Teaching Music with Passion is a one-of-a-kind, collective masterpiece of thoughts, ideas and suggestions about the noble profession of music education. Both inspirational and instructional, it will surely change the way you teach (and think) about music. Filled with personal experiences, anecdotes and wonderful quotations, this book is an easy-to-read, essential treasure! "One of the most 'real' writings I have read during my 35 years in music education." Mel Clayton, President, MENC: The National Association for Music Education Click here for a YouTube video on Teaching Music with Passion

    It is NOT about Nazism, or Neo-Nazism, and definitely not about politics; it is the story of how the ebullience of youth can be corrupted and misinterpreted by propaganda and the media. Warning This story contains a lot of strong language, British slang and outspoken opinions that may be offensive to some; it is nevertheless the truth.

    All his life Don had been too shy, too deeply pained to ask his father or grandparents to tell him the story of the lovely girl named Peggy Snyder--what delighted or troubled her, who her friends were, how she fell in love, what cut short her brief life.But then, nearing his fiftieth birthday and compelled by his father's failing health, Snyder embarked on a quest to find his mother. He traveled many times from his home in Maine down to his mother's small Pennsylvania town to trace her childhood and adolescence. He tracked down Peggy's high school friends, spent time with her teachers, probed the memories of the girls--now elderly women-- who had been her bridesmaids. Detail by detail, Don pieced together the harrowing story of Peggy's final year--her passionate love affair with her husband, the unexpected pregnancy, the sudden illness that consumed her, and the impossible choice she was forced to make.A heartbreaking, overwhelmingly beautiful book, Of Time and Memory is a story of remembering--and reclaiming--the fragile mystery of a beloved life.

    You'll follow his intensely personal journey through big breaks and broken dreams, desperate dashboard prayers, and limelight glories. Along the way, you'll find the same constant source of strength that he has--hope that is powerful enough to hold you up through whatever trials come your way.

    From the 1960s graffiti proclaiming 'Clapton is God', to his seminal work in supergroup Cream and his phenomenally successful solo career, Eric Clapton has achieved the status of bona fide living legend and enduring icon.Now in his sixth decade in the music business, he occupies an exulted position at the pinnacle of the rock world thanks to songs like Layla, Wonderful Tonight and Tears In Heaven, and for many is considered the greatest guitarist who ever lived.This book will chart his rise to stardom in the 60s and his unparalleled success since walking out of the Yardbirds as a 20-year-old to follow his chosen path of the blues with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and later with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker in supergroup Cream, as well as his successful solo career. However, his success has come at a price. Once a happy well-adjusted boy, the young Clapton was devastated by the realisation at the age of nine that the woman he thought was his sister was in fact his mother, and that the couple he thought were his parents were his maternal grandparents. His treatment by his mother was also to shape his future turbulent relationships with the women in his life, including his failed first marriage to model Pattie Boyd, who was married to Clapton's close friend George Harrison when he fell for her. Motherless Child also chronicles his battles with the demons of drugs and alcohol, his successful journey to sobriety, and examines his legacy as one of the most influential musicans of his generation.This is essential reading for any Clapton fan.

    We'll hear of the great love stories ranging from Johnny Cash and June Carter in the 1960s to Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, who married in 2005. We'll get the truth of the tragedies that led to the loss of three stars all in the same month, starting the rumor of the "Opry Curse." We'll learn how after being stabbed, shot, and maimed, Trace Adkins calls his early honky-tonk years "combat country," and we'll find inspiration from DeFord Bailey, an African American harmonica player in 1927 crippled by childhood polio who rose to fame as one of the first Opry stars. Our hearts will break for Willie Nelson, who lost his only son on Christmas Day, and soar for Amy Grant and Vince Gill, who found true love. Based on over 150 firsthand interviews with the stars of The Grand Ole Opry, these are stories that tell the heart of country--the lives that are lived and inspire the songs we love.

    But she was a born performer, destined to be on the stage. Unlike fake starlets who become famous overnight, Gaga earned her success the hard way, working night after night at sleazy bars and clubs, performing at every club in New York, getting booed offstage, and in the process, finding herself—as a singer, a dancer, a performer, and an artist. She has shocked the public with her crazy outfits, individual sense of style, and headstrong manner. She has sold millions of records, performed to millions of people, and through it all, she has won hearts with her brashness and honesty.

