Patti Smith and Peter Asher. Prince and Pink Floyd. Mellencamp and Maroon 5. Dead Can Dance and Dickens. Nick Cave and Nashville. The Jordanaires and jazz. Toss in Brian Eno, Weird Al, The Sex Pistols, Britney Spears — plus plenty more — and you’ve got one of the busiest reading weeks this fall. Let’s get to it:
Peter Asher: A Life in Music
By David Jacks
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Spanning more than 50 years of modern music history, Peter Asher: A Life in Music highlights every turn in Peter Asher’s amazing career. Over a dozen years of research has gone into telling his story, with numerous interviews conducted with Asher, along with firsthand observations of him at work in various recording studios around Los Angeles. The author also had access to Asher’s archives, which offered rare photographs and other career memorabilia to help illustrate this biography. Over 100 artists, friends, and colleagues agreed to be interviewed, and they help to provide insight into Asher’s personality and working methodology. Included are singers Jackson Browne, David Crosby, Marianne Faithfull, Carole King, Kenny Loggins, Graham Nash, Aaron Neville, Randy Newman, Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt, JD Souther and James Taylor; producers Lou Adler, Mike Curb, Richard Perry, Al Schmitt and Sir George Martin; musicians Hal Blaine, Andrew Gold, Danny Kortchmar, Paul Shaffer and Waddy Wachtel; and actors Kevin Kline and Robin Williams. Many of these participants also provided previously unseen photographs. Asher has had a unique insider’s view into the changing world of the music business — from the British invasion to digital streaming. His ability to produce projects with such a broad range — rock, pop, folk, country, rhythm and blues, jazz, dance, Latin, classical, comedy, and Broadway and movie soundtracks — is almost unheard of. And in a business rife with shady characters, his intelligence, honesty, and business sense has earned the respect of all he’s worked with. Still producing exciting work in the entertainment industry, Peter Asher has quite a story to tell.”
John Mellencamp: American Paintings and Assemblages
By John Mellencamp & Dr. Louis A. Zona
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The acclaimed singer-songwriter John Mellencamp has been an accomplished painter for more than four decades. This definitive survey — curated by Mellencamp himself — of his large-scale oil portraits and mixed-media assemblages documents America’s heart and soul, revealing unsettling but beautiful truths with an antiestablishment frown and a rich sense of narrative. “Although we may primarily know Mellencamp as a rock star, one of the highest-selling of all time and a (Rock And Roll) Hall of Famer, he is also a great painter, as this book shows. Not a musician who also paints … No, John legitimately belongs in the modern art pantheon,” says Bob Guccione Jr. in his essay that delineates the connection of Mellencamp’s music and art, both imbued with the earnest voice of America’s heartland.”
Lights, Camera, Accordion!: Eye-Popping Photographs of Weird Al Yankovic, 1981-2006
By Jon ‘Bermuda’ Schwartz
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Weird Al” Yankovic continues as one of our most beloved comedians, actors, and musicians. A skilled accordion player and lyricist, the California native not only crafts meticulous parodies, but also creates hilarious originals and pop culture-themed polkas. Now in his fifth decade of recording and performing, Al has maintained a career that has outlasted many of the artists that he has lampooned. Since 1980, Al’s drummer Jon “Bermuda” Schwartz has been by his side, photographing and documenting his career. Jon has taken more than 20,000 images of Al in his element: on tour, in the studio, on video sets, and backstage. Lights, Camera, Accordion! presents over 300 images of Al, culled from Jon’s personal collection of color photography, all restored from the original negatives. This exhaustive volume represents the 25 years that Jon shot Al on 35mm color film, from 1981 to 2006, before switching to digital photography. Jon additionally provides previously unheard stories and anecdotes throughout. From Eat It and Like A Surgeon to later classics such as Smells Like Nirvana, Amish Paradise and the Star Wars parody The Saga Begins, Lights, Camera, Accordion! showcases a body of work that spans 10 albums, five Grammys, and nearly 2,000 concerts to millions of fans — and is packed with the weirdness and fun that always surrounds the undisputed king of comedic music.”
