One of punk rock's foundational documents, the archetype for indie obsession and all but disowned by its author, The Modern Lovers was an album doomed by its own coolness from day one. Powered by the two-chord wonder “Roadrunner” and its proclamation that “I'm in love with rock 'n' roll,”The Modern Lovers is the essential document of American alienation, an escape route from the cultural wasteland of postwar suburbia. The Modern Lovers is the bridge connecting the Velvet Underground and the Sex Pistols; they were peers of the New York Dolls and friends with Gram Parsons and they would splinter into Talking Heads, The Cars, and The Real Kids.But The Modern Lovers was never meant to be an album. A collection of demos, recorded in fits and starts as Jonathan Richman and his band negotiate modernity and the music industry. It is a collection of songs about a city and a society in flux, grappling with ancient corruptions and bright-eyed idealism. Richman observes a city all but abandoned by adults, ravaged by white flight and urban renewal, veering towards anarchy as old world social moors collide with new attitudes. It is a city stands in stark contrast to the the ranchstyle bedroom community where he was raised. All of these conflicts are churned through Richman's intellectual acuity and emotional unrest to create one of the 20th century's most enduring documents of post-adolescent malaise.

    Combining muscular guitars and driving rhythms with an irresistible pop sensibility, their blistering live show and endlessly dynamic front woman Hayley Williams has taken them from club shows in their hometown to sell-out arena dates across the world - and earned them a fiercely dedicated fan-base along the way. But with their success has come the pressure of growing up under the media's scrutiny. Small-town kids from Tennessee thrust into international stardom, they have had to negotiate their adolescence alongside the demands of a gruelling tour schedule and numerous line-up changes. This test of character brought them to the brink of collapse. And yet, from this adversity Paramore returned with their most confident, accomplished and deeply personal album to date - Brand New Eyes. This unauthorised book is the first to tell their story and details the early years forming the band, their explosive debut record, the strident, platinum-selling follow-up Riot! and their status in late 2009 as the 'next major rock act' in the world.

    This is untrue. In fact, this period helped resuscitate KISS’s career, as they reestablished themselves in arenas, on the charts, and via MTV, and yielded some of their most popular songs – including Lick It Up, Heaven’s On Fire, Tears Are Falling, Crazy Crazy Nights, Hide Your Heart, Forever, Unholy, and more – many of which consistently found their way into the band’s set lists. While the majority of KISS books are focused on the glitz and glamour of the iconic makeup era, the non-makeup years are ripe to be explored in book form, and Take It Off does just that, zeroing in on the eleven albums KISS issued during this period – including such gold- and platinum-certified hits as Lick It Up, Animalize, Revenge, and Alive III – as well the resulting tours, videos, and other escapades.Take It Off draws on all-new interviews with KISS experts and associates, including the band’s lead guitarist throughout most of this period, Bruce Kulick, plus Crazy Nights producer Ron Nevison and video director Paul Rachman (Unholy/I Just Wanna/Domino). Among the other contributors are Charlie Benante (Anthrax), K.K. Downing (ex-Judas Priest), Derek Sherinan (ex-Dream Theater), and rock music experts Eddie Trunk, Katherine Turman, and Lonn Friend. The book also includes a foreword by Fozzy frontman Chris Jericho and an afterword by acclaimed producer Andreas Carlsson, as well as rare photographs and memorabilia from the period. With KISS currently in the midst of their last ever tour, now is the time to get Truly Unmasked.

    In 1905 an unknown 26-year-old clerk at the Swiss Patent Office, who had supposedly failed math in school, burst on to the scientific scene and swept away the hidebound theories of the day. The clerk, Albert Einstein, introduced a new and unexpected understanding of the universe and launched the two great revolutions of twentieth-century physics, relativity and quantum mechanics. The obscure origin and wide-ranging brilliance of the work recalled Isaac Newton’s “annus mirabilis” (miracle year) of 1666, when as a 23-year-old seeking safety at his family manor from an outbreak of the plague, he invented calculus and laid the foundations for his theory of gravity. Like Newton, Einstein quickly became a scientific icon--the image of genius and, according to Time magazine, the Person of the Century.The actual story is much more interesting. Einstein himself once remarked that “science as something coming into being ... is just as subjectively, psychologically conditioned as are all other human endeavors.” In this profile, the historian of science L. Randles Lagerstrom takes you behind the myth and into the very human life of the young Einstein. From family rifts and girlfriend troubles to financial hardships and jobless anxieties, Einstein’s early years were typical of many young persons. And yet in the midst of it all, he also saw his way through to profound scientific insights. Drawing upon correspondence from Einstein, his family, and his friends, Lagerstrom brings to life the young Einstein and enables the reader to come away with a fuller and more appreciative understanding of Einstein the person and the origins of his revolutionary ideas.About the cover image: While walking to work six days a week as a patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland, Einstein would pass by the famous "Zytglogge" tower and its astronomical clocks. The daily juxtaposition was fitting, as the relative nature of time and clock synchronization would be one of his revolutionary discoveries in the miracle year of 1905.

