trip. Brotherhood foot soldiers passed out handfuls of the tablets to communes, at Grateful Dead concerts, and at love-ins up and down the coast of California and beyond. The Hell’s Angels, Charles Mason and his followers, and the unruly crowd at the infamous Altamont music festival all tripped out on this acid. Jimi Hendrix even appeared in a film starring Brotherhood members and performed a private show for the fugitive band of outlaws on the slope of a Hawaiian volcano. Journalist Nicholas Schou takes us deep inside the Brotherhood, combining exclusive interviews with both the group’s surviving members as well as the cops who chased them. A wide-sweeping narrative of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll (and more drugs) that runs from Laguna Beach to Maui to Afghanistan, Orange Sunshine explores how America moved from the era of peace and free love into a darker time of hard drugs and paranoia.

     As a young music journalist in 1975, Stephen Davis got the opportunity of a lifetime: an invitation to cover the sold-out 1975 North American tour of Led Zeppelin, the biggest and most secretive rock band in the world, for a national magazine. He received a backstage pass, was granted interviews with band members, and even got a prized seat on the band's luxurious tour jet, The Starship. While on duty, he chronicled the Zeppelin tour in three notebooks, but after writing his article in 1975 he misplaced them. After three decades of searching, in 2005 he finally found the notebooks, on the covers of which he had scribbled the words "LZ-'75," and unearthed an amazing amount of new information from the tour including: • Lost interviews with canny vocalist Robert Plant and the brilliant guitarist Jimmy Page • Information on the rock icon who moonlighted as a heroin dealer • Revelations about the identity of the lover about whom Robert Plant sings in "What Is and What Should Never Be" and "Black Country Woman" • A detailed chronicle of each performance from a musical perspective, and a vivid account of the band members' extravagant, and often troubled, lives on tour Tied together by Davis's entertaining narrative, and including more than forty never-before-published photographs, LZ-'75 is an unprecedented and comprehensive personal portrait of the greatest (and most notoriously press-shy) rock band in history at its apex.Watch a Video

    A role model for generations of writers and performers, Doc was renowned for his mastery of virtually every popular style, from the gutbucket rhythm and blues of “Lonely Avenue” to the symphonic soul of “Save the Last Dance for Me” to the pure pop of “Viva Las Vegas.” His songs-“This Magic Moment,” “A Teenager in Love,” “Hushabye,” “Little Sister,” “Turn Me Loose,” and many others-have been recorded by everyone from Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, and B. B. King to Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, and Bruce Springsteen, with sales exceeding $100 million. Doc was ready-made for literature. His collaborator Mort Shuman once described him as an “entire rollicking soul neighborhood rolled into one man.” Garrulous, profane, hilarious, and Rabelaisian, Doc was never inhibited about offering his opinions and his friendship. His confidants, collaborators, and discoveries included Duke Ellington, John Lennon, Dr. John, Jimmy Scott, Bette Midler, and Lou Reed. In the words of renowned producer Jerry Wexler, “If the music industry had a heart, it would be Doc Pomus.” Despite, or more likely because of, his successes, few acquaintances knew that this writer of jukebox hits led one of the most dramatic and unlikely lives of his time. Spanning extravagant wealth and desperate poverty, suburban domesticity and the depths of New York’s underworld, worldwide fame and near-total obscurity, enduring love and persistent loneliness, Doc’s story remains one of the great untold American lives. Its chapters comprise a back-room history of rock ’n’ roll, touching on more than a half-century of American popular music-from the blues Doc performed with Lester Young to his collaborations with the luminaries of New York’s punk scene, shot through with vivid portraits of virtually every major player. Lonely Avenue is the first biography of this American original, so elegantly rendered that it reads like a novel, and fortified by full, exclusive access to Doc Pomus’s family, friends, voluminous journals, and archives.

    After making some of the most inventive albums of the '80s - including 1999, Purple Rain and Sign of the Times - he turned his attention to redefining his role in the music industry, changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol, declaring war on his record label, Warner Bros., and leading the internet revolution. His subsequent career has had many ups and downs, but he remains a major commercial and artistic force, as evidenced by his ability to sell out the O2 Arena in London for 21 nights in succession in 2007. In 2010 he announced that the internet was "over" and released his latest album, 20Ten, as a free cover-mounted CD with several European publications. Prince: Chaos, Disorder, and Revolution is an authoritative chronicle of one of popular music's true mavericks. Covering every album, every movie, and every tour, it includes profiles of various key collaborators, assesses the artist's various business dealings, and details his many and varied side projects - on stage, on record, on screen, and beyond.

