Lynn Harris "...a sympathetic look at the most popular soul singer of his generation" - New York Daily News On July 1, 2005, the world lost one of the greatest R&B vocalists of all time, Luther Vandross. He left a legacy of some of the most enduring love songs of our age: “Here and Now,” “Superstar,” “If Only For One Night,” and “A House Is Not A Home.” The notoriously secretive star also left behind many questions such as the real-life inspiration behind all of those yearning love songs. The newly updated and expanded edition of Luther: The Life and Longing of Luther Vandross takes you deep inside the singer’s private world. It chronicles his underdog journey from the projects of New York City’s Lower East Side to the top of the charts, selling more than 20 million albums along the way. The book details Luther’s triumphs, as well as his struggles: his battle with weight; his feuds with Aretha Franklin, Anita Baker, and En Vogue; the 1986 car accident that killed his best friend and nearly destroyed his career; and the rumors about his sexuality that followed him throughout his life. The book offers specific new details about Luther’s love life that will help illuminate the private pain of the man who brought the world so much joy.

    An anti-war book with grim b&w photographs of wartime atrocities with gallows humor/sarcastic captions.

    Wexler has worked with the entire range of American genius: Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and others. 75 photographs.

    Features 80% exclusive, hitherto-unpublished archive photos and footage sequences of all the key players in situ, together with lyric sheets, Yoko's art installations, and exclusive new insights and personal testimonies from Yoko and over forty of the musicians, engineers, staff, celebrities, artists and photographers who were there-including Julian Lennon, Klaus Voormann, Alan White, Jim Keltner, David Bailey, Dick Cavett and Sir Michael Parkinson. "A lot has been written about the creation of the song, the album and the film of Imagine, mainly by people who weren't there, so I'm very pleased and grateful that now, for the first time, so many of the participants have kindly given their time to 'gimme some truth' in their own words and pictures" -Yoko Ono Lennon, 2018 In 1971, John Lennon & Yoko Ono conceived and recorded the critically acclaimed album Imagine at their Georgian country home, Tittenhurst Park, in Berkshire, England, in the state-of-the-art studio they built in the grounds, and at the Record Plant in New York. The lyrics of the title track were inspired by Yoko Ono's "event scores" in her 1964 book Grapefruit, and she was officially co-credited as writer in June 2017. Imagine John Yoko tells the story of John & Yoko's life, work and relationship during this intensely creative period. It transports readers to home and working environments showcasing Yoko's closely guarded archive of photos and artifacts, using artfully compiled narrative film stills, and featuring digitally rendered maps, floorplans and panoramas that recreate the interiors in evocative detail. John & Yoko introduce each chapter and song; Yoko also provides invaluable additional commentary and a preface. All the minutiae is examined: the locations, the key players, the music and lyrics, the production techniques and the artworks-including the creative process behind the double exposure polaroids used on the album cover. With a message as universal and pertinent today as it was when the album was created, this landmark publication is a fitting tribute to John & Yoko and their place in cultural history.

    The images of Pink Floyd album sleeves and the artwork they contain are the subject of Mind over Matter, a first-hand look at the music business and a consideration of where art ends and commerce begins.'

    Designed to provide insight and an overview about each text for students and teachers, these guides endeavor to develop knowledge and understanding rather than just provide answers and summaries.

    Covering the dynamic period 1960-1976, Valerie Wilmer powerfully evokes a remarkable revolutionary musical era that continues to inspire generations of musicians. Valerie Wilmer evaluates the musical careers of both the famous names of the time - Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra and Cecil Taylor - and those of less well-known artists. It is her unique approach - placing the 'new jazz' in its political and social context - that makes As Serious As Your Life a classic of jazz criticism.

    This work recounts the adventurous life of his beloved 'Cello Prieto, ' tracing its history through each of its previous owners from Stradivari in 1720 to the author himself

    "A very readable book which portrays the human being behind the music, increasing our love of both." Yehudi Menuhin, from inside cover.

    Bursting at the seams with rare and previously unpublished photographs from Hammer’s archive and private collections worldwide, and featuring many new interviews, Hammer Glamour is a lavish, full colour celebration of Hammer’s female stars, including Ingrid Pitt, Martine Beswick, Caroline Munro, Barbara Shelley, Joanna Lumley, Nastassja Kinski, and of course Raquel Welch (who can forget her fur bikini in One Million Years B. C.?)