A Book of Days
By Patti Smith
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “In 2018, without any plan or agenda for what might happen next, Patti Smith posted her first Instagram photo: Her hand with the simple message “Hello Everybody!” Known for shooting with her beloved Land camera, Smith started posting images from her phone including portraits of her kids, her radiator, her boots, and her Abyssinian cat Cairo. Followers felt an immediate affinity with these miniature windows into Smith’s world, photographs of her daily coffee, the books she’s reading, the graves of beloved heroes — William Blake, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Simone Weil, Albert Camus. Over time, a coherent story of a life devoted to art took shape, and more than a million followers responded to Smith’s unique aesthetic in images that chart her passions, devotions, obsessions, and whims. Original to this book are vintage photographs: Anniversary pearls, a mother’s keychain, and a husband’s Mosrite guitar. Here, too, are never-before-seen photos of life on and off the road, train stations, obscure cafés, a notebook always nearby. In wide-ranging yet intimate daily notations, Smith shares dispatches from her travels around the world. With over 365 photographs taking you through a single year, A Book of Days is a new way to experience the expansive mind of the visionary poet, writer, and performer. Hopeful, elegiac, playful — and complete with an introduction by Smith that explores her documentary process — A Book of Days is a timeless offering for deeply uncertain times, an inspirational map of an artist’s life.”
Being Gerry Mulligan: My Life in Music
By Gerry Mulligan & Ken Poston
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Being Gerry Mulligan: My Life in Music is an intimate chronicle of Gerry Mulligan’s life and career, told in his own words. This personal narrative reveals great insight into the musician’s complex personality. He speaks freely about the important milestones in both his personal and professional life, bringing a new understanding to the man behind the music. Mulligan was one of the most important figures in the history of jazz. He was extremely influential as both a composer / arranger and as an instrumentalist. His career spanned an amazing six decades, beginning in the 1940s and continuing up to his death in 1996. Within that time, he worked with almost every major jazz figure, including Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie, as well as his own illustrious groups that featured the likes of Chet Baker, Bob Brookmeyer, Art Farmer and Chico Hamilton. As a composer, his music was distinct and original. His melodies were masterpieces, logically structured and filled with wit and humor. As an arranger, his linear approach and clever use of counterpoint helped define a new standard for modern jazz orchestration. As an instrumentalist, he is the most significant baritone saxophonist in the history of jazz. Mulligan single-handedly established the baritone saxophone as a solo voice. As one of the great jazz innovators, his writing and playing influenced entire stylistic movements, including cool jazz and bossa nova. This is his story, the way he wanted it told.”
Blue in Green
By Wesley Brown
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Written by playwright and novelist Wesley Brown, Blue in Green narrates one evening in August 1959, when, mere weeks after the release of his landmark album Kind of Blue, Miles Davis is assaulted by a member of the New York City Police Department outside of the Birdland jazz club. In the aftermath, we enter the strained relationship between Davis and his wife Frances Taylor, whom he has recently cajoled into ending her run as a performer on Broadway and retiring from modern dance and ballet altogether. Frances, who is increasingly subject to Davis’ temper — fueled by both his professional envy and substance abuse — reckons with her upbringing in Christian Science and, through a fateful meeting with Lena Horne, the conflicting demands of motherhood and artistic vocation. Meanwhile, blowing off steam from his beating, Miles speeds across Manhattan in his sports car. Racing alongside him are recollections of a stony, young John Coltrane, a combative Charlie Parker and the stilted world of the Black middle class he’s left behind. Brown (born 1945) is a novelist and playwright. He is the author of novels including Darktown Strutters, Push Comes to Shove and Tragic Magic, which was reissued in 2021 to critical acclaim.”
