All the money and fame in the world won’t prevent him from having a bad hair day. Or stepping in gum. Or not being able to fit into skinny jeans, or watching helplessly as a scoop of ice cream falls from its cone. Or so an unnamed Superstar’s life is ingeniously imagined in this very funny book. Inspired by but not based on Jay Z’s monster hit “99 Problems,” illustrator Ali Graham riffs on what might be the real problems afflicting a world-famous music mogul who also happens to be married to the foremost diva of our time. Begun as a Tumblr, which went viral almost instantly, 99 Problems is a highly conceptual gift book showcasing 99 full-color illustrations of a cartoon character who looks just like a certain legendary rapper, and the often ordinary and sometimes fantastical things that happen to him. And that’s where the book finds its hilarious, compulsive hook—in an age that worships celebrity and assumes, somewhat enviously, that fame and fortune can protect one from life’s travails, what if that just weren’t true? There’s a surprising, underlying warmth here. Even when the author dips into flights of pop culture fantasy—Superstar on the bow of the Titanic; Superstar whipping up a bad batch alongside Walter White from Breaking Bad—the recognition of shared kinship is strong. It’s a cartoon version of celebrity, but like the best cartoons, it’s edgy and knowing, yet sweet, too.

    In turns surreal and concrete, playful and serious, urgent and whimsical, Adult Head rewards readers with a unique prosody and deep wisdom. Culled from the same mind responsible for some of the best lyrics and music made in the past decade, this volume displays Tweedy's prodigious talent for poetry on the page. Jeff Tweedy has devoted the last twenty years of his life to songwriting and music making. As a member of the band Wilco and formerly of the band Uncle Tupelo, Tweedy and his band mates have garnered respect and praise from Rolling Stone, Spin, the New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune. Tweedy lives in Chicago with his wife and two sons.

    Its dazzling virtuosity and spectacular live concerts made it hugely popular with fans during the 1970s, who saw bands such as King Crimson, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, and Jethro Tull bring a new level of depth and sophistication to rock. On the other hand, critics branded the elaborate concerts of these bands as self- indulgent and materialistic. They viewed progressive rock's classical/rock fusion attempts as elitist, a betrayal of rock's populist origins. In Rocking the Classics, the first comprehensive study of progressive rock history, Edward Macan draws together cultural theory, musicology, and music criticism, illuminating how progressive rock served as a vital expression of the counterculture of the late 1960s and 1970s. Beginning with a description of the cultural conditions which gave birth to the progressive rock style, he examines how the hippies' fondness for hallucinogens, their contempt for Establishment-approved pop music, and their fascination with the music, art, and literature of high culture contributed to this exciting new genre. Covering a decade of music, Macan traces progressive rock's development from the mid- to late-sixties, when psychedelic bands such as the Moody Blues, Procol Harum, the Nice, and Pink Floyd laid the foundation of the progressive rock style, and proceeds to the emergence of the mature progressive rock style marked by the 1969 release of King Crimson's album In the Court of the Crimson King. This golden age reached its artistic and commercial zenith between 1970 and 1975 in the music of bands such as Jethro Tull, Yes, Genesis, ELP, Gentle Giant, Van der Graaf Generator, and Curved Air. In turn, Macan explores the conventions that govern progressive rock, including the visual dimensions of album cover art and concerts, lyrics and conceptual themes, and the importance of combining music, visual motif, and verbal expression to convey a coherent artistic vision. He examines the cultural history of progressive rock, considering its roots in a bohemian English subculture and its meteoric rise in popularity among a legion of fans in North America and continental Europe. Finally, he addresses issues of critical reception, arguing that the critics' largely negative reaction to progressive rock says far more about their own ambivalence to the legacy of the counterculture than it does about the music itself. An exciting tour through an era of extravagant, mind-bending, and culturally explosive music, Rocking the Classics sheds new light on the largely misunderstood genre of progressive rock.

    It is the sound of isolation that has sold itself to millions.” Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue is the best-selling piece of music in jazz history and, for many listeners, among the most haunting works of the twentieth century. It is also, notoriously, the only jazz album many people own. Recorded in 1959 (in nine miraculous hours), there has been nothing like it since. Richard Williams’s “richly informative” (The Guardian) history considers the album within its wider cultural context, showing how the record influenced such diverse artists as Steve Reich and the Velvet Underground.In the tradition of Alex Ross and Greil Marcus, the “effortlessly versatile” Williams (The Times) “connects these seemingly disparate phenomena with purpose, finesse and journalistic flair” (Financial Times), making masterly connections to painting, literature, philosophy, and poetry while identifying the qualities that make the album so uniquely appealing and surprisingly universal.

