She purred so intimately in nightclubs that couples clasped hands and huddled closer. She hypnotized, even on television. Lee epitomized cool, but her trademark song, “Fever”—covered by Beyoncé and Madonna—is the essence of sizzling sexual heat. Her jazz sense dazzled Ray Charles, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong. She was the voice of swing, the voice of blues, and she provided four of the voices for Walt Disney’s Lady and the Tramp, whose score she co-wrote. But who was the woman behind the Mona Lisa smile? With elegant writing and impeccable research, including interviews with hundreds who knew Lee, acclaimed music journalist James Gavin offers the most revealing look yet at an artist of infinite contradictions and layers. Lee was a North Dakota prairie girl who became a temptress of enduring mystique. She was a singer-songwriter before the term existed. Lee “had incredible confidence onstage,” observed the Godfather of Punk, Iggy Pop; yet inner turmoil wracked her. She spun a romantic nirvana in her songs, but couldn’t sustain one in reality. As she passed middle age, Lee dwelled increasingly in a bizarre dreamland. She died in 2002 at the age of eighty-one, but Lee’s fascination has only grown since. This masterful account of Peggy Lee’s strange and enchanting life is a long overdue portrait of an artist who redefined popular singing.

    The book opens with Leaf Fielding's arrest in a pre-dawn police raid and ends five years later with his release from jail.The narrative moves back and forth between the harsh world of prison and his previous life - from a childhood at a brutal boarding school onto undergraduate days and his LSD epiphany in the summer of love, 1967.Acid transformed him in an instant from nerdy scholar to footloose freak. His ten years of adventures in the hippie underground gave the title to this book - a quote from a Bob Dylan song - they also took him across Europe, to the Andes, to Indochina and on to the edge of the known universe. They also led inexorably to his downfall.

    Simon's same willingness to open his heart to the reader permeates The Play Goes On. This second act takes the reader from the mid-1970s to the present, a period in which Simon wrote some of his most popular and critically acclaimed plays, including the Brighton Beach trilogy and Lost in Yonkers, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. Simon experienced enormous professional success during this time, but in his personal life he struggled to find that same sense of happiness and satisfaction. After the death of his first wife, he and his two young daughters left New York for Hollywood. There he remarried, and when that foundered he remarried again. Told with his characteristic humor and unflinching sense of irony, The Play Goes On is rich with stories of how Simon's art came to imitate his life. Simon's forty-plus plays make up a body of work that is a long-running memoir in its own right, yet here, in a deeper and more personal book than his first volume, Simon offers a revealing look at an artist in crisis but still able and willing to laugh at himself.

    This is the autobiography of their lead singer, Ian Gillan. Here he tells his life story, and that of the band he helped to make great. Stories of friction and violence, groupies and non-stop partying, drugs and alcohol, and how, finally, it all spiralled out of control to destroy the band.

    Born in England and emigrating to Queensland in 1883 in his early twenties, Morant was a charming but reckless man who established a reputation as a rider, polo player and writer. He submitted ballads to The Bulletin that were published under the name 'The Breaker' and counted Banjo Paterson as a friend. When appeals were made for horsemen to serve in the war in South Africa, Morant joined up, first with the South Australian Mounted Rifles and then with a South African irregular unit, the Bushveldt Carbineers.In October 1901 Morant and two other Australians, Lieutenants Peter Handcock and George Witton, were arrested for the murder of Boer prisoners. Morant and Handcock were court-martialled and executed in February 1902 as the Boer War was in its closing stages, but the debate over their convictions continues to this day.Does Breaker Morant deserve his iconic status? Who was Harry Morant? What events and passions led him to a conflict that was essentially an Imperial war, played out on a distant continent under a foreign flag? Was he a scapegoat for British war crimes or a criminal himself?With his trademark brilliant command of story, Peter FitzSimons unravels the many myths and fictions that surround the life of Harry Morant. The truths FitzSimons uncovers about 'The Breaker' and the part he played in the Boer War are astonishing - and, in the hands of this master storyteller, make compelling reading.

    "In the form of a diary, he takes us through the crazy journey that is making music. His excellent recollections of the excesses of morons and geniuses involved in creating melodies and rhythms for us to enjoy are sheer entertainment." - Musician Robert Palmer (from his foreword for the book). From the author's first glimpse of a magical recording studio in the mid-1960s up through a busy career that continues to the present day, this rollicking story can only be told by those that were there. As the young tape operator on sessions for The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and Joe Cocker at the famed Olympic Sound Studios in London, Phill learned the ropes from experienced engineers and producers such as Glyn Johns and Eddie Kramer. Phill soon worked his way up engineering sessions for Mott the Hoople, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley and many other lendary rockers. He eventually became a freelance engineer/producer and worked with Roxy Music, Go West, Talk Talk, and Robert Plant. But more than a recollection of participating in some of the most treasured music of the past 40 years, this is a man's journey through life as Phill struggles to balance his home and family with a job where drug abuse, chaos, rampant egos, greed, lies and the increasingly invasive record business take their toll. It's also a cautionary tale, where long workdays and what once seemed like harmless indulgences become health risks, yet eventually offer a time to reflect back on.