Beyond Sketches of Spain: Tete Montoliu and the Construction of Iberian Jazz
By Prof. Benjamin Fraser
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Few musicians shaped Iberian jazz more than pianist Vicenç Tete Montoliu i Massana (1933-97). Fascinated by the modernist aesthetics of mid-century jazz, Montoliu was known for a carefully crafted mix of lyricism and dissonance, a penchant for discordant crashes, and a development of highly original compositions. Over the course of his career, he boasted some 100 recordings spanning Denmark, Germany, Holland, Spain, and the United States, and performed with the most notable jazz luminaries including Lionel Hampton, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Dexter Gordon and Archie Shepp. In drawing from the Black American jazz form, Montoliu fashioned an adjacent critical space shaped by his experiences as a Catalan and a person with congenital visual impairment living under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Beyond Sketches of Spain: Tete Montoliu and the Construction of Iberian Jazz explores the artist’s life, musical production, and international reception within a cultural studies framework, invoking Fumi Okiji‘s notion of gathering in difference. In its investigation of this impressive and often overlooked transnational jazz legend, the book moves beyond mere sketches of Spanish nationhood, challenges conventional scholarly narratives, and recovers links between the United States, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, and Europe.”
Bird/Diz: An Erased History of Bebop
By Warren C Longmire
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “What becomes of a history overwritten, sampled, celebrated and smeared? How do we find creation past erasure? Part new media archive, part visual poetry project, Bird/Diz: An Erased History of Bebop is a journey into highs and lows of Black Americaís first global music export. Taking biographies of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie as a jumping off point, Bird/Diz jumps between actual erasures of the written/oral history of bebop, redacted poems taken from those words, and reflections on historic performances from some of jazz’s chief characters. From St. Louis heroin dens to Copenhagen soundstages, it strives to find, in the continued disappearance of Black American contributions to world art, the seed of innovation that never dies.”
The Book of Jose: A Memoir
By Fat Joe & Shaheem Reid
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Fat Joe is a hip-hop legend, but this is not a tale of celebrity; it is the story of Joseph Cartagena, a kid who came of age in the South Bronx during its darkest years of drugs, violence, and abandonment, and how he navigated that traumatizing landscape until he found — through art, friendship, luck, and will — a rocky path to a different life. Joe is born into a sprawling Puerto Rican and Cuban family in the projects of the South Bronx. From infancy his life is threatened by violence, and by the time he starts middle school, he is faced with the grim choice that defined a generation: to become predator or prey. Soon Joe and his crew dominate the streets, but he finds his true love among the park jams where the Bronx’s wild energy takes musical form. His identity splits in two: a hustler roaming record stores, looking for beats; and a budding rapper whose violent rep rings in the streets. As Joe’s day-to-day life becomes more fraught with betrayal, addiction, and death, until he himself is shot and almost killed, he gravitates toward the music that gives him both a voice to tell the stories of his young life and the tools he needs to create a new one. The challenges never stop — but neither does Joe. This memoir, written in Joe’s own intensely compelling voice, moves with the momentum of pulp fiction, but underneath the tragicomedy and riveting tales of the streets and the industry is a thought-provoking story about a generation of survivors raised in warlike conditions — the life-and-death choices they had to make, the friends they lost and mourned, and the glittering lives they created from the ruins.”
Sex Pistols: I Wanna Be Me
By Dave Simpson
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Amidst the chaos that surrounded The Sex Pistols, it’s often forgotten just what a powerful band they were, and what great records they made. The Sex Pistols were no ordinary group. Their story might be short, and not without its casualties, but their legacy is undoubted; one listen to their ferocious, raw rock ’n’ roll will soon tell you that. Without them, popular culture in the last 30+ years would be very, very different. The Pistols didn’t just kick down doors; they trashed the music industry’s house. For a band who (really) only released one album and four incandescent singles — Anarchy in the U.K., God Save the Queen, Pretty Vacant and Holidays in the Sun — they gave birth to a sea of imitators and inspired a DIY aesthetic still alive today. Not bad for a band that ‘couldn’t play.’ Despite claims from New York, The Sex Pistols were the true originators of punk; no one else had their attitude, balls, or honesty — as inspired by anger and poverty, as art and poetry. The Sex Pistols ARE punk; the rest are ‘punk rock’.”
