Life on Two Legs


Norman J. Sheffield - 2013
    For the next 15 years, Trident Studios, was at the epicentre of the music industry, recording some of the era's greatest artists, from The Beatles and David Bowie to Elton John and Genesis. Trident also developed their own talent, including a raw and demanding four-piece band called Queen. After an acrimonious split with Trident, their volatile leader Freddie Mercury famously dedicated a song to Norman: Death On Two Legs. In Life On Two Legs, this legendary music figure breaks his forty year silence and sets the record straight, not just about Freddie and Queen but also about artists from John Lennon and Marc Bolan to Harry Nilsson and Phil Collins and the recording of such classics as Hey Jude by The Beatles and Space Oddity by David Bowie. Funny, fascinating and occasionally irreverent - and with a foreword by Sir Paul McCartney - this is an unmissable memoir that brings to vivid life some of rock's greatest characters as well as the era and the studio that produced some of its classic music.

Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race, and New Beginnings in a New South


Mark Kemp - 2004
    Growing up in North Carolina, Mark Kemp burned with shame and anger at the attitudes of many white southerners--some in his own family--toward the recently won victories of the civil rights movement. "I loved the land that surrounded me but hated the history that haunted that land," he writes.Then the down-home, bluesy rock of the Deep South began taking the nation by storm, and Kemp had a new way of relating to the region that allowed him to see beyond its legacy of racism and stereotypes of backwardness. Although Kemp would always struggle with an ambivalence familiar to many white southerners, the seeds of redemption were planted in adolescence when he first heard Duane Allman and Ronnie Van Zant pour their feelings into their songs.In the tradition of Nick Tosches, Peter Guralnick, and other music historians, Kemp maps his own southern odyssey onto the stories of such iconic bands as the Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and R.E.M., as well as influential indies like the Drive-By Truckers. In dozens of interviews with quintessential southern rockers and some of their most diehard fans, Kemp charts the course of the music that both liberated him and united him with countless others who came of age under its spell. This is a thought-provoking, searingly intimate, and utterly original journey through the South and its music from the 1960s through the 1990s.

Witches, Ghosts, and Signs: Folklore of the Southern Appalachians


Patrick W. Gainer - 2008
    Patrick W. Gainer wrote, "The material presented in this volume has been collected from people in West Virginia over the last half-century. Long before the tape recorder came into use, I was writing down all kinds of traditional lore as I traveled over the hills and through the hollows of the mountain state."Witches, Ghosts, and Signs: Folklore of the Southern Appalachians was first published in 1975 and is the only work thus far to catalog portions of the extensive tradition of folk cures, nature lore, and agricultural signs, as well as a number of witch-tales and ghost-tales. Gainer describes bean stringings, quilting bees, play parties, and infares along with other, more recognizable social occasions such as Christmas and Halloween. These descriptions are extremely valuable to aid our understanding of the textual material that might be passed on at such times. Taken together, Dr. Gainer's material makes the days and atmosphere of long ago come alive and immediate. Even as radio, television and easier travel between communities today tend to standardize speech and tradition, Dr. Gainer's carefully collected and preserved folklore lets readers comprehend more fully what sets the people of Southern Appalachia so proudly apart from the rest of the country.About the Author:Patrick W. Gainer, Professor Emeritus of English at West Virginia University, is widely renowned as a collector of folklore, as a musician, educator, and founder of the West Virginia Folk Festival at Glenville

A Good American


Alex George - 2012
    It is 1904. When Frederick and Jette must flee her disapproving mother, where better to go than America, the land of the new? Originally set to board a boat to New York, at the last minute, they take one destined for New Orleans instead ("What's the difference? They're both new"), and later find themselves, more by chance than by design, in the small town of Beatrice, Missouri. Not speaking a word of English, they embark on their new life together. Beatrice is populated with unforgettable characters: a jazz trumpeter from the Big Easy who cooks a mean gumbo, a teenage boy trapped in the body of a giant, a pretty schoolteacher who helps the young men in town learn about a lot more than just music, a minister who believes he has witnessed the Second Coming of Christ, and a malevolent, bicycle-riding dwarf. A Good American is narrated by Frederick and Jette's grandson, James, who, in telling his ancestors' story, comes to realize he doesn't know his own story at all. From bare-knuckle prizefighting and Prohibition to sweet barbershop harmonies, the Kennedy assassination, and beyond, James's family is caught up in the sweep of history. Each new generation discovers afresh what it means to be an American. And, in the process, Frederick and Jette's progeny sometimes discover more about themselves than they had bargained for. Poignant, funny, and heartbreaking, A Good American is a novel about being an outsider - in your country, in your hometown, and sometimes even in your own family. It is a universal story about our search for home.

