When Stars Were in Reach: The Who at Union Catholic High School - November 29, 1967 (Black and White Version)


Michael Rosenbloom - 2013
    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.

Stephen Stills: Change Partners: The Definitive Biography 2016


David Roberts - 2019
    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

Poet Of The Wrong Generation


Lonnie Ostrow - 2016
    But you can’t go back and forth forever and we’ve already said goodbye.”Through these words, a young poet unearths his musical soul while severing ties with the woman he loves after her stunning betrayal. Unknowingly, in writing this ballad of liberation, he will soon evolve as one of the fastest rising stars on the pop music landscape.The year is 1991; the place, New York City. Here we meet Johnny Elias, a college student from Brooklyn with boundless adoration for two things in life: timeless popular music, and the heart of a sweet, complicated young woman who is clearly out of his league.Megan Price not only is the object of Johnny’s affection, but also the only daughter of New York’s most powerful PR woman: the indomitable Katherine Price.Projecting that her daughter’s boyfriend will never live up to the family standard, Katherine cleverly perpetrates a series of duplicitous schemes to rid Johnny from her high-class world. But in her callous disregard, she inadvertently sets him on a determined course to his improbable musical destiny - while sending her own daughter spiraling down a path of devastation.Poet of the Wrong Generation tells the symmetrical story of a lovable underdog and his meteoric rise to stardom, his humiliating downfall and his unprecedented attempt to reclaim his place as the unlikely musical spokesman for his generation. At the heart of Poet is a tale of star-crossed lovers and their struggle with unforeseen success and disillusionment, in an attempt to rediscover lasting harmony.Uniquely integrating a variety of original song compositions, Poet projects the epic clash between true contentment and the fable of stardom’s rewards; a nostalgic journey through the major events of the 1990s, with a cherished cast of characters and a stunningly unpredictable conclusion.

Step By Step Mixing: How to Create Great Mixes Using Only 5 Plug-ins (Audio Issues #1)


Bjorgvin Benediktsson - 2017
     Learn a Proven Step By Step Mixing Process That's Helped Thousands of Musicians Like Yourself Make Amazing Mixes in Their Home Studio, Using Only EQ, Compression, Reverb, Delay, and Saturation "This is the NO BS guide to taking your mixes to the next level! Björgvin has been teaching and writing about recording for a decade, and really understands that stuff that we all struggle with in the home studio. Step By Step Mixing takes you through the full process of making sure your mixes rock from ruff to radio ready!" -Lij Shaw, Award winning Producer and Podcaster of Recording Studio Rockstars Let Me Ask You This: Do you fight to make all your instruments fit together in a busy mix? Do you struggle to EQ each instrument to sit in their frequency range without getting in the way of everything else? Do you tear your hair out finding the right compression setting for each track? Do you have a hard time using reverb and delay without cluttering up your mix? Do you get confused by saturation and how to use it to get a warmer sounding mix? If you answered yes to one of those questions - don't worry - you're not alone. If you want to make better mixes immediately in your home studio that translate to every speaker system, whether you're working on demos for your band of mixing records for your clients, grab Step By Step Mixing right now. Here's What You'll Learn Inside: Learn to get organized and simplify your mixing process to create more mixes that sound better in less time Learn practical EQ tips to make all of your instruments fit in your mix Learn to use compression to create punchy and tight mixes Learn to use reverb and delay to add space and depth to your mixes without cluttering up the song and making yourself sound like an amateur Learn everything you need to know about saturation to add that secret sauce to your songs that make people take notice of your skills Learn an invaluable process to getting your mix to translate to any speaker or sound system Step by Step Mixing covers the theory behind each processor while giving you simple to use, practical audio tips you can use to improve your mixes. Every chapter is broken down as such: Explanations on the theory behind what the plug-ins do and how to use them: You’ll get a thorough walkthrough of the various regions of the frequency spectrum. You’ll understand exactly how to use your compressors. You’ll learn all about the various reverb and delay settings (some reverbs are just too complex!) and you’ll get very familiar with using saturation (without overloading and distorting your mixes!). Common Problems and Their Practical Solutions: After you understand how each processor works we’ll talk about some real world scenarios. I’ll give you some practical and easy to use tips to make your mixes jump out of the speakers. Once you've mastered these five processors above you’ll be ready to make a killer mix in your home studio, whether you’re working on demos for your band or mixing records for your friends and

