Almost as a rule, musician autobiographies are a chance to settle scores, name names, spew vitriol; essentially an exercise in one-sided venting. Obviously, someone forgot to mention that to Johnny Marr. And while this revelation may turn off some of the realty TV-warped Smith out there, for those looking to get an honest sense of who Marr is as a person, Set The Boy Free makes for a fascinating read.
There have been a slew of great stories around the Rolling Stones for generations now, maybe more so than any band, so you’d be forgiven if you’re sporting a tattoo of the Tongue logo, but can’t exactly recall the short-lived band, The New Barbarians. Thankfully, rock journalist Rob Chapman’s got you covered.
If you can’t tell the difference between a Fender Telecaster and Gibson Les Paul, this is clearly not the book for you. However, if you know Hendrix was a Strat guy and underneath that black spray paint and all those stickers, Joe Strummer always rocked a Tele, then this is likely to be your new Bible.
At this point there’s a pretty set template for writing rock memoirs (with a few exceptions, of course). Most roll out like a version of VH1’s Behind the Music: future rock star has dreams of making it big, so he practices all the time, stopping only for the occasion drug and drink binge; he/she hooks up with future band mates, they sign a really shitty record contract but end up…
One of the problems that role-playing gamers typically run into when they have to move locations for their gaming sessions is the sheer weight of the books that they must lug around. One understands the logic for these companies creating luscious tomes that are typically hard cover and full of amazing illustrations and further clarifications about nuances to the game play. The simple fact though is that if you are a…
Yes, there are already a slew of books about Bruce Springsteen out there. Add to that, the fact that he’ll finally be putting out his autobiography this fall, but Boss proves there was room for one more book about one of the best rock starts to ever come out of the U.S.
Rosenblum creates a compelling narrative during her latest title, Good Neighbors : The Democracy of Everyday Life.The importance of those individuals that live near us has been decreased in importance over the course of the last thirty years. There have been a number of titles that have dealt with the ramifications that this lack of community has had (most prominently, Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone), but this Rosenblum text showcases the importance of…
Frank Turner is a stellar musician and songwriter with an appeal that attracts folk fans just as much as punk rockers. But on the surface, despite an increasingly higher profile with each new record, he seems like an unlikely candidate for a traditional rock memoir. Just shy of a decade into his solo career, all indications are that he’s still a long way off from putting the guitar in the…
“The first time I drank piss was on a fire escape overlooking downtown Los Angeles.” So begins the memoir on NOFX. If you can get past that first sentence, the payoff is worth it.
As far as I can tell, this is the only one book out there on the genre-defying traveling carnival known as The Butthole Surfers. But given the amount of research that went into Let’s Go To Hell, there is no need for anyone to ever attempt another tome on the band. The author, James Burns, who also runs the Texas band’s archive (christened “Anal Obsession,” naturally), has pulled off a…
If you don’t know XTC from NOFX or INXS, this is the wrong book for you. But anyone who has heard the sweet thinking man’s pop music created by Andy Partridge and the boys, knows that there are few contemporaries who were able to turn a phrase as deftly as XTC.
The Guinness World Records book has long been required reading for anybody that wishes to familiarize themselves with the extremes in a wide variety of events, environments and life generally. I remember when I was a kid where I would just flip through the book finding exactly the limits of human and animal alike. At some point in the recent past the Guinness Book of World Records had changed formats…
Being a Pantera fan, Official Truth, 101 Proof was a book I was certain many of us metalheads were eager to read. To me, their songs are filled with so much power and energy with such precise raw aggression they are easily one of my all-time favorite heavy metal bands. Having been fortunate enough to have seen them live back in 1992 (more on that a little later), this was…
David Randall “Randy” Blythe is the vocalist and lyricist of the metal band Lamb of God – from my previous readings of his blog and attending 3 Lamb of God concerts it’s hard to believe that this wild growling madman on stage is such an eloquent writer in his stories beyond just song lyrics. Randy writes this book telling of his arrest, incarceration, trial and ultimate acquittal when he was…
Outlaw Country mainstay Ray Wylie Hubbard has managed to make a career out swimming against the current and not really giving a fuck about what’s best for his career. So while he may not be selling out stadiums like the backwards ball cap sportin’ dudes in the world Bro Country he has managed to live a life that makes for one hell of a memoir.
In her much-anticipated bio, The Pretenders front woman Chrissie Hynde gives a remarkably frank look into her life growing up as a teen and early 20-something in her native Dayton, Ohio before uprooting and relocating to London and finding herself at the center of the punk rock movement.
Incredibly imaginative, Black Chalk, the debut for Christopher Yates, is one of the most compelling works of fiction put out this year.
Coaching is a profession that has been seen as ancillary to a job; gym teachers are provided with the opportunity while individuals around the neighborhood can volunteer to coach a Little League team. Where Successful Coaching by Rainer Martens comes into play is when a professional or amateur wishes to take the next step. The title is vital in providing readers with the tools that they need to create a…
One of the most surprising revelations to come out of the memoir from Alice Cooper’s former bassist is not the fact that Cooper was an alcoholic (Cooper has admitted that himself), it’s not how callously he ditched his childhood friends for interchangeable band mates once he started to make it big and go solo; rather it’s the fact that Cooper, long since sober, ended up not only reading the memoir,…
With the sheer amount of information that is being passed around the gym, through cliques, and on online forums, it is difficult to find proper form and information for those that are looking to increase their overall fitness. The 2nd Edition of Bodybuilding Anatomy provides readers with a tremendous amount of exercises for each part of the body, to ensure that all the muscles in the shoulders, chest, back, arms,…