He Walked the Americas


L. Taylor Hansen - 1963
    

The Mexican Pet


Jan Harold Brunvand - 1986
    . . . Many readers . . . will be gratified to know that Brunvand intends to continue this series of relaxed, unofficial excursions into popular legends. Admirers of curiosa and the psychology of crowds cannot afford to miss them." —Kirkus Reviews

Mary: Spirit Woman of the Old West


Janis Hoffman - 2016
    There are many corrections and many notes stuck between the pages, and the ink and pencil are faded and often difficult to read. I have had to guess at the meaning a few times and hope I haven’t done too much harm to her intent. Many changes were made in punctuation, spelling, paragraphing and chapters, and I’ve updated a few words, like Black Feet to Blackfoot. She made a few mistakes I did not correct, like mixing up the locations of the Little Blue and Big Blue rivers. The name Mary Faraday Huntington does not appear in any of the old records. Whoever wrote the words was neither shy nor humble, has a very foul mouth, and shamelessly talks about things rarely mentioned in stories of the Wild West. Her story is the way it was long ago, not the sugar coated fairly tales of book and film. Her story reminds me of something Jamake Highwater wrote: “The outward rusticity of primal behavior makes Western people devise a self-serving ideal of themselves as civilized, which sets them widely apart from other peoples and from nature. Their withdrawal from an awareness of their place in nature is nearly complete…primal peoples live among animals and vegetation constantly in close contact with the sources of nourishment and death, understanding their environment and expressing their ideas and feelings in terms of the natural world. In contrast, people in the West have created an idealization of their relationship with nature which has neither life nor spirit.” ADVENTURES IN THE WILD WEST OF LONG AGO Mary Faraday Huntington I’ve led a wild life and had a hell of a good time. I still have my nose, all my fingers and my scalp thanks to my high intelligence, strength, quickness, excellent judgment, and a little help from all my many, many friends. I promise not to lie too bad. If you are a prissy little thing, best to pass on by. If you are a refined gentleman, pass on by. 1. You’re just a girrrrrrl 2. The Under Water People 3. Fort Childs 4. Rising Wolf 5. The second best whorehouse in town 1 YOU’RE JUST A GIRRRRRL “You can't race. You’re just a girrrrrrl!” I bounced him a good one and he shrieked and jumped up and down with blood spurting out of his big, ugly nose. Oh my, how he did carry on. I got on my pony and went to the line. The flag dropped and off we went. No problem, I promised Charlie 3 cobs if we win. He got his corn and I got a shiny silver dollar and a tin can full of chewing tobacco. I traded the can for a bunch of fancy ribbons at old man Bailey’s haberdashery. ____________________ My name is Mary Faraday Huntington and I was born in 1834 at Independence, Missouri. My mother died when I was 9 months old and an Indian woman working at a whorehouse was the only one Christian enough to take me in. Don’t know who my father was but he must have been big, strong, and sharp as a whip. Probably an army man having a little fun. Sure they call me a bastard, but they learned quick enough not to do that to my face. Jennie is a Blackfoot spirit woman and a real good mother who cooks and cleans at Polly’s Paradise. We have a little room in the basement. Her real name is Aokii’aki, Water Woman. She taught me sign and Blackfoot, how to live off the land, and how to fight with my hands and feet and knife. And she is teaching me the ways of a spirit woman.

