Music reviews and criticism Books

Now Is the Time to Invent offers a definitive portrait of the vibrant indie-rock scene that flourished in the mid-1980s and reached its creative peak in the 1990s. More than 60 profiles and interviews, taken from the pages of the acclaimed independent...

Song Noir examines the formative first decade of Tom Waits' career, when he lived, wrote and recorded nine albums in Los Angeles; from his soft, folk-inflected debut, Closing Time (1973), to the abrasive, surreal Swordfishtrombones (1983)...

Let legendary rock manager Simon Napier-Bell take you inside the (dodgy) world of popular music - not just a creative industry, but a business that has made people rich beyond their wildest dreams.This book describes the evolution of the music industry...

A guide to the music and multifaceted career of Canadian artists and songwriters Tegan and Sara.Through interviews with Tegan and Sara, their collaborators, journalists, and fans, this book explores the multifaceted career of one of music's most...

The 90s live on in this edgy offstage glimpse of the indie musical artists that shaped a decade.The music of the 1990s shaped more than one generation. It was the music Generation X came of age listening to and the songs millennials cut their teeth on...

Was John Lennon meeting Paul McCartney more significant than John Lennon meeting Yoko Ono? Rubber Soul or Revolver? Which Wings album was Paul McCartney's solo pinnacle?In 100 brief chapters, John M. Borack discusses and ranks the greatest...

Life in the Stocks: Veracious conversations with musicians & creatives is a collection of rock 'n' roll stories taken from the iTunes chart-topping podcast, Life in the Stocks-hosted by UK-based DJ, presenter, and writer, Matt Stocks (Ex-Kerrang!...

Featuring a foreword from legendary director Martin Scorcese, Woodstock: Interviews and Recollections combines stories, anecdotes, and perspectives from dozens of musicians and filmmakers about the making of the Academy Award-winning documentary...

"Womack and Kruppa present a thorough history of Harrison and Clapton's songmaking and recording sessions." -BooklistNewly revised and expanded, this paperback edition featuresexclusive material from the Malcolm Frederick Evans archives and draws on rare...

The Beatles Finally Let It Be includes the January 1969 rehearsals and recording sessions; the unreleased "Get Back" albums; "Let It Be" and "Let It Be...Naked;" along with American; British and Canadian perspectives. This volume also includes a detailed...

Few music groups have been able to sustain a fan base as passionate and dedicated as that of Pearl Jam, and this entertaining guide rewards those fans with everything they need to know about the band in a one-of-a-kind format. Packed with history,...

In the early 1990s, Swedish death metal revolutionized the international music scene. Suddenly, the mild-mannered Scandinavian country found itself at the forefront of a new movement with worldwide impact thanks to bands such as Entombed, Dismember, and...

The Day the Country Died features author, historian, and musician Ian Glasper (Burning Britain) exploring in minute detail the influential, esoteric, UK anarcho punk scene of the early Eighties. If the colorful '80s punk bands captured in Burning Britain...

Part civic history and part memoir from this veteran scene-builder and co-founder of the acclaimed Wavelength concert series, Any Night of the Week charts the evolution of Toronto's diverse independent music scene in the latter half of the nineteenth...

Throughout the 1990s, Prince feuded with his record label, Warner Bros., over his rights as an independent recording artist--and made some of the most brilliant music of his career. During that time, Jim Walsh covered Prince for the St. Paul Pioneer...

A must-have for any guitar lover!This book introduces the reader to 250 guitars of all types from the early acoustic archtop designs of the Gibson L-5 in the last 1920s, through the National resonators of the 1930s, the hollow body electric Gibsons of...

In ancient Greek thought, the musical scale discovered by the philosopher Pythagoras was seen as a utopian model of the harmonic order behind the structure of the cosmos and human existence. Through proportion and harmony, the musical scale bridges the...

An outstanding anthology in which notable musicians, artists, scientists, thinkers, poets, and more- from Gustavo Dudamel and Carrie Mae Weems to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Paul Muldoon-explore the influence of music on their lives and workWhat happens when...

Before the nineteenth century, instrumental music was considered inferior to vocal music. Kant described wordless music as "more pleasure than culture," and Rousseau dismissed it for its inability to convey concepts. But by the early 1800s, a dramatic...

In this book Jean-Jacques Nattiez, well-known for his pioneering work in musical semiology, examines both music, and discourse about music, as products of human activity that are perceived in varying ways by various cultures. Asking such questions as...

In 1968, the New Yorker hired Ellen Willis as its first popular music critic. Her column, Rock, Etc., ran for seven years and established Willis as a leader in cultural commentary and a pioneer in the nascent and otherwise male-dominated field of rock...

A self-described "song-hunter," the folklorist Alan Lomax traveled the Mississippi Delta in the 1930's and '40s, armed with primitive recording equipment and a keen love of the Delta's music heritage. Crisscrossing the towns and hamlets where the blues...