    That made him one of the most influential portrait photographers of our days. In Corbijn’s career, however, there has been one constant: the band U2, and their collaboration of 22 years. His most recent publication—number seven in the line of Corbijn books published by Schirmer/Mosel—is dedicated to Bono, Edge, Larry, and Adam, to their longstanding friendship, mutual inspiration, and shared experience of rock history that is part of the history of photography. It was Anton Corbijn who "invented" U2’s public image and he is still shaping it. The long way from their first encounter in February 1982 in New Orleans to their April 2004 Lisbon shooting for the most recent U2 album is documented in a wealth of private and so-called official pictures with hand-written annotations by the photographer. Interview between Bono and Anton Corbijn and texts by Bono, Helena Christensen, Bill Clinton, William Gibson, Paul Morley, Salman Rushdie, Michael Stipe, and Wim Wenders. Book design by smel, creative & strategic design studio, Amsterdam Anton Corbijn, born in Strijen, Holland, in 1955, photographer, filmmaker and designer, started his career in the 70s with portraits of David Bowie, Lou Reed, Miles Davis, and Peter Gabriel. He has produced numerous books, more than 75 music videos and many album covers. His work has been widely exhibited throughout Europe, the US, and Japan. U2, Irish rock band, by many considered the greatest rock band in the world, was founded in Dublin in 1978 by Paul "Bono" Hewson, Dave "The Edge" Evans, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr. 379 color and duotone plates

    It is also an engrossing chronicle of the author's own development, both artistic and personal. As Davis's collaborator on Miles: The Autobiography,Troupe--one of the major poets to emerge from the 1960s--had exceptional access to the musician. This memoir goes beyond the life portrayed in the autobiography to describe in detail the processes of Davis's spectacular creativity and the joys and difficulties his passionate, contradictory temperament posed to the men's friendship. It shows how Miles Davis, both as a black man and an artist, influenced not only Quincy Troupe but whole generations. Troupe has written that Miles Davis was "irascible, contemptuous, brutally honest, ill-tempered when things didn't go his way, complex, fair-minded, humble, kind and a son-of-a-bitch." The author's love and appreciation for Davis make him a keen, though not uncritical, observer. He captures and conveys the power of the musician's presence, the mesmerizing force of his personality, and the restless energy that lay at the root of his creativity. He also shows Davis's lighter side: cooking, prowling the streets of Manhattan, painting, riding his horse at his Malibu home. Troupe discusses Davis's musical output, situating his albums in the context of the times--both political and musical--out of which they emerged. Miles and Me is an unparalleled look at the act of creation and the forces behind it, at how the innovations of one person can inspire both those he knows and loves and the world at large.

    Together these two volumes form the most comprehensive books available on Dylan's words. Clinton Heylin is the world's leading Dylan biographer and expert, and he has arranged the songs in a continually surprising chronology of when they were actually written rather than when they appeared on albums. Using newly discovered manuscripts, anecdotal evidence, and a seemingly limitless knowledge of every Bob Dylan live performance, Heylin reveals hundreds of facts about the songs. Here we learn about Dylan's contributions to the Traveling Wilburys, the women who inspired "Blood on the Tracks "and "Desire," " "the sources Dylan "plagiarized" for "Love and Theft "and "Modern Times," " "why he left "Blind Willie McTell" off of "Infidels "and "Series of Dreams" off of "Oh Mercy," " "what broke the long dry spell he had in the 1990s, and much more. This is an essential purchase for every true Bob Dylan fan.

    But the reality of punk stretches over three decades and numerous countries, with a history as rich and varied as it is shocking and daring. With this lavishly illustrated and authoritative A-Z guide, Brian Cogan leads readers through the fiery history of a furious, rebellious, contradictory, and boundary-redefining musical genre and cultural movement that remains as massively influential as it is wildly misunderstood. As The Encyclopedia of Punk clearly proves, punk music and culture has produced a rich trove of material, above and beyond the hundreds of bands, from books and films to incendiary political movements.

