George Martin reveals the technical and musical challenges of working with The Beatles, while Phil Ramone, producer for such artists as Billy Joel, discusses studio wall treatments. Offering real-world advice on everything from mics to mixing to coaching a nervous singer, producers interviewed include Arif Mardin (Aretha Franklin), Brian Wilson (The Beach Boys), Alan Parsons (Pink Floyd) and more.

    Vexation Lullaby is pure raw pleasure from start to finish." —Lily King, author of EuphoriaPeter Silver is a young doctor treading water in the wake of a breakup—his ex-girlfriend called him a "mama's boy" and his best friend considers him a "homebody," a squanderer of adventure. But when he receives an unexpected request for a house call, he obliges, only to discover that his new patient is aging, chameleonic rock star Jimmy Cross. Soon Peter is compelled to join the mysteriously ailing celebrity, his band, and his entourage, on the road. The so-called "first physician embedded in a rock tour," Peter is thrust into a way of life that embraces disorder and risk rather than order and discipline. Trailing the band at every tour stop is Arthur Pennyman, Cross's number-one fan. Pennyman has not missed a performance in twenty years, sacrificing his family and job to chronicle every show on his website. Cross insists that "being a fan is how we teach ourselves to love," and, in the end, Pennyman does learn. And when he hears a mythic, as-yet-unperformed song he starts to piece together the puzzle of Peter's role in Cross's past.

    the open road. protest and rebellion, the blues, youth, lost love, and sexuality. With adoration Tim Brookes explores these ideas and how they became entwined with the history of America. Shortly before his fiftieth birthday, baggage handlers destroyed his guitar, his twenty-two-year-old traveling companion. His wife promised to replace it with the guitar of his dreams, but Tim discovered that a dream guitar is built, not bought. He set out to find someone to make him the perfect guitar-- a quest that ended up a dirt road in the Green Mountains of Vermont. where an amiable cur mudgeon master-guitar-maker, Rick Davis, took a rare piece of cherry wood and went to work with saws, rasps, and files. Arriving with conquistadors and the colonists, the guitar found itself in an extraordinary variety of hands: those of miners and society ladies. lumberjacks and presidents wives, girls and boys courting in canoes and frolicking on picnics, Hawaiians, African-Americans. Cajuns, Jazz players rehearsing in a men's room in Atlantic City. spiritualists. singing cowboys of the silver screen. bluegrass musicians, and Beatles fans. Inventors and crackpots tinkered with it. In time it became American's instrument, the rhythm of its soundtrack. When Tim wasn't breathing over Rick's shoulder. he was trying to unvravel the symbolic associations a guitar bolds for so many of us, musicians and nonmusicians alike. His quest took him across the country.talking to historians. curators. and guitar makers. As David Spelman, founder and director of the New York Guitar Festival. raved: "Guitaris "a love to the guitar. from a guitar-loved extradinaire."

    In Never Said Nothing, the latest in Audible’s Words + Music series, Phair charts her unlikely journey from making her first record—one that’s now ensconced on Rolling Stone’s "500 Greatest Albums of All Time"—to a trial by fire (she’d never set foot on stage before its release), to even more improbably, a second and a third, maybe fourth act, depending on how one counts these things.In this honest and disarming look inside her unique career, Phair talks of how her meteoric rise was accompanied by an equally intense case of the dreaded imposter syndrome, discovering music’s strange magic, and her possibly unique ability to chart her future through songs. Although she includes herself in the class of ‘ordinary people doing extraordinary things,’ listening to Never Said Nothing, along with her performances—which include "‘6’1," "Polyester Bride," and "Stars and Planets,"—one can’t help but feel that ‘fearless person doing extraordinary things’ is the better description.