Dion: The Wanderer Talks Truth (Stories, Humor Music)


Dion DiMucci - 2011
    He continued to make great music while slowly returning to his Catholic roots. His hard-won wisdom filters through his stories whether he's recalling how he went shopping with John Lennon and ended up on the cover of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band or what it was like to travel in the Jim Crow South with Sam Cooke.Praise for Dion... "To this day nobody, nobody can rock like Dion."—Lou Reed "He always had the name that said it all...Dion."—Bruce Springsteen "If you want to hear a great singer, listen to Dion. His genius has never deserted him."—Bob DylanThe audio edition of this book can be downloaded via Audible.

On the Road and Off the Record with Leonard Bernstein: My Years with the Exasperating Genius


Charlie Harmon - 2018
    Was he drunk to boot? He greeted his new assistant with "What are you drinking?" Yes, he was drunk.Charlie Harmon was hired to manage the day-to-day parts of Bernstein's life. There was one additional responsibility: make sure Bernstein met the deadline for an opera commission. But things kept getting in the way: the centenary of Igor Stravinsky, intestinal parasites picked up in Mexico, teaching all summer in Los Angeles, a baker's dozen of young men, plus depression, exhaustion, insomnia, and cut-throat games of anagrams. Did the opera get written?For four years, Charlie saw Bernstein every day, as his social director, gatekeeper, valet, music copyist, and itinerant orchestra librarian. He packed (and unpacked) Bernstein's umpteen pieces of luggage, got the Maestro to his concerts, kept him occupied changing planes in Zurich, Anchorage, Tokyo, or Madrid, and learned how to make small talk with mayors, ambassadors, a chancellor, a queen, and a Hollywood legend or two. How could anyone absorb all those people and places? Because there was music: late-night piano duets, or the Maestro's command to accompany an audition, or, by the way, the greatest orchestras in the world. Charlie did it, and this is what it was like, told for the first time.A celebratory, intimate, and detailed look at the public and private life of Leonard Bernstein written by his former assistant. Foreword by Broadway legend Harold Prince.

One Night Bands


Pamela Des Barres - 2012
    My 4th book, "Let's Spend the NIght Together," was over long (imagine that!) and this scintillating chapter had to be excised. But here it is in all it's naughty, bawdy glory: the untold tales of groupies and their one night romps with rock gods.

Driving Stevie Fracasso


Barry Divola - 2021
    What could possibly go wrong? For fans of Nick Hornby, David Nicholls and Jonathan Tropper.Jaded music journalist Rick McLennan knows his life is going south when he loses his job, his apartment and his long-term girlfriend all on the same day. But then he is thrown a lifeline - a commission to write the story of his ex-rock-star brother, Stevie, and drive him from Austin, Texas, to New York to play one final gig. One small problem: the brothers haven't spoken in thirty years.Rick knows it's a bad idea. But he's out of choices. So he gets behind the wheel of a beaten-up 1985 Nissan Stanza and drives towards his destiny. He's about to find everything he didn't know he was missing. It's September 2001.From award-winning journalist and author Barry Divola comes a glorious, music-infused, rollicking road-trip novel - think High Fidelity meets The Big Lebowski meets The Darjeeling Limited. A smart, funny and wholly endearing story about how, though we may at times lose ourselves along the way, the road always leads back to family and the things that bring us joy.'Of course this road trip comes with a top-quality mix-tape - it's by Barry Divola - but it's the layers to this story, and its humour and its heart, that make this journey irresistible.' - Nick Earls'This book is the super f∗∗∗ing gnarly lead break of rock-lit novels.' - John Birmingham'Driving Stevie Fracasso reads as great as the fifth Replacements album sounds. It's a New York-centric, music-obsessive tale of humour and poignancy, the literary equivalent of hanging with folks who think going to church is finding a record fair. A+' - Stuart CoupeAn interpreter of the listening experience forced to listen to experience? This novel will be read in between flippin' records. Go for the ride. You'll be spent, you'll be grateful.' - Tim Rogers'If I could go back in time and take a different fork in the road, I would have lived like Barry Divola. But poor choices can't be unmade, and if Driving Stevie Fracasso is the only ride available I'll take it. Damn you, Barry Divola, you've been having everyone else's fun.' - Malcolm Knox

