Rock Art

In 2018, during an interview with journalist Tanya Pearson, Shirley Manson lamented: "It’s a blanket fact that after September 11th, nonconformist women were taken off the radio.” This comment echoed a reality Pearson had personally witnessed as a musician and a fan, and launched her into a quest to figure out just what happened to these extraordinary female figures. Pretend We’re Dead seeks to answer two big questions.

Seattle band, The Gits and their charismatic front person Mia Zapata were on the verge of international rock stardom but on July 7, 1993, days before their third United States tour, Mia Zapata, The Gits twenty-seven-year-old singer-songwriter, was brutally assaulted and murdered by a stranger. Zapata's death sent chilling ripples through progressive communities throughout the United States. She became a cause-celebre for women's rights activists outraged by the brutal killing and lack of law enforcement support.

This isn't another boring book filled with confusing audio mumbo-jumbo. By providing the actual real-world techniques that professionals use every day, this book will give you the most effective tips for mixing heavy music that you can apply immediately to your own mixes.

“What are the greatest rock albums of all-time?” Perhaps one of the more common questions examined between music-loving chums, that has led to many a good-natured debate. But if you really dig deeper into the question…is it from the standpoint of the album’s importance in rock history? A classic release that proved significant to an artist’s career? Or perhaps merely a personal favorite, that you just can’t get enough of?

In They Just Seem a Little Weird, veteran entertainment journalist Doug Brod offers an eye- and ear-opening look at a crucial moment in music history, when rock became fun again and a gig became a show. This is the story of friends and frenemies who rose, fell, and soared once more, often sharing stages, studios, producers, engineers, managers, agents, roadies, and fans-and who are still collaborating more than 40 years on.

Pamela Des Barres, the world’s foremost supergroupie, here offers an all-access backstage pass to the world of rock stars and the women who love them. Having had her own affairs with legends such as Keith Moon and Jimmy Page--as documented in her bestselling memoir I’m with the Band--Pamela now turns the spotlight onto other women who have found their way into the hearts and bedrooms of some of the world’s greatest musicians.

Bob Gruen is one of the most well-known and connected photographers in rock and roll. For almost 50 years, he has documented the music scene in pictures that have captured the world's attention. Right Place, Right Time is Gruen's first written account of his winding, adventure-filled journey.

The revealing backstory of the album with no name that spawned 'When the Levee Breaks', 'Black Dog,' 'Stairway to Heaven', and 'Rock 'n' Roll'. Four tracks each side; eight killers, no fillers. This is how they did it.

The Show That Never Ends is the behind-the-scenes story of the extraordinary rise and fall of progressive ("prog") rock, epitomized by such classic, chart-topping bands as Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, and Emerson Lake & Palmer, and their successors Rush, Styx, and Asia. With inside access to all the key figures, Washington Post national reporter David Weigel tells the story with the gusto and insight prog rock's fans (and its haters) will relish.

Mick Jagger, Jimmy Cliff, Roger Waters, Jimmy Page, Stevie Wonder, Bonnie Raitt, and many other leading artists reveal for the first time the emotions, inspirations, and techniques behind their influential works. Covering the history of rock, R&B, country, disco, soul, reggae, and pop, Anatomy of a Song is a love letter to the songs that have defined generations of listeners.

Spanning three decades worth of astute, acerbic, and overall astounding music writing, Kick Out the Jams is the first large-scale anthology of the work of renowned critic Dave Marsh. Ranging from Elvis Presley to Kurt Cobain, from Nina Simone to Ani DiFranco, from the Beatles to Green Day, the book gives an opinionated, eye-opening overview of 20th-century popular music—offering a portrait not just of an era but of a writer wrestling with the American empire.

From the Stooges and MC to Grand Funk Railroad and Ted Nugent, to the White Stripes, Eminem, and Kid Rock, and whole casts of other great bands and performers, Detroit has always produced louder, more rumbling, more subversive rock music than any city in the world. In Detroit Rock City, listeners get to hear the stories straight from the participants themselves: the singers, the guitar slingers, the fans, the reporters, the promoters, even the guys who hand-made amps to be louder and crunchier than the competition’s.

When Paul McCartney closed Live Aid in July of 1985, we thought he was rock's Grand Old Man. He was forty-three years old. As the forty years since have shown, he—and many others of his generation—were just getting started. This was the time when live performance took over from records. The big names of the '60s and '70s exploited the Age of Spectacle that Live Aid had ushered in to enjoy the longest lap of honor in the history of humanity, continuing to go strong long after everyone else in the business had retired.

Today, yacht rock is one of the most celebrated "yesteryear" styles of pop music, and has resonated with a new generation of musicians. But despite all the hoopla, there has never been a book that told the entire story of the genre. Until now. Featuring interviews with many of the heavy hitters of the genre, including John Oates, Kenny Loggins, and Don Felder, The Yacht Rock Book leaves no sail unturned. This is the definitive story of the yacht rock’s creation, rise, chart-smashing success, fall, and stunning rebirth.

In the summer of 1964 Jacksonville, Florida teenager Ronnie Van Zant and some of his friends hatched the idea of forming a band to play covers of the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Yardbirds, and the country and blues-rock music they had grown to love. Naming their band after Leonard Skinner, the gym teacher at Robert E. Lee Senior High School who constantly badgered the long-haired aspiring musicians to get haircuts, they were soon playing gigs at parties, and bars throughout the South.

In All the Years Combine: The Grateful Dead in Fifty Shows, Robertson listens to and writes ecstatically about fifty of the band's most important and memorable concerts in order to better understand who the Grateful Dead were, what they became, and what they meant-and what they continue to mean.

On New Year's Eve, 1970, Paul McCartney told his lawyers to issue the writ at the High Court in London, effectively ending The Beatles. You might say this was the last day of the pop era. The following day, which was a Friday, was 1971. You might say this was the first day of the rock era. And within the remaining 364 days of this monumental year, the world would hear Don McLean's "American Pie", The Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar", The Who's "Baba O'Riley", Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven", and more.

Of all the musical developments of rock in the 1960s, one in particular fundamentally changed the music's structure and listening experience: the incorporation of extended improvisation into live performances. While many bands—including Cream, Pink Floyd, and the Velvet Underground—stretched out their songs with improvisations, no band was more identified with the practice than the Grateful Dead. In Get Shown the Light Michael Kaler examines how the Dead's dedication to improvisation stemmed from their belief that playing in this manner enabled them to touch upon transcendence.

Rock and roll was birthed in basements and garages, radio stations and dance halls, in cities where unexpected gatherings of artists and audience changed and charged the way music is heard and celebrated, capturing lightning in a bottle. Musician and writer Lenny Kaye explores ten crossroads of time and place that define rock and roll, its unforgettable flashpoints, characters and visionaries, how each generation came to be, how it was discovered by the world.

Matt Pinfield is the ultimate music fan. He's the guy who knows every song, artist, and musical riff ever recorded, down to the most obscure band's B-side single on its vinyl-only EP import. As a child, music helped Pinfield make sense of the world. Later he would approach his music idols after concerts and explain why he loved their music. As an adult, rock music inspired his career, fueled relationships, and, at times, became a life raft.