    She talks of her life, career, family and loves and impending motherhood with surprising intimacy and, being true to her outspoken reputation, complete honesty.

    In 1966, he was Prince of the Sunset Strip, busy with his pioneering racially-mixed band Love, and accelerating the evolution of California folk-rock by infusing it with jazz and orchestral influences, a process that would climax in a timeless masterpiece, the Love album Forever Changes. Shaped by a Memphis childhood and a South Los Angeles youth, Lee always craved fame. Drug use and a reticence to tour were his Achilles heels, and he succumbed to a dissolute lifestyle just as superstardom was beckoning. Despite endorsements from the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, Leess subsequent career was erratic and haunted by the shadow of Forever Changes, reaching a nadir with his 1996 imprisonment for a firearms offence. Redemption followed, culminating in an astonishing post-millennial comeback that found him playing Forever Changes to adoring multi-generational fans around the world. This upswing was only interrupted by his untimely death, from leukemia, in 2006. Writing with the full consent and cooperation of Arthur's widow, Diane Lee, author John Einarson has meticulously researched a biography that includes lengthy extracts from the singer's vivid, comic, and poignant memoirs, published here for the first time.

    Raised in a poor South London family with a history of mental illness, David Robert Jones was to become an emblem of his time whose fame rivaled that of Elvis Presley and the Beatles. He sang some of the most haunting pop songs of the 1970s and starred in some of the strangest plays and films of the period (The Elephant Man, The Hunger, The Man Who Fell to Earth). Androgynous, Jekyll and Hyde by turns, susceptible to cocaine and paranoia, casting off a series of managers and involved in complex lawsuits, Bowie eventually deserted Britain and America and moved to a house near the Berlin Wall. The Gillmans' formidable research enables them to smash many Bowie myths, but their sympathy for him and his disturbed family is evident, and they deal fairly with his wife, agents and lovers. Still, only obsessed Bowie fans will have the stamina to get all the way through this depressing 500-page odyssey. Photos. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

    They're sexually active. And they play their own instruments.In a time when overproduced boy bands and teen sensations are saturating the music market, the boys of blink-182 are a breath of fresh air -- proving that sugarcoated acts aren't the only thing that can get nominated for MTV's "Video of the Year.""Blink-182 Tales from Beneath Your Mom" is chock full of the outrageous band's behind-the-scenes antics, juvenile sense of humor, and never-before-published photos. Bandmates Mark Hoppus, Tom Delonge, and Travis Barker join Mark's sister, Anne, in this exciting tell-all book about life on the road and backstage.From their early days jamming in Tom's garage, to dominating MTV's "TRL," to going multiplatinum with their album "Enema of the State" and being voted "The Sexiest Rock Band" by "Teen People," fans can at last get an inside look at the video-streaking, toilet-joke-living, self-styled punk/pop band that has all the kids asking, "What's My Age Again?"

    From toughing it out in Texas to his appearance at Woodstock, his affair with Janis Joplin, his stadium-filling tours, and binging on drugs and the temptations of the road before finally fulfilling his dream of becoming a 100-percent pure bluesman, resurrecting the career of Muddy Waters, and winning a Grammy Award for his effort, this is a raucous roller coaster of a true story.