    During a series of visits with her father to the South he'd escaped as a young black man, Lise Funderburg, the mixed-race author of the acclaimed "Black, White, Other," comes to understand his rich and difficult background and the conflicting choices he has had to make throughout his life. Lise Funderburg is a child of the '60s, a white-looking mixed-race girl raised in an integrated Philadelphia neighborhood. As a child, she couldn't imagine what had made her father so strict, demanding, and elusive; about his past she knew only that he had grown up in the Jim Crow South and fled its brutal oppression as a young man. Then, just as she hits her forties, her father is diagnosed with advanced and terminal cancer -- an event that leads father and daughter together on a stream of pilgrimages to his hometown in rural Jasper County, Georgia. As her father's escort, proxy, and, finally, nurse, Funderburg encounters for the first time the fragrant landscape and fraught society -- and the extraordinary food -- of his childhood.In succulent, evocative, and sometimes tart prose, the author brings to life a fading rural South of pecan groves, family-run farms, and pork-laden country cuisine. She chronicles small-town relationships that span generations, the dismantling of her own assumptions about when race does and doesn't matter, and the quiet segregation that persists to this day. As Funderburg discovers the place and people her father comes from, she also, finally, gets to know her magnetic, idiosyncratic father himself. Her account of their thorny but increasingly close relationship is full of warmth, humor, and disarming candor. In one of his last grand actsFunderburg's father recruits his children, neighbors, and friends to throw a pig roast -- an unforgettable meal that caps an unforgettable portrait of a man enjoying his life and loved ones right up through his final days."Pig Candy" takes readers on a stunning journey that becomes a universal investigation of identity and a celebration of the human will, familial love, and, ultimately, life itself.

    And there were those hits: “Wild One,” “Volare,” and “Forget Him,” to name a few. He was far more than just a teen idol. Bobby’s voice and boy next door charm earned him a spot singing, acting, and dancing with Ann-Margret in the film adaptation of the hit musical comedy, Bye Bye Birdie. His comedic talents made him a nighttime fixture during the golden age of TV variety shows, and his phrasing and musicianship led to dozens of headlining gigs in the casino showrooms of Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Frank Sinatra anointed him as his favorite pop singer of the early ‘60s. But early success took a toll on his life. Bobby Rydell’s brutally honest street corner narrative evolved during an eighteen-month collaboration with Allan Slutsky, the award-winning author and producer of the widely acclaimed book and documentary film, Standing in the Shadows of Motown. Inspiring, gut-busting, and, at times, heartbreaking, Teen Idol On The Rocks gives you a front row seat to the turbulent, six decade journey of one of rock and roll’s earliest, and most celebrated teen idols.

    For four years I lived for them. It's not a pretty story.'Bye, Bye Baby is the true tale of a passionate obsession with possibly the most untalented bunch of musicians in the history of rock and roll. Even in their heyday, Leslie, Eric, Woody, Alan, and Derek of the Bay City Rollers were hideously uncool among everyone but fourteen-year-old girls. Their tartan knickerbockers and striped socks were sneered at, while their feeble teenybopper music was ridiculed.And yet for Caroline Sullivan, a teenager in suburban New Jersey, these pasty-faced Scottish youths ruled her heart. Over four hot summers from 1975 to 1979, Sullivan and her band of lust-crazed friends, the Tacky Tartan Tarts, crisscrossed the United States in the Rollers' wake, staking out airports and hotels, tricking airline clerks and wheedling information out of bodyguards and PR companies-all in pursuit of that one big night.Bye Bye Baby is a confessional memoir that invites the reader into some of Sullivan's most excruciatingly embarrassing moments. More than just an uproarious tale of teenage passion and teen-adulation, it is also an inspired exploration of the intimate bonds that tie teenage girls.

    This will become a treasured addition to the collections of Elvis fans everywhere.