    The Untold Vajpayee : The Life and Times of A Poet Politician by ULLEKH NP , 9780670088782

    A pioneering drummer who has transcended genres, he did much to popularize world music with his fierce passion for the rhythms of Africa. He is that rare thing, a critically acclaimed musician who has enjoyed global success with not one but several supergroups to his name, including Cream and Blind Faith. Here, Ginger tells his story for the first time and without any self-censorship. It's an often harrowing, but honest journey from his humble beginnings in war-torn south London to his adopted home in South Africa's beautiful Western Cape. He tells of his life-long love of jazz, how he discovered the drums and African music, and life on the road. He also confesses to the heroin use that should have killed him in his colorful 1960s prime, working and playing with the biggest names of the time. In the 1970s, he came up with a trans-Saharan trucking scheme, was a successful rally driver, built an ill-fated recording studio, and discovered a consuming passion for playing polo. He talks candidly of the loss and recovery of his fortune, his three marriages, Cream's 1993 induction into the rock 'n' roll hall of fame, their subsequent successful reunion in 2005, and his hopes for the future.

    While these are elements of popular culture, they aren’t all it has to offer. Pop culture may not cure diseases, topple political regimes, or make scientific breakthroughs, but it does play a vital role in the story of humanity.In fact, it’s pretty hard to define the human experience without it. And it’s impossible to create pop culture without the human experience. Popular podcaster Knox McCoy understands this, and so do the tens of thousands of listeners who tune in to hear him talk about pop culture every week on his wildly popular podcast, The Popcast with Knox and Jamie.In The Wondering Years, Knox explores this idea of connecting popular culture to his own experiences. Through hilarious yet poignant stories, he reflects on how pop culture has helped shape his life and carve out the foundation of his faith. While the three cultural tentpoles—the South, the Church, and Sports—defined many aspects of his East Tennessee upbringing, it was pop culture that most definitively influenced Knox and his sense of the world at large. Through books, television, music, and movies, Knox found many of the answers he was searching for about God and the universe and why we are all here. The Wondering Years is a hilarious look back at the key influences that shaped Knox’s formative years and his faith, a reminder of our own encounters with pop culture that have shaped each of our formative years and continue to influence us today.

    Sharing some of the recipes that they brought over, the tomatoes, the garlic, the sausage, the wine, this is a mouthwatering memoir of family and food. It is also a brilliant evocation of life between the wars, a triumphant story of survival against all the odds, that captures the sights and smells of Italian life and culture, at home and abroad.

    And that’s just since the Halifax musician started making records of his own in 1999. For a decade before that, he was one-quarter of Thrush Hermit, a band of scrappy Superchunk disciples who became hard-rock revivalists and one of the last survivors of the ’90s pop “explosion” of major-label interest in Halifax.Canada’s east coast has never been much of a pop-culture mecca. Most musicians from the region who’ve ever made it big moved away. But armed with a stubborn streak and a knack for great songwriting, Plaskett has kept Halifax as his home, building both a career and a music community there. Along the way, he’s earned great respect: when he plays shows in Alberta, east-coast expats literally thank him for staying home.Nowhere with You is the study of how he pulled this off, from the origins of Canada’s east-coast exodus to Plaskett’s anointment as “Halifax’s Rick Rubin.” It’s a story about what happens when you call a city “the new Seattle,” about the lessons you learn playing to empty rooms in Oklahoma, and about defying radio-single expectations with rock operas and triple records. It’s about doing what you want, where you want, no matter how much work it takes.

    Author Mark Wilkerson interviewed Townshend himself and several of Townshend's friends and associates for this biography.

    Guns are drawn, and in the ensuing hail of bullets, only the husband walks away. However, police soon find out, that what seems to be a robbery gone wrong is anything but. The Case of the Ragged Stranger, as the tabloids dubbed it, is a tale of deceit, betrayal, and depravity, a stranger-than-fiction mystery story whose shocking solution riveted the nation and made it one of the most sensational crimes of the Jazz Age.

    Refusing to cave in to society's rules, Eleanor's exuberant style, wavering voice and lack of Hollywood beauty are fodder for the media.First Lady for thirteen years, Eleanor redefines and exploits this role to a position ofpower. Using her influence she champions for Jews, African Americans and women. Living through two world wars Eleanor witnesses thousands of graves, broken bodies and grieving families. After visiting troops in the Pacific she says:"If we don't make this a more decent world to live in I don't see how we can look these boys in the eyes."She defies a post-war return to status quo and establishes the Universal Declarationof Human Rights within the U.N. She earns her way to being named "First Lady of the World." The audacity of this woman to live out her own destiny challenges us to do the same. After all, it's not about Eleanor. Her story is history.  It's about us.

    Through interviews with all of the principal troublemakers, Martin Popoff celebrates the formation of the band and the records that made them legends: Motörhead, Overkill, Bomber, Ace of Spades, No Sleep ’til Hammersmith, and Iron Fist. An in-depth coda brings the story up to date with the shocking recent deaths of Taylor and Kilmister.Motörhead comes to life in this book as bad-luck bad boys — doused in drink and drugs, most notably speed — incapable of running their lives right, save for Fast Eddie, who is charged with holding things together. Popoff also examines the heady climate of music through the band’s rise to prominence during the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, with detailed reflection on Motörhead’s unique position in the scene as both originators and embattled survivors who carried on the renegade spirit of those times.