From Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs; Chuck Klosterman IV; and Eating the Dinosaur, these essays are now available in this ebook collection for fans of Klosterman’s writing on pop music.

    After indie favorite Nirvana catapulted into the mainstream with its unexpected phenomenon, Nevermind, rebellion was suddenly en vogue. Looking to replicate the band’s success, major record labels set their sights on the underground, and began courting punk’s rising stars. But the DIY punk scene, which had long prided itself on its trademark authenticity and anti-establishment ethos, wasn’t quite ready to let their homegrown acts go without a fight. The result was a schism: those who accepted the cash flow of the majors, and those who defiantly clung to their indie cred.   In Sellout, seasoned music writer Dan Ozzi chronicles this embattled era in punk. Focusing on eleven prominent bands who made the jump from indie to major, Sellout charts the twists and turns of the last “gold rush” of the music industry, where some groups “sold out” and rose to surprise super stardom, while others buckled under mounting pressures. Sellout is both a gripping history of the music industry’s evolution, and a punk rock lover’s guide to the chaotic darlings of the post-grunge era, featuring original interviews and personal stories from members of modern punk’s most (in)famous bands:Green DayJawbreakerJimmy Eat WorldBlink-182At the Drive-InThe DonnasThursdayThe DistillersMy Chemical RomanceRise AgainstAgainst Me!

    Numerous one-on-one conversations with Ozzy, Tony, Geezer, and Bill, as well as ten interviews with Ronnie James Dio, and additional interviews with supporting musicians such as Tony Martin, Ian Gillan, Glenn Hughes, Vinny Appice, and Neil Murray, make this full-colour retrospective a must for any fan. The drugs, drink, depression, and doom surrounding this band from the start have imbued songs like “The Wizard,” “Paranoid,” “Iron Man” “War Pigs,” “Children of the Grave” and “Heaven and Hell” with an almost supernatural importance among lovers of dark music. In the wider realm, full albums such as Master of Reality, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Sabotage, and Heaven and Hell show up with regularity on lists of greatest records of all time. Doom Let Loose explains how such classics came to be. It also deals with their tour history, documenting the places rocked, the bands who supported the Sabs, and most notably the trials and tribulations of the band and they tried to hold it together in the Satan-obsessed, drug-addled America of the Nixon era. Look for all manner of Sabbath photos and artefacts that make this examination of heavy metal’s fearsome foursome as feast for the eyes as well as the enquiring mind.

    chart hit. The band followed it with 40 further albums of consistently challenging, distinctive and innovative music. Drawing on hours of new interviews, and encouraged by Crimson supremo Robert Fripp, the author traces the band’s turbulent history year by year, track by track.

    Decibel magazine is regarded as the best extreme music magazine around.Precious Metal gathers pieces from Decibel's most popular feature, the monthly “Hall of Fame” which documents the making of landmark metal albums via candid, hilarious, and fascinating interviews with every participating band member.Decibel's editor-in-chief Albert Mudrian, has selected and expanded the best of these features, creating a definitive collection of stories behind the greatest extreme metal albums of all time.

    30,000 first printing."

    Celebrating the year in music writing by gathering a rich array of essays, missives, and musings on every style of music from rock to hip-hop to R&B to jazz to pop to blues, it is essential reading for anyone who loves great music and accomplished writing. Scribes of every imaginable sort—novelists, poets, journalists, musicians— are gathered to create a multi-voiced snapshot of the year in music writing that, like the music it illuminates, is every bit as thrilling as it is riveting.

    This sweeping chronicle of music, politics, drugs, fear, loathing, and faith has been recognized as an indie rock classic in its own right. Among the bands profiled: Mission of Burma, Butthole Surfers, The Minutemen, Sonic Youth, Black Flag, Big Black, Hüsker Dü, Fugazi, Minor Threat, Mudhoney, The Replacements, Beat Happening, and Dinosaur Jr.

    In 1987, Lawrence Livermore founded independent punk label Lookout Records to release records by his band The Lookouts. Forming a partnership with David Hayes, the label released some of the most influential recordings from California’s East Bay punk scene, including a then-teenaged Green Day. Originally operating out of a bedroom, Lookout created "The East Bay Punk sound,” with bands such as Crimpshrine, Operation Ivy, The Mr. T Experience, and many more. The label helped to pave the way for future punk upstarts and as Lookout grew, young punk entrepreneurs used the label as a blueprint to try their hand at record pressing. As punk broke nationally in the mid 90s the label went from indie outfit to having more money than it knew how to manage.

    Each chapter begins with a discussion of their most popular song but leads to stories of their history and place in the scene, ultimately painting a vivid picture of this colorful, idiosyncratic time. Mixtape suggestions, fashion sidebars, and quotes from famous contemporary admirers help fill out the fun. Participants include members of Duran Duran, New Order, The Smiths, Tears for Fears, Adam Ant, Echo and the Bunnymen, Devo, ABC, Spandau Ballet, A Flock of Seagulls, Thompson Twins, and INXS.

    Starting with the early Sixties session scene when the teenage Page contributed to recordings by The Who, The Rolling Stones, Tom Jones and many more, the author goes on to explore Page's time in The Yardbirds, the band that would metamorphose into the legendary Led Zeppelin.Supported by album reviews, rare photographs, a full discography and candid conversations with Page's friends, managers and musical collaborators, author Martin Power's No Quarter: The Three Lives Of Jimmy Page represents the most comprehensive and up-to-date biography yet written about Jimmy Page—a "one man guitar army" and true music legend.

    RIP IT UP AND START AGAIN is a celebration of what happened next.Post-punk bands like PiL, Joy Division, Talking Heads, The Fall and The Human League dedicated themselves to fulfilling punk's unfinished musical revolution. The post-punk groups were fervent modernists; whether experimenting with electronics and machine rhythm or adapting ideas from dub reggae and disco, they were totally confident they could invent a whole new future for music.

    Bands like The Tragically Hip, Blue Rodeo, and Sloan created a fever pitch for Canadian music, but there were also numerous others in the underground who created equally exciting work. This vital, lively, and entertaining examination of a groundbreaking decade contains vivid original photographs and interviews with all the major players.

    Distraction Pieces features both curated highlights from the iTunes-chart-topping podcast - from Akala to Howard Marks via the likes of Adam Buxton, Romesh Ranganathan and Amanda Palmer - and exclusive new content, with chapters on politics, social media, music, comedy and more. Featuring illustrations by tattoo artist mr heggie, this is a must-have for fans of the Distraction Pieces podcast, and a must-read for anyone interested in the creative mind.

    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.'"