Tiger in a Trance


Max Ludington - 2003
    Liberally dabbling in his product, his judgment gets cloudier and he starts snorting heroin and sleeping with his supplier’s girlfriend, a green-eyed beauty named Jane. Jason also meets Melanie, a rebellious one-armed high-school girl who’s youthful abandonment leads her deeper into the nomadic world of the Dead. And as his addiction takes hold, Jason reacquaints himself with an old friend of his late father’s who’s near the end of his days. While he struggles with the ghosts of his own past and his exceedingly tenuous future, Jason has to decide where his heart lies and which road will ultimately take him there.

The Rolling Stones: Fifty Years


Christopher Sandford - 2012
    Add the mercurial Brian Jones (who'd been effectively run out of Cheltenham for theft, multiple impregnations and playing blues guitar) and the wryly opinionated Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts, and the potential was obvious. During the 1960s and 70s the Rolling Stones were the polarising figures in Britain, admired in some quarters for their flamboyance, creativity and salacious lifestyles, and reviled elsewhere for the same reasons. Confidently expected never to reach 30 they are now approaching their seventies and, in 2012, will have been together for 50 years. In The Rolling Stones, Christopher Sandford tells the human drama at the centre of the Rolling Stones story. Sandford has carried out interviews with those close to the Stones, family members (including Mick's parents), the group's fans and contemporaries - even examined their previously unreleased FBI files. Like no other book before The Rolling Stones will make sense of the rich brew of clever invention and opportunism, of talent, good fortune, insecurity, self-destructiveness, and of drugs, sex and other excess, that made the Stones who they are.

The King and Dr. Nick: What Really Happened to Elvis and Me


George Nichopoulos - 2009
    Nick."Dr. Nichopoulos spent a decade with Elvis on the road and at Graceland, trying to maintain the precarious health of one of the world’s greatest entertainers. But on August 16, 1977, he found himself in the ambulance with Elvis on that fateful last trip to the ER. He signed the death certificate.From that day forward, Dr. Nick became the focus of a media witch hunt that threatened his life and all but destroyed his professional reputation. Now, for the first time, Dr. Nick reveals the true story behind Elvis’s drug use and final days—not the version formed by years of tabloid journalism and gross speculation. Put aside what you’ve learned about Elvis’s final days and get ready to understand for the first time the inner workings of “the king of rock n’ roll.”

100 Lost Rock Albums From The 1970s


Matthew Ingram - 2012
    From The Wire: "Matthew Ingram, aka Woebot, has published a book titled 100 Lost Rock Albums From The 1970s. The book takes in strands of metal, glam rock, French artists, punk and pub rock, and is released digitally as a self-published eBook via Amazon. Ingram says: 'Last year I started writing an article on the 100 Lost Rock Albums From The 1970s but it ballooned out of all proportions and I decided to turn it into an eBook.''Over time we have lost touch with the original character of the 70s. Using 'lost' records I've attempted to re-examinine the decade and redress what I see as imbalance. Beyond small reviews of a meticulously-selected 100 albums there's quite a lot of contemporary history, much theorising and lots of gags.'"