    After a rejection from an elite New York conservatoire—a rejection she always believed stemmed from the color of her skin—she began performing jazz, blues, and classical songs in a bar to fund her music studies. In 1958 her rendition of the Gershwin standard “I Loves You Porgy” became a Top 40 hit, and her subsequent debut album Little Girl Blue launched what would become an extensive singing and songwriting career. Drawing on a wealth of original interviews with Simone’s closest associates, this extraordinary biography follows her sparkling career as well as her passionate belief in racial equality that eventually led her to undergo self-imposed exile from America in 1970. Featuring rare photographs and a review of Simone’s more than 40 albums and numerous hits, this is an extensive look at the complex and extremely talented diva.

    Born in Texas and raised in Arizona, Buck eventually found his way to Bakersfield, California. Unlike the vast majority of country singers, songwriters, and musicians who made their fortunes working and living in Nashville, the often rebellious and always independent Owens chose to create his own brand of country music some 2 000 miles away from Music City - racking up a remarkable twenty-one number one hits along the way. In the process he helped give birth to a new country sound and did more than any other individual to establish Bakersfield as a country music center. In the latter half of the 1990s, Buck began working on his autobiography. Over the next few years, he talked into the microphone of a cassette tape machine for nearly one hundred hours, recording the story of his life. With his near-photographic memory, Buck recalled everything from his early days wearing hand-me-down clothes in Texas to his glory years as the biggest country star of the 1960s; from his legendary Carnegie Hall concert to his multiple failed marriages; from his hilarious exploits on the road to the tragic loss of his musical partner and best friend, Don Rich; from his days as the host of a local TV show in Tacoma, Washington, to his co-hosting the network television show Hee Haw; and from his comeback hit, "Streets of Bakersfield " to his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In these pages, Buck also shows his astute business acumen, having been among the first country artists to create his own music publishing company. He also tells of negotiating the return of all of his Capitol master recordings, his acquisition of numerous radio stations, and of his conceiving and building the Crystal Palace, one of the most venerated musical venues in the country. Buck 'Em! is the fascinating story of the life of country superstar Buck Owens - from the back roads of Texas to the streets of Bakersfield. Click here to watch a video extra on YouTube for Buck 'Em.

    Just a few short months later, he found himself confined to a wheelchair. But rather than succumbing to the darkness that threatened to overwhelm him in the days after his diagnosis, he drew on his powerful faith and unwavering belief in life and found a way to light, hope and acceptance.From growing up in Fairview, to serving in the dioceses in Ballymun and later Mount Merrion and Kilmacud, and his charity work while in UCD, Fr Tony takes us on the journey of his life and shows us how, through this devastating illness, he came to know the true meaning and nature of God's love.Sadly, Tony passed away on the 28 August 2019 but his memoir and his message of hope, strength and unwavering faith live on.'Our lives will never be measured in words spoken or success achieved but rather how we live and how our life has affected those around us.' Fr Tony Coote

    He writes openly about his film career, the huge success of The Krays, his tremendous fight against brain cancer and on to today with fame again in EastEnders. This is a stunningly written account of a fascinating life written with candour and wit. 'There are tears and laughter, and it's all told with honesty, style and unexpected humour. This inspiring tale reveals his hopes and fears as he battled for his life while trying to get his career back into the groove. It will have you glassy-eyed, torn between the Kleenex and digging out your old Spandau Ballet albums' The Mirror

    In 1979, Thatcher's Britain was a country crippled by strikes, joblessness, and economic gloom, divided by race and class—and skanking to a new beat: 2 Tone. The unruly offspring of white boy punk and rude boy ska, the Specials burst on to the scene. On stage they were electric, and at the heart of this energy was the vocal chemistry of the ethereal Terry Hall and Jamaican rude boy Neville Staple. In 1961, five-year-old Neville was sent to England to live with his father, a man for whom discipline bordered on child abuse. As he recounts here, growing up black in the Midlands of the 1960s and 1970s wasn't easy, and his youth was marked by scuffles with skins, compulsive womanizing, and a life of crime that led from shoplifting to burglary and eventually prison. But throughout there was music, and Nev reveals how he became part of the most important band of the 1980s. He remembers sound system battles; the legendary 2 Tone tour with the Selecter, Madness, and Dexy's, and their clashes with white nationalist thugs. He recalls the band's increasing tensions and eventual split; his subsequent foray into bubblegum pop with Fun Boy Three; and a newfound fame in America as godfather to Third Wave ska bands. Finally he reflects on the Specials' reunion and how even now, 30 years later, they can't help tearing themselves apart.