Harder to Breathe: A Memoir of Making Maroon 5, Losing It All, and Finding Recovery
By Ryan Dusick
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “In the ’90s, Ryan Dusick and his friends Adam Levine and Jesse Carmichael dreamed about making it big … and against all odds, they did. This inside story recounts Maroon 5’s founding and their road to becoming Grammy-winning megastars, told through the eyes of former drummer Dusick. He takes readers behind the scenes of the band’s meteoric rise to success — and the grueling demands that came with it — as well as his personal struggles with anxiety and addiction after his departure from the band. For Maroon 5, fame came with a platinum debut record, jam sessions with Prince in his own living room, and encounters with celebrities such as Jessica Simpson, Justin Timberlake, John Mayer and Bono. For Dusick, stardom came to an abrupt halt with the devastating loss of his ability to play drums due to chronic nerve damage. Alongside Maroon 5’s story of camaraderie and pressure, Dusick interweaves his own narrative: A decade lost to liquor and antianxiety medication, his ferocious commitment to recovery, and his current perspective as a professional counselor. With a candor that will speak to anyone who has struggled with mental health, Harder to Breathe moves beyond celebrity to examine the nature of heartbreak and resilience, and to buoy anyone currently facing similar challenges. Ultimately, Harder to Breathe is a roller-coaster memoir about how making it to the top sent Dusick to the bottom — and how he let go of the past and embraced a new future, one breath at a time.”
Drumming with Dead Can Dance: and Parallel Adventures
By Peter Ulrich
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Peter Ulrich thinks he got the ultimate fan trip ― to play, record, and tour with his favourite band, Dead Can Dance. His memoir details the early days, from signing with 4AD, recording their first album, then heading off on tour with Cocteau Twins. There follow insights into the legendary period of the 4AD label of the 1980s; contributing to This Mortal Coil; guesting with Wolfgang Press, Pieter Nooten and Michael Brook, and Modern English; and touring the U.S. for the first time in 1990. Following his departure from DCD, Ulrich remained close with Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard, and his memoir tracks their parallel paths over the following decades. A must for fans of Dead Can Dance and the 4AD label, and at the same time, a fascinating slalom through the ups and downs of trying to pursue a vision through the music industry.”
The Jordanaires: The Story of the World’s Greatest Backup Vocal Group
By Gordon Stoker, Michael Kosser & Alan Stoker
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The greatest backup-vocal group in the history of recorded music undoubtedly was The Jordanaires, a gospel group of mostly Tennessee boys, formed in the 1940s, that set the standard for studio vocal groups in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, and beyond. In their 65-year career, from 1948 through 2013, the recordings they sang on have sold an estimated eight billion copies. They sang on more than 200 of Elvis Presley’s recordings, including most of his biggest hits. They were in three of his best-known movies, appeared with him on most of his early nationwide TV shows, and toured with him for many years. Throughout Elvis’s early career, they were his most trusted friends and probably his most positive influence. “No telling how many thousands of miles we rode together over those fourteen years,” remembered Gordon Stoker, the group’s manager and high tenor, “and most of those miles were good miles, with lots of laughs, and lots of talk about life.” While the Jordanaires’ bread and butter may have been Nashville’s burgeoning recording industry, it seemed that there was always a plane waiting to take them cross country to the pop sessions in L.A. They sang on most of Ricky Nelson’s biggest hits and over the years backed up Andy Williams, Fats Domino, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Dinah Shore, The Everly Brothers, Glen Campbell, Patti Page, Neil Young, Perry Como, Loretta Lynn, Ringo Starr, Tom Jones, Andy Griffith, Bobby Vinton, Brenda Lee, Patsy Cline, Billy Ray Cyrus, Clyde McPhatter and about 2,100 other recording acts.”
Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius
By Nick Hornby
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Every so often, a pairing comes along that seems completely unlikely — until it’s not. Peanut butter and jelly, Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong Un, ducks and puppies, and now: Dickens and Prince. Equipped with a fan’s admiration and his trademark humor and wit, Nick Hornby invites us into his latest obsession: the cosmic link between two unlikely artists, geniuses in their own rights, spanning race, class, and centuries — each of whom electrified their different disciplines and whose legacy resounded far beyond their own time. When Prince’s 1987 record Sign O’ the Times was rereleased in 2020, the iconic album now came with dozens of songs that weren’t on the original — Prince was endlessly prolific, recording 102 songs in 1986 alone. In awe, Hornby began to wonder, Who else ever produced this much? Who else ever worked that way? He soon found his answer in Victorian novelist and social critic Charles Dickens, who died more than 100 years before Prince began making music. Examining the two artists’ personal tragedies, social statuses, boundless productivity, and other parallels, both humorous and haunting, Hornby shows how these two unlikely men from different centuries “lit up the world.” In the process, he creates a lively, stimulating rumination on the creativity, flamboyance, discipline, and soul it takes to produce great art.”
Prince on Prince: Interviews and Encounters
By Arthur Lizie
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Prince is among the most respected and influential entertainers of the 20th century, breaking sexual, racial, and creative barriers throughout his almost forty years in the spotlight. He was a multitalented studio artist, a master songwriter who produced and performed almost all of his own music on yearly LPs and countless singles and videos. He was one of the most dynamic live performers ever to hit the stage, a world-class dancer, and musician who’s still remembered for the best Super Bowl halftime performance in history. He fought for artists’ rights, changed his name to a glyph, and took a star turn in the Oscar winner Purple Rain. But for all this, he was a quiet and private individual, reluctant to talk about the work he felt should speak for itself. This volume offers a chronological look at some of Prince’s most entertaining and revealing interviews, from 1978 and the release of his debut LP For You, to a 2015 interview conducted only months before his untimely death at the age of 57.”
Britney: Breaking Free – The Unauthorized Biography
By Danny White
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “This biography uncovers the story of how this church-going girl from the Deep South became an objectified teenage sensation and the princess of pop. It follows her rollercoaster existence from the top of the charts to the despair of a very public mental health crisis. Go behind the scenes of Britney Spears’ battle to free herself from her notorious conservatorship and the impact it had on this highly talented but fragile woman, whose cultural and social influence is fast approaching that of Marilyn Monroe. This book lifts the lid on the controversies that have plagued her life, covers her romances, and celebrates her many remarkable triumphs. Along the way, we learn much about show-business and society itself. As she enters her fifth decade in the relentless glare of the spotlight, this is a compelling and intimate portrait of the real Britney and brings her story up to date, revealing what will come next for this fascinating star, who has perfected the art of reinvention.”
Like A Surgeon: A Surgeon’s Guide To The Top 1000 Songs Of The 1980’s
By Dr. Eli Tabariai
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “An intricate exploration of the music of the 1980’s from one man’s point of view. This exploration features a ranking of the songs that were released in the 1980’s and the reasons why they are ranked the way they are. In addition, graphic illustrations are displayed to represent some of the titles of the music. The top 1,000 songs according to the author’s opinion are noted as well as 100 songs that are honorary mentions.”
The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music
By Tom Breihan
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “When Tom Breihan launched his Stereogum column in early 2018, The Number Ones — a space in which he has been writing about every No. 1 hit in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, in chronological order — he figured he’d post capsule-size reviews for each song. But there was so much more to uncover. The column has taken on a life of its own, sparking online debate and occasional death threats. The Billboard Hot 100 began in 1958, and after four years of posting the column, Breihan is still in the early aughts. But readers no longer have to wait for his brilliant synthesis of what the history of No. 1s has meant to music and our culture. In The Number Ones, Breihan writes about 20 pivotal No. 1s throughout chart history, revealing a remarkably fluid and connected story of music that is as entertaining as it is enlightening. The Numbers Ones features the greatest pop artists of all time, from the Brill Building songwriters to The Beatles and The Beach Boys; from Motown to Michael Jackson, Prince and Mariah Carey; and from the digital revolution to the K-pop system. Breihan also ponders great artists who have never hit the top spot, like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and James Brown. Breihan illuminates what makes indelible ear candy across the decades — including dance crazes, recording innovations, television phenomena, disco, AOR, MTV, rap, compact discs, mp3s, social media, memes, and much more — leaving readers to wonder what could possibly happen next.”