Nirvana: A Tour Diary: My Life on the Road with One of the Greatest Bands of All Time


Andy Bollen - 2013
    As drummer for the British group Captain America, one of the two support bands on Nirvana's Nevermind UK tour, Andy Bollen had a ringside seat at the exact moment that Nirvana went massive. Afforded intimate access, Bollen wrote his own personal diary in Nirvana's dressing room, where he spoke candidly to Cobain—from his fears of losing original fans to his love of the Bay City Rollers. He saw firsthand how Nirvana worked, the relationships that made them tick, and the dynamic that made them one of the great bands. This is a warm, affectionate, funny, and, at times, brutally honest account, written by a guy on the periphery, perfectly positioned to observe. Drawing on the diaries he kept at the time, the book brings to life a pivotal moment in rock history, making it a must-read for Nirvana fans and lovers of iconic rock stories. The author also includes his own photographs which have never been seen before.

Song Maps: A New System to Write Your Best Lyrics


Simon Hawkins - 2016
     Does any of the following sound familiar? - You worry that the lyrics you write just don't deliver their full potential but can't figure out why, even though technically they tick all the right boxes. - You have great ideas but your finished lyrics somehow fall short of the emotional impact you wanted and, as a result, your songs get passed over. - You have a busy schedule with limited time to write and have wasted too many hours chasing un-writable lyric ideas. - You wonder how some professional songwriters always seem to get a particular dynamic in their lyrics, consistently writing songs better than 90% of what you hear on the radio. - You are perhaps nervous about going into a pro co-writing session because you fear your ideas aren't worth bringing into the writing room. - You know you have so many great titles waiting to be written but haven't found a way of systematically developing them into well-crafted lyrics. - After writing an amazing hooky Chorus and a great supporting first Verse, you hit the dreaded wall that is “second verse curse”. In Song Maps – A New System to Write Your Best Lyrics, I deliver simple, logical, well-defined solutions to these issues and more: I give you seven well-developed professional templates for you to bring your lyrics to life. I also provide you with a tried and tested process for writing lyrics using Song Maps. And I'll reveal the songwriter’s secret weapon. Much of this book contains new material. This is because, while I enjoyed building a firm foundation of knowledge about the craft from the songwriting programs at Berklee Music School and other sources, I discovered Song Maps afterwards, from my experience as a professional songwriter, writing either on my own or in the writing rooms of Nashville. Having been signed as a staff songwriter at Universal Music Publishing in Nashville, being nominated and winning awards for my songs including Grammys, Doves and hymn-writing awards, and after spending many years studying thousands of techniques and developing them in my own songwriting and in the writing room, I've had the privilege of teaching the material in this book to hundreds of songwriters and seeing a step change in their writing. I have been blessed to watch them find their authentic voice in writing ideas to their full potential, helping them achieve their dream to move from writing flat 2D lyrics to fabulous High Definition full-color 3D lyrics. As you assimilate Song Maps into your writing workflow, your songwriting will shift away from tentative, self-conscious, inhibited writing to strong, bold, intentional and vulnerable writing that does full justice to your original ideas, ultimately allowing you to make the impact you deserve as a songwriter. If you implement the simple, easy-to-understand concepts in this book, I promise you your songs will be better crafted than 90% of the songs you hear on the radio. It will also transform your effectiveness as a co-writer. Importantly, no matter where your songs end up, you will be confident you have written a brilliant lyric and you have served your co-writers well. Let this book help you transform your lyric writing by using Song Maps in your songwriting workflow and take your song ideas to their ultimate potential by writing your best, truly golden, spectacular songs.

Songwriting: Essential Guide to Rhyming: A Step-By-Step Guide to Better Rhyming and Lyrics


Pat Pattison - 1991
    This book has a very specific purpose: to help songwriters find better rhymes and use them more effectively. Rhyme is one of the most crucial areas of lyrics writing, and this guide will provide all of the technical information necessary to develop your skills completely. The exercises and worksheets help experienced writers take a fresh look at their techniques, and prevent novices from developing bad habits. Use this book to start writing better than ever before!