    His love affair with punk comes full circle as he learns to hate it and then learns to love it again. The pieces in this book take us from his Southern roots, his brief stay in St. Louis, and his journey to California on a quest for punk bliss. Sinister finds himself in Oakland, where he gets exactly what he wanted, but it may just kill him. From recounts of specific shows to metaphorical dreams of Abraham Lincoln to the tragic stories of circus elephants, All Blacked Out & Nowhere to Go mixes tragedy and comedy into a book that's louder and faster than any book of its kind.

     2.  Fascinating Memoir:  This book has it all: high stakes gambling, drugs, jail, psychotic episodes and debilitating depression and mental illness, plus the depths of despair and heights of victory.  3.  Very High Profile:  Mike Matusow is one of the most recognizable and followed players in poker today.  Yahoo's online search engine identifies over 1.1 million websites that provide content about Mike Matusow.  His weekly online video show "The Mouthpiece" at CardPlayer.com, averages over 2,000 viewers per day. 4.  Super Popular Subject: Poker is the third most watched sport on cable television, behind auto racing and football. 5.  Secondary Market Possibilities: The National Institute of Mental Health estimates there are 5.7 million people in the U.S. that have bipolar disorder and the CDC estimates 1.6 million elementary school children have been diagnosed ADHD.Get Ready for a Wild Ride… Hang on tight as Mike “The Mouth” Matusow, poker player extraordinaire, takes you with him on a breathtaking, true-life roller coaster ride from his humble beginnings in a trailer park to a rock and roll lifestyle full of hot women, sex, wild drug-filled parties and million-dollar wins and losses. Yet behind the glamour and glory of his high-stakes poker career lurked the flip side: a person torn between two debilitating mental illnesses?—?bipolar disorder and ADHD. To dig himself out of depression and suicidal despair, Matusow turned to dangerous street drugs to self-medicate a problem he didn’t understand, and spiraled deeper into the darker world of addiction, police narcotic stings, and jail time. In this revealing and tumultuous autobiography, the combustible Matusow holds nothing back. You’ll get a mouthful of the man behind the infamous Matusow Meltdowns seen on national TV. Riveting, exhilarating, sexy, sometimes shocking and always fascinating, this voyeur’s look into the world of high-stakes poker, mental illness, and ultimately, Matusow’s inspiring redemption, will keep you glued to your seat until the very last page!

    But I have to give credit where it is due, it’s a quality piece. The man has done his research and it shows. It provided me with more than a few revelations … and I’m in the band.’ — Bill Gould, Faith No MoreSmall Victories: The True Story of Faith No More is the definitive biography of one of the most intriguing bands of the late twentieth century. Written with the participation of the group’s key members, it tells how such a heterogeneous group formed, flourished, and fractured, and how Faith No More helped redefine rock, metal and alternative music. The book chronicles the creative and personal tensions that defined and fueled the band, forensically examines the band’s beginnings in San Francisco’s post-punk wasteland, and charts the factors behind the group’s ascent to MTV-era stardom.Small Victories strips away the mythology and misinformation behind their misanthropic masterpiece Angel Dust, explores the rationale behind the frequent hiring and firing of band members, and traces the unraveling of the band in the mid-1990s. It also examines the band’s breakup and hiatus, explores their unwelcome legacy as nu-metal godfathers, and gives a behind-the-scenes view of their rebirth. Based on meticulous research and hundreds of interviews with current and former band members and other key figures, Small Victories combines a fan’s passion with a reporter’s perspicacity.

    She speaks with authority because she arrived there as a child in 1892, and with wide-eyed wonder saw the whole place turn to gold.With his divining rod, Mabel's father tapped gold ore on Beacon Hill but missed becoming a millionaire by selling his claim short. Nonetheless, life was rich for young Mabel in a booming town with points of interest like Poverty Gulch, the Continental Hotel, and a fantastic house called Finn's Folly; with characters around like the promoter Windy Joe and (seen from a distance) the madam Pearl De Vere; with something always going on, whether a celebration or a disastrous fire or train wreck or a no-nonsense miners' strike.Mabel Lee's book brings back a time and place with affection. The foreword is by Lowell Thomas, who was her pupil when she was a young schoolmarm in Cripple Creek.