    Granted, that’s a bold claim to make given that many think his best work lay behind him by the time this record was made. It offers Jackson on a threshold, at long last embracing adulthood—politically questioning, sexually charged—yet unable to convince a skeptical public who had, by this time, been wholly indoctrinated by a vicious media. Even though the record sold well, few understood or were willing to accept the depth and breadth of Jackson’s vision; and then before it could be fully grasped, it was eclipsed by a shifting pop music landscape and personal scandal—the latter perhaps linked to his assertive new politics. This book tries to cut through the din of dominant narratives about Jackson, taking up the mature, nuanced artistic statement he offered on Dangerous in all its complexity. It is read here as a concept album, one that offers a compelling narrative arc of postmodern angst, love, lust, seduction, betrayal, damnation, and above all else racial politics, in ways heretofore unseen in his music. This record offered a Michael Jackson that was mystifying for a world that had accepted him as a child and as childlike and, hence, as safe; this Michael Jackson was, indeed, dangerous.

    Do Angels Need Haircuts? is an extraordinary snapshot of this turning point in Reed’s career. Gathering poems, photographs and ephemera from this era (including previously unreleased audio of the 1971 St. Mark’s Church reading), and featuring a new foreword by Anne Waldman and an afterword by Laurie Anderson, this book provides a window to a little-known chapter in the life of one of the most singular and uncompromising voices in American popular culture.

    Everything you ever wanted to know about scales, but were afraid to ask! This book fills you in on major and minor scales; the modes; the blues scale; harmonic minor, melodic minor, chromatic, whole tone & diminished scales; other exotic and ethnic scales; and more. Includes easy-to-read fretboard diagrams, and a bio of Troy Stetina.

    It purposely makes the two biggest developments in end-user music in the last 30 years irrelevant. Zaireeka is not mobile. It is not personal. It is not solitary, cannot be easily controlled, and can't easily be consumed in small doses. So another way to think of Zaireeka is as a one-off piece of technology that comes in a highly inconvenient dead-end format, which is a rather extraordinary kind of thing for a rock band to make. The Flaming Lips' 1997 album Zaireeka is one of the most peculiar albums ever recorded, consisting of four CDs meant to be played simultaneously on four CD players. Approaching this powerful and complex art-rock masterpiece from multiple angles, Mark Richardson's prismatic study of Zaireeka mirrors the structure the work itself. Thoughts on communal listening and the "death of the album" are interspersed with the story of the Zaireeka's creation (with assistance from Wayne Coyne) and an in-depth analysis of the music, leading to a complete picture of a record that proved to be a watershed for both the band and adventurous music fans alike.

    Created with the cooperation of Yoko Ono Lennon, who has opened her archives for this project, the book offers insightful details about every era of John's life, from his early days at art school to the height of Beatlemania to "Imagine." A live recording of that song is included, along with several interviews of John talking about his life and art, on the audio CD contained in this package. Throughout, the book features archival photographs and reproductions of John's handwritten song lyrics, drawings, memorabilia, and personal papers. In all, 40 removable facsimiles can be enjoyed by the reader, several previously unpublished, including an intimate self-portrait in pen and ink and a plea for world peace. It's been said that John Lennon's was the voice of a generation. Lennon Legend celebrates that voice's power to resonate across the generations.

      In 1963, Brian May and his father Harold started to build the Red Special, an electric guitar meant to outperform anything commercially made. "My dad and I decided to make an electric guitar. I designed an instrument from scratch, with the intention that it would have a capability beyond anything that was out there, more tunable, with a greater range of pitches and sounds, with a better tremolo, and with a capability of feeding back through the air in a 'good' way'." (Brian May). Brian used the Red Special guitar on every Queen and solo album that he recorded and at the vast majority of his live performances: the roof of Buckingham Palace, Live Aid, the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics . . . and beyond. Here, Brian talks about his one-of-a-kind instrument, from its creation on. Along with original diagrams, sketches, and notes, May has included a great selection of photographs of himself with the guitar, in action from the last 40 years, and photographs of every stage of the Red Special's creation, which was fully dismantled and photographed inside and out just for this book, as well as close-ups and X-rays, and Brian will be commenting on it all. It is a unique guitar with unique sound. Any fan of Queen, Brian, or electric guitars will find this book utterly fascinating. 200 clr and b&w illus.