Tired of the usual boring bake sales and dances, this group of high school seniors tried a novel approach to fundraising. They coaxed an initially reluctant administration to enter the rock concert business in the fall of 1967 by booking an on-the-rise, little-known British rock band named curiously enough The Who. In the inevitable clash between a Catholic high school's button-down culture and the destructive live act of The Who, something had to give. WSWIR deconstructs a rock n' roll perfect storm by reliving the events and revisiting with many of the colorful cast of characters (not just the students) involved in transforming the school's image from that of a staid, conservative high school in Scotch Plains, New Jersey to one that was soon at the cutting edge of the rock music scene in the years 1967 and 1968, rock n' roll's hey day. WSWIR is also a snapshot of The Who at a period in their career when for all intents and purposes they were little more than a cult band in the United States, known more for scintillating live performances than record sales. When surveying the various U.S. venues in which The Who performed on the way to reaching iconic status, one would be hard-pressed to find a more unusual setting than Union Catholic High School where The Who left an audience of mostly first-time concert-going teens with mouths agape. It was an event that is still talked about today by those who attended the show and scoffed at in disbelief by everyone else...that is, until now. This is a Black and White Edition, meaning with the exception of the front and back cover, all graphics are in black and white. The book includes rare photographs of The Who on the Union Catholic stage and backstage (in the teachers' lounge no less!) as well as other choice accoutrements.

    Burdon was ripped off by unscrupulous agents, accountants, and record labels, hounded by the police, and framed for a crime he didn't commit. Yet through it all, he never became bitter. He was the first rocker to play behind the Iron Curtain. He sang with Jimi Hendrix, chased Jim Morrison out of his house with a .44, and introduced John Lee Hooker to the toughest venue Hooker ever played. Eric Burdon explains how he became the "Egg Man" in the Beatles' "I am the Walrus." With the enthusiasm and good humor of his live shows, Burdon recalls the tense reunion between John Lennon and Lennon's long-estranged father; racing motorcycles across the California desert with Steve McQueen; picketing the offices of MGM Records for nonpayment of royalties; performing in wartime Sarajevo with a symphony orchestra; getting run out of Meridian, Mississippi for promoting black music, and singing his heart out year after year. A complete discography and fifty photographs, many never before published, are included in this unforgettable memoir. "Burdon has lived like a real rocker." -New York Times Book Review "Riveting and informative."-Los Angeles Times "These reminiscences will delight Burdon's fans . . . in general."-Library Journal

    17 selections from the critically acclaimed musical about Alexander Hamilton which debuted on Broadway in August 2015 to unprecedented advanced box office sales. Our collection features 17 selections in piano/vocal format from the music penned by Lin-Manuel Miranda, including: Alexander Hamilton * Burn * Dear Theodosia * Hurricane * It's Quiet Uptown * My Shot * One Last Time * Satisfied * That Would Be Enough * Washington on Your Side * You'll Be Back * and more. Also includes a biography of Miranda.

    Our 'understanding' of old music allows us only a glimpse of the spirit in which it is rooted. We see that music always reflects the spiritual and intellectual climate of its time. Its content can never surpass the human power of expression, and any gain on one side must be compensated by a corresponding loss on the other." In these essays, Nikolaus Harnoncourt summarizes his views arising from years devoted to the performance of early music. The problem of interpreting historical music is particularly critical in our age, when modern music has little appeal for the listening public. The vacuum left by the absence of a truly living contemporary music is therefore filled by older music. But for performers and audiences to understand music of earlier times, they must learn to comprehend the languages and messages of the past.

    A pioneering drummer who has transcended genres, he did much to popularize world music with his fierce passion for the rhythms of Africa. He is that rare thing, a critically acclaimed musician who has enjoyed global success with not one but several supergroups to his name, including Cream and Blind Faith. Here, Ginger tells his story for the first time and without any self-censorship. It's an often harrowing, but honest journey from his humble beginnings in war-torn south London to his adopted home in South Africa's beautiful Western Cape. He tells of his life-long love of jazz, how he discovered the drums and African music, and life on the road. He also confesses to the heroin use that should have killed him in his colorful 1960s prime, working and playing with the biggest names of the time. In the 1970s, he came up with a trans-Saharan trucking scheme, was a successful rally driver, built an ill-fated recording studio, and discovered a consuming passion for playing polo. He talks candidly of the loss and recovery of his fortune, his three marriages, Cream's 1993 induction into the rock 'n' roll hall of fame, their subsequent successful reunion in 2005, and his hopes for the future.