Decades: Brian Eno In The 1970s
By Gary Parsons
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Brian Eno is arguably one of the most influential musicians working in rock music. Starting out as synthesizer peacock of the early glam rock-era Roxy Music, Eno not only changed his look but his musical style throughout the seventies and moved from foot-stomping proto-punk anthems to the quiet introspection and inventor of ambient music. Along the way, he became a much in demand producer working with Ultravox! and Talking Heads and also collaborated with David Bowie on three of the most important albums of his career. He also managed to blur the boundaries between rock music and modern avant-garde classical music with the founding of his Obscure Records label. Eno began this decade strutting his stuff onstage to Bryan Ferry’s songs and finished it with the serene melodies of Music For Airports and, along the way, managed to squeeze in a couple of albums with King Crimson’s Robert Fripp as well as being part of the krautrock scene. This is Eno’s journey through the highs and lows of the ’70s.”
Pink Floyd: Every Album, Every Song
By Richard Butterworth
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Pink Floyd are one of the most innovative, enduringly successful bands in history. Their influence is incalculable. 1973’s Dark Side Of The Moon, though far from the first concept album, established a new model for quasi-symphonic, long-form investigations into the human condition: A record of thoughtfully poignant lyrics and some of the most elegant, powerful, genre-defining rock music ever made. Formed in 1967 Roger Waters, Rick Wright and Nick Mason, helmed by the tragically brilliant Syd Barrett, fused English pastoral whimsy with electrifying instrumental voyages through inner and outer space. Their gigs at underground clubs, such as UFO and Middle Earth, are the stuff of psychedelic legend. Between 1968 and 1971, with Barrett replaced by David Gilmour, their sonic inquiries were never braver: Some delivered instantly, others revealed their treasures slowly — but all played crucially distinctive parts in rock’s development. During the 1970s, the music matured as the messages darkened. While Floyd continued to prove that emotional weight and cathartic release can be forged from deceptively modest arrangements, the band’s live spectaculars reached a pitch of technical complexity and extravagance none has matched. With insightful analysis, objectivity and ironic wit, Richard Butterworth appraises afresh Pink Floyd’s official recorded canon, from Arnold Layne to The Endless River. and beyond, to 2022 and the first all-new Floyd music for 28 years.”
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Every Album, Every Song
By Dominic Sanderson
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Not many artists can boast a career like Nick Cave, which has gone from strength to strength since the debut album from his band The Bad Seeds in 1984. Most musicians in their 60s are relegated to the periphery as the quality of their output becomes tired and predictable and they fail to match the success of their earlier offerings — Nick Cave is an exception to this. His 2019 album Ghosteen may arguably be his best, still sounding as potent as those Old Testament, drug-fuelled ’80s albums or the mid-’90s streak of classics that the band are most renowned for. Cave’s eclectic career has been fruitful, not only as a musician but as a literary mastermind whose lyrics have been analysed and theorised on countless occasions, as he consistently and compellingly mulls over themes of religion, love, redemption, loss and death. This book delves into the music and lyrics of every track in The Bad Seeds’ back catalogue, starting with their post-punk beginnings on From Her To Eternity right the way through to the ambient synth-driven soundscapes of Ghosteen. Hidden gems from the band’s two B-sides compilations, as well as their thrilling live albums, are also be included in this appraisal of a band that are still very much alive and kicking.”
Creedence Clearwater Revival: Every Album, Every Song
By Tony Thompson
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Creedence Clearwater Revival were a San Francisco band of the 1960s that had nothing to do with Human Be Ins, Timothy Leary or the Summer of Love. They were, for a time, the most popular band in the U.S. but never scored a No. 1 hit. They were headliners at Woodstock but didn’t appear in the film or on the soundtrack LP. They shared a radical ‘back to basics’ sensibility with The Band but were not embraced by the emerging rock press with anywhere near the same enthusiasm. When the punks were hunting dinosaur bands to extinction in 1977, Richard Hell covered one of their songs on his debut album. In the 1980s, as their songs became staples of ‘classic rock’ radio, they were revered by underground bands like The Gun Club, The Minutemen and The Scientists. In this book, a track-by-track analysis of all the band’s recorded output, Tony Thompson rolls up the sleeves on his plaid shirt and prepares to answer the big questions. Who’s Jody? What is ‘chooglin’? Where is Green River? Why can’t the singer leave Lodi? Who was the fortunate son? Is the bathroom on the right?”