    The songwriting giant behind the bands Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co. had a knack for spinning tales, from the many personal myths he cultivated throughout his life to the poems and ballads he penned and performed. As with too many great musicians, Molina's complicated relationship with the truth, combined with a secretive relationship with the bottle, ultimately claimed his life.Jason Molina: Riding with the Ghost details Molina's personal trials and triumphs and reveals for the first time the true story of Molina's last months and works, including an unpublished album unknown to many of his fans. Offering unfettered access to the mind and artistry of Molina through exclusive interviews with family, friends, and collaborators, the book also explores the Midwest music underground and the development of Bloomington, Indiana-based label Secretly Canadian.As the first authorized and detailed account of this prolific songwriter and self-mythologizer, Jason Molina provides readers with unparalleled insight into Molina's tormented life and the fascinating Midwest musical underground that birthed him. It's a story for the ages that speaks volumes to the triumphs and trials of the artistic spirit while exploring the meaningful music that Molina's creative genius left behind.

    On the surface he’s the least likely candidate for a rap impresario. But with his signature charm and passion, he plunges headfirst into the wards, clubs, and projects of New Orleans, opening up a world closed to most outsiders: a journey into the heart of the hip-hop dream, and into larger question of racial identity in America. Written before Hurricane Katrina struck (and published here with an afterword that chronicles how Katrina altered the lives of those he met) Triksta now stands as an elegy to a city, its music, and its people.

    Anselmi covers the bands and musicians that have impacted those styles most―Black Sabbath, Candlemass, Melvins, Eyehategod, Godflesh, Neurosis, Saint Vitus, and many others―while diving into the cultural doom that has spawned such music, from the bombing of Birmingham and hurricane devastation of New Orleans to glaring economic inequality, industrial alienation, climate change, and widespread addiction. Along the way, Anselmi interweaves the musical experiences that have led him to proudly identify as one of the doomed.

    Muggles of all ages will want to play these memorable themes including: Hedwig's Theme * Harry's Wondrous World * Diagon Alley * Hogwarts Forever! * Quidditch * Voldemort * Nimbus 2000 * Family Portrait. This great piano collection may be used just for fun or as supplementary study along with Level Three or Level Four piano methods.

    That's why I decided to collect the best gems of breath-taking trivia and to present you a great compilation of facts, suitable for a broad audience. This is the result of years of sifting through history and reference books on a myriad of subjects as well as searching the Internet and paying attention to the news. This book is intended to be fun for anyone older than 14 - even the most ‘spicy’ entries, neatly separated in the chapter ‘Facts about human and animal sexuality”, remain factual and abstain from profanity. To my greatest delight, an avid reader of my site explained that she has been preparing daily fact sheets for her son’s lunch box. She prints out three facts every day to create some lunchtime fun for her son, thus enticing him to read more and provoking his intellectual curiosity. I wish my parents had done something like that for me! I confess that most trivia books are insufferably boring. This book is different, packed with interesting, educational and fun ingredients; it seeks to entertain as well as challenge. It will provide you with never-ending intellectual ammunition for a lifetime of dinner parties. You will amaze your friends and family by recounting to them that the greatest Chinese pirate of all times was a woman, or that herrings use flatulence to communicate! The book will be your strongest ally in combatting social awkwardness and will arm you with plenty of icebreaking pieces of trivia, suitable for any occasion.

    This biography captures Munson's meteoric rise to stardom in baseball's most storied franchise.

    It was a fertile era for new genres, from alt-rock to Afropop, hip hop to techno. Rock critic Robert Christgau's obsessive ear and authoritative pen have covered it all-over 3,800 albums graded and classified, from A+s to his celebrated turkeys and duds. A rich appendix section ensures that nothing's been left out-from "subjects for further research" to "everything rocks but nothing ever dies." Christgau's Consumer Guide is essential reading and reference for any dedicated listener.

    He was investigated for sedition by the House Committee on Un-American activities, harassed by the FBI and CIA, blacklisted, picketed, and even stoned by conservative groups. How Can I Keep from Singing is an inside history of Pete Seeger, whose life has remained a closely guarded secret until now. In this ASCAP award-winning book, David Dunaway parts the curtain through interviews with Pete, his family, friends, and fellow musicians to present a rich, compelling portrait of one of the most remarkable performers, composers, and activists of this century.