    The embarrassment is palatable, but perseverance is the most touching part of these stories. These awful things that happened don't interrupt the dream. The dream of performing and stardom. The dream of connecting with an audience. No Encore! is a glimpse into the analog past; a trip to a distant world when artists made albums and suites of songs you listened in order." —Bret Easton Ellis   “They hated us and started throwing cups, bottles, change, chairs, and anything that wasn’t nailed down.” —Dean Ween This hilarious, sometimes horrifying, collection spans four decades and chronicles the craziest, druggiest, and most embarrassing concert moments in music history—direct from the artists who survived them.  “In the midst of my insanity, I thought it would be a very romantic gesture to go into Fiona Apple’s dressing room and write a message on her wall in my own blood.” —Dave Navarro From wardrobe malfunctions to equipment failures, from bad decisions to even worse choices, this is a riveting look into what happens when things go wrong onstage and off. “Ozzy had a sixty-inch teleprompter with the song lyrics, and that got stolen, along with microphones, snare drums and cymbals. Our drummer at the time was stabbing people in the neck with his drumstick.” —Zakk Wylde No Encore! is an unflinchingly honest account of the shows that tested the dedication to a dream—from Alice Cooper’s python having a violent, gastric malfunction on stage to Lou Barlow’s disastrous attempt to sober up at Glastonbury, from Shirley Manson’s desperate search for a bathroom to the extraordinary effort made to awaken Al Jourgenson as Ministry was taking the stage. As Hunter S. Thompson famously wrote, “Buy the ticket, take the ride.”  “I go to exit the venue, and there’s 25 people marching towards us. It’s about 3:00 AM, and they weren’t there to be nice. They were carrying bats, boards, chains, hammers, and they were coming for us.” —Dee Snider

    No rock star contrivance, no intellectual perspective, no master plan for world domination. You're talking about four guys from rural Washington who wanna rock..."--Everett True, Melody Maker, March 18th, 1989In 1992, Nirvana's breakthrough anthem, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," introduced a new underground sound to the mainstream music world. The record-breaking sales and global recognition that followed should have been a welcomed payoff for the hard-working punk band. Instead, that bright optimism quickly faded into bitter dissatisfaction, as the trio became conflicted about their unexpected success, and about having an audience that was the epitome of everything they had attempted to rebel against.Nirvana's sonic catapult from obscurity to international stardom and their chart-topping success changed the face of rock music world-wide. In Nirvana: The Chosen Rejects, the authors have used a wealth of sources, including personal interviews with Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl, in order to reconstruct Nirvana's meteoric rise and the subsequent fall of their troubled lead singer. The result is a front row perspective of the musical influences that helped nurture Nirvana's seminal sound, the stories about the creation of their albums, and the ideas that shaped their songs. Nirvana: The Chosen Rejects also contains a comprehensive discography and an A-Z listing of every Nirvana song officially released.Kurt St. Thomas and Troy Smith were an award-winning programming team at WFNX-FM, Boston (MA), one of the nation's top alternative radio stations in the early 1990's. The pair wrote and produced the definitive Nirvana interview compact disc, Nevermind, It's an Interview, as well as interview CDs for Paul Weller, The Breeders, and Frank Black. St. Thomas lives in New York City, and Smith resides on Cape Cod, MA.

    What is needed is a clear and simple method of learning one scale in all positions, and of learning all scales in one position. Guitarists need to be able to call up any scale to their fingertips instantaneously regardless of key, mode, string, or position and they need to be able to do so without memorizing hundreds of pages of diagrams. Fortunately, this is not only possible, but it is also incredibly simple. This booklet will teach you how.