    I was on the edge of my seat, anticipating what was to come. So many delicious plot twists kept me on my toes.""I couldn't put it down...kept me wondering what next." It's a slow Monday at Manhattan's Midtown North Precinct when NYPD Detective Dexter Fortune takes the call. Recently returned to duty, Fortune is willing enough to be amused by what he believes to be a crank caller. But after listening to the man describe how he killed two women with a third victim awaiting discovery, Fortune soon realizes this call is no joke.Reunited with his partner, Detective Gabriella Fernandez, the pair race to apprehend a devious serial killer intent on adding to his body count. But to catch this killer, Fortune and Fernandez must uncover secrets long buried in the past. With the Mayor, the Chief of Police, and the City watching and the media treating the killer dubbed "The Chatterbox" like a celebrity, the detectives become caught-up in a game of catch-me-if-you-can with a killer promising more victims.Taunted by late-night phone calls from The Chatterbox, a sleep-deprived Fortune is seduced by the killer into making it personal. A killer who delights in manipulating and deceiving Fortune into drawing false and dangerous conclusions.Finally, convinced of the man's identity and with his superiors unwilling to act, Fortune defies authority to force The Chatterbox into the open. In doing so, he comes face-to-face with a predator he realizes, too late, he has seriously underestimated.Desperate to save the people he cares for and loves, Fortune is lured into a violent confrontation that could leave him, The Chatterbox, or both men dead.And for The Chatterbox? This suits him just fine. If you love Connelly, Kellerman, Baldacci, and J.D. Robb, you'll love Ian Patterson. With plenty of twists and turns, THE CHATTERBOX KILLER is BOOK I in a new, fast-paced Serial Killer Thriller Series featuring NYPD Homicide Detectives Dexter Fortune and Gabriella Fernandez. Buy THE CHATTERBOX KILLER today and enjoy these other page-turning Ian Patterson suspense thrillers available now on Amazon.com: AVENGING ANGEL and THE GIRL IN THE GLASS TOWER. For updates and Free Books, follow Ian Patterson at www.amazon.com/author/ianpatterson

    In the more than 40 years since the days of DJ Kool Herc and "Rapper's Delight," hip hop and rap have become a billion-dollar worldwide phenomenon. Yet there is no definitive history of the genre-until now. Based on Chuck's long-running show on Rapstation.com, this massive compendium details the most iconic moments and influential songs in the genre's recorded history, from Kurtis Blow's "Christmas Rappin'" to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill to Kendrick Lamar's ground-breaking verse on "Control." Also included are key events in hip hop history, from Grandmaster Flash's first scratch through Tupac's holographic appearance at Coachella. Throughout, Chuck offers his insider's perspective on the chart toppers and show stoppers as he lived it. Illustrating the pages are more than 100 portraits from the talented artists specializing in hip hop.

    Guitarists of all levels will find a wealth of practical music knowledge in this special book with online audio access. Veteran guitarist and author Tom Kolb dispels the mysteries of music theory using plain and simple terms and diagrams. The accompanying recordings provide 94 tracks of music examples, scales, modes, chords, ear training, and much more!

    This biography is a comprehensive study of his past, and with its specially commissioned astrological chart, the future of this survivor and star.

    With the exception of a few dance recordings, including “Is It All Over My Face?” and “Go Bang! #5,” Russell’s pioneering music was largely forgotten until 2004, when the posthumous release of two albums brought new attention to the artist. This revival of interest gained momentum with the issue of additional albums and the documentary film Wild Combination. Based on interviews with more than seventy of his collaborators, family members, and friends, Hold On to Your Dreams provides vital new information about this singular, eccentric musician and his role in the boundary-breaking downtown music scene.Tim Lawrence traces Russell’s odyssey from his hometown of Oskaloosa, Iowa, to countercultural San Francisco, and eventually to New York, where he lived from 1973 until his death from AIDS-related complications in 1992. Resisting definition while dreaming of commercial success, Russell wrote and performed new wave and disco as well as quirky rock, twisted folk, voice-cello dub, and hip-hop-inflected pop. “He was way ahead of other people in understanding that the walls between concert music and popular music and avant-garde music were illusory,” comments the composer Philip Glass. “He lived in a world in which those walls weren’t there.” Lawrence follows Russell across musical genres and through such vital downtown music spaces as the Kitchen, the Loft, the Gallery, the Paradise Garage, and the Experimental Intermedia Foundation. Along the way, he captures Russell’s openness to sound, his commitment to collaboration, and his uncompromising idealism.

    DE VEYRAhas published two books of poetry: Subterranean Thought Parade and Shadowboxing in Headphones. He has won the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, the Free Press Literary Awards, and the very first National Commission for Culture and the Arts' Writers' Prize for Poetry. He also fronts the spoken word-jazz-rock band Radioactive Sago Project and currently works as a host and writer for the News and Public Affairs programs of TV5. This is his third collection of poems.