    This full-length, exhaustively researched account of the thrash kings' career recaps and reevaluates the years guitar hero Jeff Hanneman and drum legend Dave Lombardo were in the group. Over the course of 59 chapters, 400 footnotes and three appendices, it profiles the members and presents dramatic scenes from 32 years in the Abyss: A fresh look at the group's early days. Reign in Blood tours. A European invasion. The Palladium riot. The seat cushion chaos concert. Newly unearthed details from Lombardo's turbulent history with the band. Historical artwork and photos never seen in public before. The entire diabolical discography. Hanneman’s hard times. The Big Four’s big year. Lombardo’s final exit. The top 11 Hanneman tributes. The mosh memorial service. Untold stories. Updates. And relevant digressions, including a contrasting look at other contemporaries and cutting-edge extreme bands. Over decades, Slayer experience triumph and loss, but never defeat, whether it's at the hands of rivals, peers, America's most infamous church, or the United States government itself. In addition to extensive archival material, this book features original content from the band, key affiliates, and firsthand witnesses, including Metal Blade CEO Brian Slagel, former tour manager Doug Goodman, engineer Bill Metoyer, former Metal Blade exec William "DJ Will" Howell, and cover artist Albert Cuellar (who went on to work with Tim Burton, Sublime, and Sir Mix-A-Lot). It also includes Jeff Hanneman's original diagram for the Live Undead picture disc (spoiler: it's a stick-figure sketch). Slayer fans will never see — or hear — the thrash metal champions the same way. 33 photos and 11 illustrations include lost artwork by Hell Awaits artist Albert Cuellar and stunning exclusive pictures by Harald Oimoen (of Murder in the Front Row renown). Written by D.X. Ferris, an Ohio Society of Professional Journalists Reporter of the Year and author of "Slayer's Reign in Blood," which is book no. 57 in Bloomsbury Academic's prestigious 33 1/3 series. The bargain-priced e-book edition features extensive interactive content, and can be read on any smart phone, tablet, computer, or portable communications device (with free Kindle software).

    These lectures, Mr. Bernstein's most recent venture in musical explication, will make fascinating reading as well. Virgil Thomson says of the lectures: "Nobody anywhere presents this material so warmly, so sincerely, so skillfully. As musical mind-openers they are first class; as pedagogy they are matchless."Mr. Bernstein considers music ranging from Hindu ragas through Mozart and Ravel, to Copland, suggesting a worldwide, innate musical grammar. Folk music, pop songs, symphonies, modal, tonal, atonal, well-tempered and ill-tempered works all find a place in these discussions. Each, Mr. Bernstein suggests, has roots in a universal language central to all artistic creation. Using certain linguistic analogies, he explores the ways in which this language developed and can be understood as an aesthetic surface. Drawing on his insights as a master composer and conductor, Mr. Bernstein also explores what music means below the surface: the symbols and metaphors which exist in every musical piece, of whatever sort. And, finally, Mr. Bernstein analyzes twentieth century crises in the music of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, finding even here a transformation of all that has gone before, as part of the poetry of expression, through its roots in the earth of human experience.These talks, written and delivered when Leonard Bernstein was Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University, are the newest of the author's literary achievements. In addition to a distinguished career as conductor, pianist, and composer, Mr. Bernstein is the recipient of many television Emmys for the scripts of his Young People's Concerts, Omnibus programs, and others, and is the author of The Infinite Variety of Music and The Joy of Music, for which he received the Christopher Award.

    Benjamin Spock, September 1969The connection between all the rhetoric and all the poetry, between the words of a Black Panther and those of a rock star or a pacifist, between the scars of a pop artist and those of a napalm victim, have haunted and informed the structuring of this book, with its own peculiar version of a beginning, a middle, and an end.

    Angel-like Blengins with butterfly wings, natural catastrophes, innocent girls, and murderous soldiers all appear in Darger's scenes, which are reproduced in this book in double-page and gatefold spreads. In the volume's introductory essay, Klaus Biesenbach examines the radical originality of Darger's art, including his use of collage, incorporation of religious themes and iconography, and frequent juxtaposition of innocence with violence. An essay by Brooke Davis Anderson illuminates Darger's source materials and techniques. Michael Bonesteel puts Darger's life in the context of his work and selects key texts to accompany the illustrations. The book also includes for the first time the text of Darger's History of My Life, A" the artist's autobiography. The only book of its kind, Henry Darger offers an authoritative, balanced, and insightful look at an American master

    Renovating the home, Dock stumbles upon a treasure trove of Civil War memorabilia squirreled away in an old root cellar, including pictures and possibly even a recording of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. As he's forced to defend his new find from the onslaught of collectors, history buffs, and media hounds, Dock discovers that, much like Honest Abe himself, he's the right man for the fight--independent, funny, loyal, and stubborn as a Missouri mule. When the scallywags and opportunists--including an easy-on-the-eyes television reporter with one hell of an attitude--start crawling out of the woodwork, he'll need all of that and a bit more.