Heroes: David Bowie and Berlin


Tobias Rüther - 2008
    The rocker settled in Berlin, where he would make his “Berlin Trilogy”—the albums Low, Heroes, and Lodger, which are now considered some of the most critically acclaimed and innovative of the late twentieth century. But Bowie’s time in Berlin was about more than producing new music. As Tobias Rüther describes in this fascinating tale of Bowie’s Berlin years, the musician traveled to West Berlin—the capital of his childhood dreams and the city of Expressionism—to repair his body and mind from the devastation of drug addiction, delusions, and mania.             Painting a vivid picture of Bowie’s life in the Schöneberg area of the city, Rüther describes the artist’s friendships and collaborations with his roommate, Iggy Pop, as well as Brian Eno and Tony Visconti. Rüther illustrates Bowie’s return to painting, days cycling to the Die Brücke museum, and his exploration of the city’s nightlife, both the wild side and the gay scene. In West Berlin, Bowie also met singer and actress Romy Haag; came to know Hansa Studios, where he would record Low and Heroes; and even landed the part of a Prussian aristocrat in Just a Gigolo, starring alongside Marlene Dietrich. Eventually Rüther uses Bowie and his explorations of the cultural and historical undercurrents of West Berlin to examine the city itself: divided, caught in the Cold War, and how it began to redefine itself as a cultural metropolis, turning to the arts to start a new history. Tying in with an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, in September, 2014, Heroes tells the fascinating story of how the music of the future arose from the spirit of the past. It is an unforgettable look at one of the world’s most renowned musicians in one of its most inspiring cities.

Pig City: From The Saints to Savage Garden


Andrew Stafford - 2004
    But behind the music lay a ghost city of malice and corruption.Pressed under the thumb of the Bjelke-Petersen government and its toughest enforcers - the police - Brisbane's musicians, radio announcers and political activists braved ignorance, harassment and often violence to be heard."Pig City" maps the shifts in musical, political and cultural consciousness that have shaped the city's history and identity. This is Brisbane's story - the story of how a city finally grew up.

Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture


Ytasha L. Womack - 2013
    From the sci-fi literature of Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, and N. K. Jemisin to the musical cosmos of Sun Ra, George Clinton, and the Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am, to the visual and multimedia artists inspired by African Dogon myths and Egyptian deities, the book’s topics range from the “alien” experience of blacks in America to the “wake up” cry that peppers sci-fi literature, sermons, and activism. With a twofold aim to entertain and enlighten, Afrofuturists strive to break down racial, ethnic, and social limitations to empower and free individuals to be themselves.

Autobiography of Mother Jones


Mary Harris Jones - 1925
    She played a significant role in organizing mining strikes in West Virginia and Colorado, as well as the Pittsburgh steel strike of 1919. She was instrumental in the formation of the United Mine Workers union (UMW) in 1890 and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1905.An important addition to feminist literature, the Autobiography of Mother Jones is also "a great piece of working-class literature…probably the most readable book in the whole field of American labor history." — Clarence Darrow.

From the Ashes, Surviving the Station Nightclub Fire


Gina Russo - 2010
    Despite so much personal loss in the national tragedy that was The Station Fire, Gina Russo offers readers an emotional story of hope and triumph that will amaze and inspire.

Ranters and Crowd Pleasers: Punk in Pop Music, 1977-1992


Greil Marcus - 1993
    Marcus's unparalleled insight into present-day culture and brilliant ear for music bring punk's searing half-life into deep focus. Originally published in the U.S. as "Ranters and Crowd Pleasers.""

The Roof: The Beatles' Final Concert


Ken Mansfield - 2018
    January 30, 1969 was one of those moments. There are those who were on the periphery of the event that day and heard what was going on; but as one of the few remaining insiders who accompanied the Beatles up onto the cold windswept roof of the Apple building, Ken Mansfield had a front row seat to the full sensory experience of the moment and witnessed what turned out to be beginning of the end. Ken shares in The Roof: The Beatles Final Concert, the sense that something special was taking place before his eyes that would live on forever in the hearts and souls of millions. As the US manager of Apple, Ken Mansfield was on the scene in the days, weeks, and months leading up to this monumental event. He shares his insights into the factors that brought them up onto that roof and why one of the greatest bands of all time left it all on that stage. Join Ken as he reflects on the relationships he built with the Fab Four and the Apple corps and what each player meant to this symphony of music history.

Tape Delay


Charles Neal - 1987
    A virtual Who's Who of people who've done the most in the eighties to drag music out of commercial confinement."--NMEContributors: Marc Almond, Dave Ball, Cabaret Voltaire, Nick Cave, Chris & Cosey, Coil, Einsturzende Neubauten, The Fall, Diamanda Galas, Genesis P-Orridge, Michael Gira, The Hafler Trio, Matt Johnson (The The), Laibach, Lydia Lunch, New Order, Psychic TV, Boyd Rice, Henry Rollins, Clint Ruin, Silverstar Amoeba, Mark E. Smith (The Fall), Sonic Youth, Stevo, Mark Stewart, Swans, Test Dept, David Tibet (Current 93), Touch.