Rock & Roll Nightmares: True Stories, Vol. 2
By Staci Layne Wilson
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Rock & Roll Nightmares, Vol. 1 scratched the sinister surface with tales of the 27 club, rock ’n’ roll suicides, plane crashes, curses, and more. Now the series continues with concert mayhem, an unflinching look at the “baby groupie” trend of the 1970s, Satanic panic in the ’80s, horrific home invasions, musicians who died on stage, rockers who lived on borrowed time, gun-toting music producers, deadly DJs, and much more. You will read about: Murdered rock stars, hitmen hired and narrow escapes; shocking stories of rockers who’ve served time for violent crimes; devil worship and belief in the occult; folks on the fringe who took their obsessions too far; pyrotechnics gone horribly wrong; musicians mowed down by deadly disease; mysteries solved, graves robbed, fortunes stolen, and more! Rock & Roll Nightmares: True Stories, Vol. 2 is a meticulously researched, up-to-date, entertaining, and shocking book that rounds up the tragic tales from the 1960s to the present day.”
You Are Ketchup: And Other Fly Music Tales
By Kokayi
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Music artists, as perceived by the music industry, are akin to a condiment — to be easily replicated, sold in high volume, and enjoyed by the masses. The message is blunt, honest, and necessary. Implicit in it is the reality of an ever-changing music landscape that requires the artists to adapt, and with integrity, lest they become forgotten. It’s this essential idea that the Grammy-nominated artist and creative consultant Kokayi shares in You Are Ketchup. With a harmonious blend of narrative and advice, D.C. native Kokayi walks readers through the golden age of hip hop to the current day, dispensing hard-earned lessons and illuminations from decades of producing and performing music. Kokayi is a teacher inasmuch as he is a musician, and now writes for emerging artists yet to achieve success and veteran artists who might have once had it but are not out. Using stories from life and career as a vehicle, Kokayi covers a range of topics, including art as a commodity and advice about defining your artistic community, knowing when your art is ready to level up, finding a formula that works, distinguishing your art from others, and more. In a music world where an artist’s career can too easily become a tale of the past, You Are Ketchup arrives as essential reading for the multitude of creatives hungry for the wisdom and knowledge of a successful insider.”
How Nashville Became Music City, U.S.A.: A History of Music Row, Updated and Expanded
By Michael Kosser
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “How Nashville Became Music City, U.S.A. was first published in 2006 and quickly became the go-to reference for those seeking to understand the Nashville music industry, or write about it. Now, Michael Kosser, prolific songwriter and author, returns with an updated and expanded edition, bringing the history of Music Row up to the present, since so much has changed over the last 15 years. This new edition of How Nashville Became Music City, U.S.A. details the history of the Nashville song and recording industry from the founding of its first serious commercial music publishing company in 1942 to the present. Kosser tells the history of Music Row primarily through the voices of those who made and continue to make that history, including record executives, producers, singers, publishers, songwriters, studio musicians, studio engineers, record promoters, and others responsible for the music and the business, including the ambitious music executives who struggle to find an audience who will buy country records instead of just listening to them on the radio. The result is a book with insight far beyond the usual media stories, with plenty of emotion, humor, and historical accuracy. Kosser traces the growth and cultural changes of Nashville and the adventurous souls who fly to it to be a part of the music. He follows the changes from its hillbilly roots through its “Nashville Sound” quasi-pop days, from the outlaws, the new traditionalists, and the mega-sellers to the recent bro country and the rise of mini-trends. This edition also bears witness to the huge influence of Music Row on pop, folk, rock, and other American music genres.”
