|
Categories
Hip Fiction
America the Beautiful
Style/Beauty
The Dirty Parts
Nonfiction
Art
Biography
Entertaining
Great Gifts for Kids
Music
Teens
Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Small Gift Books
Sports
Main
Page
|
|
WHAT
TO GIVE, WHAT TO GET 2001: Begin Your Holiday Shopping With Us
Music
|
THE DIRT: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
by Tommy Lee, Mick Mars, Vince Neil, and Nikki Sixx, with Neil Strauss
Regan Books
ISBN: 0060392886
Eyeliner, codpieces, silicon and peroxide enhanced girls, hypodermics, whammy bars, Jack D., blood, guts, glory: it's the poetry of rock 'n' roll as expounded upon by the boys of Mötley Crüe. DIRT: The Autobiography of Mötley Crüe is a no-holds-barred (as if Tommy Lee has anything left to hide) look into the band that turned debauchery into an art form. It's like an uncensored, 300-page episode of VH1's Behind the Music. Chock full of color photos and co-authored by New York Times music critic Neil Strauss --- whose last hand-holding stint was THE LONG HARD ROAD OUT OF HELL, puppy-lovable Marilyn Manson's tender autobiography --- THE DIRT is the gift for all the metal-heads on your list.
|
DA CAPO BEST MUSIC WRITING 2001: The Year's Finest Writing on Rock, Pop, Jazz, Country, and More
edited by Nick Hornby
Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0306810662
This book --- thankfully --- is not a collection of puff-piece profiles on today's hot artists who are already being booked for the 2005 season of VH-1's "Where Are They Now?" show. While some pieces (all published in 2000) do concentrate on a specific musician live or dead (Neil Young, Eminem, Django Reinhardt, Jeff Buckley, Sleater-Kinney, Billie Holiday), others explore themes and topics ranging from Napster, Arab rappers, and record promoters of yesteryear to a bluegrass festival and a sidesplitting, all-too true "Rock Snob's Dictionary." Also, while much of the writing comes from the top names in rock journalism, there is a fair amount of writing coming from non-music writers, novelists, performers, and even one die-hard fan. Likewise, the material is culled not just from the usual suspects (Rolling Stone, Village Voice) but unlikely sources from web sites and The Oxford American to a slew of cities' alternative newsweeklies --- the forum that often produces the best music writing today.
|
MOLTO AGITATO: The Mayhem Behind the Music at the Metropolitan Opera
by Johanna Fiedler
Doubleday
ISBN: 038548187X
Stories abound in this unsparingly detailed book by Johanna Fiedler, daughter of Arthur Fiedler. The Strum and Drang, the Wagner, Puccini, Verdi, and Barber, the tragedies, comedies, gossip, murder, and suicide, the boxholders, financiers, labor movement, orchestras, and guest conductors --- all are important to the rich tapestry that is the Metropolitan Opera Company. Through the Three Tenors introduction of opera to "the masses," the Met continues to evolve. Ticket sales are high, but younger, less affluent opera lovers are attending. Times are changing, but it looks like the Met will prevail.
|
HEAVIER THAN HEAVEN: A Biography of Kurt Cobain
by Charles R. Cross
Hyperion Books
ISBN: 0786865059
It was bound to happen sooner or later. Charles R. Cross has written the definitive biography of Kurt Cobain, against which all others from here on will be judged. HEAVIER THAN HEAVEN, published on the 10th anniversary of Nirvana's landmark album Nevermind, is an exhaustive biography, utilizing more than four hundred interviews; four years of research; and exclusive access to Cobain's unpublished diaries, lyrics, and family photos. Cross is the perfect choice to write this book. From 1986 to 2000 he was the editor of The Rocket, a critically acclaimed music magazine based in Seattle (who happened to be the first magazine to put Nirvana on its cover). A tangled web of emotions, Cobain's life is, was and will likely continue to be, a prime target for exploitation. Fortunately, Cross renders the good, bad, and grotesque sensitively but without bias. And so the portrait of the artist becomes: divorce his parents; find outlets in artwork and music; get a band together; practice, practice, practice; beginning of drug use; move to Olympia, cut an album; "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is released; an unusual love is found with Courtney Love; Nirvana explodes; heroin; overdose; a daughter is born; heroin; love; heroin; love; death.
|
DREAM BROTHER: The Lives & Music of Jeff and Tim Buckley
by David Browne
HarperCollins
ISBN: 0061076082
The tragically short lives of cult musicians Tim and Jeff Buckley scarcely intermingled during the not-quite nine years in which they both lived simultaneously. But despite the physical and emotional distance between this father and son, fate charted a parallel course for the doomed troubadours, a story told in revealing detail by music critic David Browne in DREAM BROTHER. Browne's background as a journalist serves him well as his numerous interviews with the principals in Tim's and Jeff's lives help him to paint a fair and compelling portrait of two men who looked and sounded alike and lived for their art. They also both died accidentally --- Tim by heroin overdose and Jeff by drowning. The Buckleys spent much of their lives denying each other but secretly needing and longing for the other's presence. Although they rarely spoke, father and son communicated feelings for one another through their music, with Tim asking "Oh, is he a soldier, or is he a dreamer?/Is he mama's little man?/Does he help you when he can?/Oh, does he ask about me?" in "Dream Letter" on his album Happy Sad. Jeff answered in "Dream Brother," the last song on Grace, his only album, warning a friend "Don't be like the one who made me so old/Don't be like the one who left behind his name/Because I waited for you like I waited for him/And nobody ever came." Browne's DREAM BROTHER succeeds in capturing the Buckley story --- a legacy of men committed to a similar artistic excellence and who, but for an accident of time that made them father and child, could indeed have been twin sons of an elusive muse.
©
Copyright 2001, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
Back to top.
|
|