    The vilification of popular music by government and individuals has been going on for decades. Now, for the first time, Parental Advisory offers a thorough and complete chronicle of the music that has been challenged or suppressed -- by the people or the government -- in the United States.From Dean Martin's "Wham, Bam, Thank you Ma'am" to Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar; from freedom fighters such as Frank Zappa and in-your-face rappers such a N.W.A. to crusaders such as Tipper Gore, this intelligent and entertaining book shows how censorship has crossed sexual, class, and ethnic lines, and how many see it as a de facto form of racism. With nearly one hundred fascinating photographs of musicians, record burning, and controversial cover art; illuminating sidebars; and a decade-by-decade timeline of important moments in censorship history, Parental Advisory is by turns frightening and hilarious -- but always revealing.

    Overnight, the 17-year-old Elvis fan with big dreams became a real-life teen idol, and Britain had their first rock 'n' roll star. A new chapter had started in the history of music.Over sixty years later, with a hit in every decade since and over 250 million record sales, Cliff Richard performes live to sell-out audiences with continued success as a recording artist, while era-defining pop stars have come and gone.Now in his autobiography, Cliff takes us back to 1950s post-War London, where he exploded out of the skiffle scene with his unique new sound. From there he is catapulted into the centre of the British film industry, and goes on to conquer Saturday-night TV. We go behind the scenes on West End musicals, and around the world with him on tour.Cliff Richard is one of the biggest-selling artists of all time, and he has achieved that while always following his own path, on his own terms. Here he tells his story in his own words, through the toughest times he has faced, to the biggest dreams that came true.

    Set against the mean streets of L.A.'s South Bay 'hoods, the book is populated by a cast of vivid characters, including Tupac Shakur, Snoop's one true friend and musical soulmate, cut down at the beginning of a brilliant career, and Suge Knight, whose Death Row Records brought street-level credibility--and gangland tactics--into the corporate suites of the entertainment industry.From the Crip gang members who recruited Snoop virtually off the playground to the pimps and players, whores and hustlers who formed his extended family on the streets and behind prison walls, Tha Doggfather offers a scathing, unexpurgated look at life on the edge in a modern urban jungle. Snoop's rise to the pinnacle of rap stardom is chronicled, along with his nearly career-ending arrest and trial for a murder he didn't commit.Raised to the pinnacle, brought to the brink, Snoop Dogg eventually found sanity and salvation in his relationship with Shantay Taylor, his high school sweetheart. Married in 1997, the couple started a new life with their two young sons, even as Snoop's career reached new heights in his creative collaboration with Master P and No Limit Records.

    The book carefully presents the fundamentals of materials processing along with their relevant applications, so that the reader can clearly assess the capabilities, limitations, and potentials of manufacturing processes and their competitive aspects. Using real-world examples and well-wrought graphics, this book covers a multitude of topics, including the mechanical behavior of materials; the structure and manufacturing properties of metals; surfaces, dimensional characteristics, inspection, and quality assurance; metal-casting processes including heat treatment; bulk deformation processes; sheet-metal forming processes; material removal processes; polymers, reinforced plastics, rapid prototyping and rapid tooling; metal powders, ceramics, glasses, composites, and superconductors; joining and fastening processes; microelectronic and micromechanical devices; automation; computer-integrated systems; and product design. For manufacturing engineers, metallurgists, industrial designers, material handlers, product designers, and quality assurance managers.

    Sandy Denny laid down the marker for folk-rock when she joined Fairport Convention in 1968, releasing three albums with them in 1969 before her shock departure just ahead of the release of the celebrated Liege & Lief. Her music went far beyond this during the seventies, driven by a restless search for the perfect framework for her songs, first with Fotheringay the group she formed but controversially left after recording just one album. On leaving, she immediately collaborated on a historic one-off recording with Led Zeppelin on ‘The Battle of Evermore’ – the only guest vocalist ever to record with the group. Four fascinating, mercurial solo albums followed as well as an ultimately misguided return to Fairport Convention before her tragic and untimely death, aged 31, in 1978, in circumstances still shrouded in hearsay and speculation.Sandy emerged from the folk scene of the sixties – a world of larger-than-life characters such as Alex Campbell, Jackson C. Frank, Anne Briggs and Australian singer Trevor Lucas, whom she married in 1973. Their often turbulent relationship is at the core of Sandy’s later life and work, as she tried to reconcile a longing for the simple life and motherhood with the trappings of a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle and a fear of the fame and success which others expected of her.This is her story told with the help of more than sixty of her friends, fellow musicians and contemporaries all of whom spoke with great candour, some with too much candour, and all with a mixture of joy and sadness when talking about Sandy.