As he finds himself within spitting distance of middle-age, journalist Eric Spitznagel feels acutely the loss of... something. Freedom? Maybe. Coolness? Could be. The records he sold in a financial pinch? Definitely. To find out for sure, he sets out on a quest to find the original vinyl artifacts from his past. Not just copies. The exact same records: The Bon Jovi record with his first girlfriend's phone number scrawled on the front sleeve. The KISS Alive II he once shared with his little brother. The Replacements Let It Be he's pretty sure, 20 years later, would still smell like weed.As he embarks on his hero's journey, he reminisces about the actual records, the music, and the people he listened to it with--old girlfriends, his high school pals, and, most poignantly, his father and his young son. He explores the magic of music and memory as he interweaves his adventures in record-culture with questions about our connection to our past, the possibility of ever recapturing it, and whether we would want to if we could.Memories are far more indelible when married to the physical world, and Spitznagel proves the point in this vivid book. We love vinyl records because they combine the tactile, the visual, the seeable effects of age and care and carelessness. When he searches for the records he lost and sold, Spitznagel is trying to return to a tangible past, and he details that process with great sensitivity and impact.--Dave Eggers, New York Times bestselling author of The Circle

    He overcame adolescent upheaval and personal demons—including his parents’ divorce, his mother’s untimely death and severe alcoholism—to become metal’s biggest star.So Let It Be Written does justice to the many hats Hetfield has worn, with his strong leadership, signature vocal style, powerful guitar-playing and masterful songwriting. Author Mark Eglinton uses exclusive, firsthand interviews—with prominent rock stars and key figures in Hetfield’s life—to construct the definitive account of Hetfield.“Hopefully this book will rekindle certain special memories about one of metal’s most charismatic and important individuals.” —Chuck Billy of TestamentMark Eglinton is the co-writer of Official Truth, 101 Proof by Pantera’s Rex Brown and Confessions of a Heretic by Behemoth’s Adam Nergal Darski. Chuck Billy is the singer of Testament.

    The creative synchronicity among Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan exploded out of the artistic ferment of the early sixties’ roots and folk scene, providing the soundtrack for the Dionysian revels of the counterculture. To those in the know, the Dead was an ongoing tour de force: a band whose constant commitment to exploring new realms lay at the center of a thirty-year journey through an ever-shifting array of musical, cultural, and mental landscapes.Dennis McNally, the band’s historian and publicist for more than twenty years, takes readers back through the Dead’s history in A Long Strange Trip. In a kaleidoscopic narrative, McNally not only chronicles their experiences in a fascinatingly detailed fashion, but veers off into side trips on the band’s intricate stage setup, the magic of the Grateful Dead concert experience, or metaphysical musings excerpted from a conversation among band members. He brings to vivid life the Dead’s early days in late-sixties San Francisco–an era of astounding creativity and change that reverberates to this day. Here we see the group at its most raw and powerful, playing as the house band at Ken Kesey’s acid tests, mingling with such legendary psychonauts as Neal Cassady and Owsley “Bear” Stanley, and performing the alchemical experiments, both live and in the studio, that produced some of their most searing and evocative music. But McNally carries the Dead’s saga through the seventies and into the more recent years of constant touring and incessant musical exploration, which have cemented a unique bond between performers and audience, and created the business enterprise that is much more a family than a corporation.Written with the same zeal and spirit that the Grateful Dead brought to its music for more than thirty years, the book takes readers on a personal tour through the band’s inner circle, highlighting its frenetic and very human faces. A Long Strange Trip is not only a wide-ranging cultural history, it is a definitive musical biography.

    It bridges the gap between the natural sciences and music theory and, nearly a century after its first publication, it is still a standard text for the study of physiological acoustics — the scientific basis of musical theory. It is also a treasury of knowledge for musicians and students of music and a major work in the realm of aesthetics, making important contributions to physics, anatomy, and physiology in its establishment of the physical theory of music. Difficult scientific concepts are explained simply and easily for the general reader.The first two parts of this book deal with the physics and physiology of music. Part I explains the sensation of sound in general, vibrations, sympathetic resonances, and other phenomena. Part II cover combinational tones and beats, and develops Helmholtz's famous theory explaining why harmonious chords are in the ratios of small whole numbers (a problem unsolved since Pythagoras).Part III contains the author's theory on the aesthetic relationship of musical tones. After a survey of the different principles of musical styles in history (tonal systems of Pythagoras, the Church, the Chinese, Arabs, Persians, and others), he makes a detailed study of our own tonal system (keys, discords, progression of parts).Important points in this 576-page work are profusely illustrated with graphs, diagrams, tables, and musical examples. 33 appendices discuss pitch, acoustics, and music, and include a very valuable table and study of the history of pitch in Europe from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries.

    The author examines the nature of intervals in various contexts, discusses the modes and other scales employed in modern music, describes the formation and uses of chords by thirds, by fourths, and by seconds, of added-note chords and polychords; he deals with different types of harmonic motion, with harmonic rhythm and dynamic sand ornamentation, with harmonic behavior in tonality, polytonality, atonality and serial composition.

    Michael Jackson Treasures pairs a compelling exploration of his story with photographs and memorabilia that illuminate h is fascinating, complicated life. Featuring a number of rare pieces, including selected pages from the Jackson children’s high school yearbook, the patent for the antigravity lean shoes from “Smooth Criminal,” and a fancifully die-cut mask from the Dangerous Tour, Michael Jackson Treasures is a trove of powerful images and ephemera from a truly global superstar.

    For many listeners, when this non-traditional, surprisingly feminine album was released, it was like hearing an entirely new form of music.In this book, Shawn Taylor explores the creation of the album as well as the impact it had on him at the time - a 17-year-old high-school geek who was equally into hip-hop, punk, new wave, skateboarding, and Dungeons & Dragons: all of a sudden, with this one album, the world made more sense. He has spent many years investigating this album, from the packaging to the song placement to each and every sample - Shawn Taylor knows this record like he knows his tattoos, and he's finally been able to write a fascinating and highly entertaining book about it.