    Except it wasn’t that simple. Self-confessed latch-key kids, theirs was far from an easy ride.Inspired by both the energy of British punk bands like the Sex Pistols and Buzzcocks and cult American bands such as Dead Kennedys and Husker Du, Green Day formed in 1989. The band gigged relentlessly across the US, quickly selling out every underground club that booked them, and their 1994 major label debut Dookie was a 10-million-selling worldwide hit album that seized the zeitgeist while rock music was still reeling from the death of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain. They toured the world, headlined all the big festivals, won countless awards and released multi-million selling albums.In 2004 Green Day reached a career pinnacle with the concept album American Idiot, a sophisticated commentary on modern life—not least dissatisfaction with their president and America’s continued cultural and economic imperialism. The No. 1 success of the Grammy-winning album extended Green Day's fan base even further—from pre-teen kids to previously skeptical critics.This book is the world’s first full biography on Green Day. An authority on punk and hardcore, author Ben Myers charts the band members’ difficult childhoods, the context of the band within the US and world punk scene and their glittering rise to success. Myers has also interviewed the band for various magazines at different stages of their career.

    " In Mozart's Letters, Mozart's Life, Robert Spaethling presents "Mozart in all the rawness of his driving energies" (Spectator), preserved in the "zany, often angry effervescence" of his writing (Observer). Where other translators have ignored Mozart's atrocious spelling and tempered his foul language, "Robert Spaethling's new translations are lively and racy, and do justice to Mozart's restlessly inventive mind" (Daily Mail). Carefully selected and meticulously annotated, this collection of letters "should be on the shelves of every music lover" (BBC Music Magazine).

    Poker's biggest players, such as Phil Ivey (2009 WSOP Main Event Finalist), Johnny Chan, Phil Hellmuth, Doyle Brunson and Daniel Negreanu give first-person accounts of their personal journeys and the key moments in their rise to the top of the poker pantheon. These stories will teach, inspire and make you laugh. Deal Me In humanizes the larger-than-life personalities, allowing the reader to understand more about poker strategy through the trials and errors of the best players in the game. Each poker legend tells his or her own story in the book including: Doyle Brunson, Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Ivey, Annie Duke, Johnny Chan, Chris Jesus Ferguson, Carlos Mortensen, Chau Giang, Jennifer Harman, Allen Cunningham, Howard Lederer, Erik Seidel, Chad Brown, David Devilfish Ulliott, Layne Flack, Scotty Nguyen, Annette Obrestad, Tom Dwan and the 2008 Main Event winner Peter Eastgate.

    By the band’s side from the very beginning, he beheld the inception and growth of the most extraordinary musical phenomenon of the last century. But he was also there when things started to go wrong—when George Harrison quit the band at the height of their success and when it all started to spiral out of control. And he reveals for the first time exactly what caused their break-up. As Brian Epstein’s right-hand man, Alistair Taylor was with the charismatic manager when he first saw The Beatles perform at The Cavern. Taylor later became the band’s ever-present Mr. Fix-it. He bought islands, handled paternity cases, and became a close and trusted friend. It was he who found Epstein’s body after his suicide and, in the reorganization that followed, Taylor went on to become General Manager of Apple, The Beatles’ record company.

    This is the autobiography of their lead singer, Ian Gillan. Here he tells his life story, and that of the band he helped to make great. Stories of friction and violence, groupies and non-stop partying, drugs and alcohol, and how, finally, it all spiralled out of control to destroy the band.

    Further extracts are available as digital shorts, accompanying the London Southbank festival programme.Jean Sibelius hailed from the ‘small nation’ of Finland. Working in isolation, far from the great artistic capitals of Europe, Ross shows how Sibelius’s reinvention of classical forms went on to set the pace for classical composers around the world.Now a major festival running throughout 2013 at London’s Southbank, The Rest is Noise is an intricate commentary not just on the sounds that defined the century, but on art’s troublesome dance with politics, social and cultural change.Alex Ross is the New Yorker’s music critic, and the winner of the Guardian First Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Rest is Noise, which was also shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson and Pulitzer prizes for non-fiction.

    During his six-decade career, he has played with all the greats. His career sky-rocketed when Crosby, Stills & Nash played only their second gig together at Woodstock in 1969. With the addition of Neil Young, the band would go on to play the first rock stadium tour in 1974. Stephen Stills is the only person to have been inducted twice in one night into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame