"On the Guest List: Adventures of a Music Journalist" is a fun, upbeat memoir about a girl who loves music and life in general. Maryanne paints a vivid picture of being a teenager in the 1970s and young woman in the 1980s -- and how the punk, new wave and rock scene was from a young fan's viewpoint. Life truly comes together for Maryanne once she creates a career for herself reporting on the music she loves, writing for publications such as The Aquarian Arts Weekly, music.com and Punk magazine. Unlike other music memoirs, there is no downward spiral into drugs and addiction. Nor is it a groupie "tell all." "On the Guest List" is simply a compilation of mostly happy memories straight from the pages of Maryanne's diaries -- and of course, her heart.

Janey Peyton is filthy rich, but also a down-to-earth goth chick. She lives in suburban New Jersey during the 1980s. Janey has it all, including an Italian live-in housekeeper (who sometimes drives her batty with overbearing dated love advice). Since Janey's status symbol-driven parents are absent in her life love-starved Janey desperately seeks a soul mate as she cruises the new wave nightclubs. Enter Beck Stewart, also a workaholic, but for all the right reasons. The working class hero wants to make a better life for himself. Beck falls hard for Janey and turns a blind eye to the immediate red flags: she's a snoop and obviously hates his beloved old cat, Morticia. When Janey discovers Beck can't resist overtime hours, she mistakes his job loyalty for neglect. For "revenge" she takes on other lovers and is careless when it comes to hiding her conquests. What happens when Beck feels enough is enough and the couple who had their ups and downs finally hit an all time low? And what happens when a stray kitten shows up on cat hater Janey's doorstep? If you love the'80s, alternative wave, sexy chick lit, and of course CATS, this book is for you!

Domenic and Antoinette Lombardi began dating when they were teenagers. And soon afterward Domenic was called to fight in the Korean War. During his time in combat, he wrote his love, Antoinette, over 200 letters. She saved every one of them. She also put together scrap books that contained newspaper clippings of the war, photographs, holiday cards, and other memorabilia; as well as more recent newspaper clippings of celebrations such as their anniversaries and birthdays. Domenic had his own collection of memories, several typed, as well as handwritten notebook diaries, filled with the truth he experienced fighting for The United States. Maryanne Christiano-Mistretta spent several months at the home of The Lombardis in Florham Park, New Jersey, ferreting through the photo albums, love letters, and notebook dairies in order to put together this wondrous memoir. The happy couple have been married over 65 years, as of this second printing.

"Stanley Booth's book is the only one I can read and say, 'Yeah, that's how it was.'" —Keith Richards Stanley Booth, a member of the Rolling Stones' inner circle, met the band just a few months before Brian Jones drowned in a swimming pool in 1968. He lived with them throughout their 1969 American tour, staying up all night together listening to blues, talking about music, ingesting drugs, and consorting with groupies. His thrilling account culminates with their final concert at Altamont Speedway—a nightmare of beating, stabbing, and killing that would signal the end of a generation's dreams of peace and freedom. But while this book renders in fine detail the entire history of the Stones, paying special attention to the tragedy of Brian Jones, it is about much more than a writer and a rock band. It has been called—by Harold Brodkey and Robert Stone, among others—the best book ever written about the sixties. In Booth's afterword, he explains why it took him 15 years to write the book, relating an astonishing story of drugs, jails, and disasters. Stanley Booth is the author of Rythm Oil: A Journey Through the Music of the American South and Keith: Till I Roll Over Dead. He has written for Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Playboy. He lives in Brunswick, Georgia.

Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect. Cultural liberation and musical innovation. Pyrotechnics, bottle service, bass drops, and molly. Electronic dance music has been a vital force for more than three decades now, and has undergone transformation upon transformation as it has taken over the world. In this searching, lyrical account of dance music culture worldwide, Matthew Collin takes stock of its highest highs and lowest lows across its global trajectory. Through firsthand reportage and interviews with clubbers and DJs, Collin documents the itinerant musical form from its underground beginnings in New York, Chicago, and Detroit in the 1980s, to its explosions in Ibiza and Berlin, to today’s mainstream music scenes in new frontiers like Las Vegas, Shanghai, and Dubai. Collin shows how its dizzying array of genres—from house, techno, and garage to drum and bass, dubstep, and psytrance—have given voice to locally specific struggles. For so many people in so many different places, electronic dance music has been caught up in the search for free cultural space: forming the soundtrack to liberation for South African youth after Apartheid; inspiring a psychedelic party culture in Israel; offering fleeting escape from—and at times into—corporatization in China; and even undergirding a veritable “independent republic” in a politically contested slice of the former Soviet Union. Full of admiration for the possibilities the music has opened up all over the world, Collin also unflinchingly probes where this utopianism has fallen short, whether the culture maintains its liberating possibilities today, and where it might go in the future.

Puerto Vallarta is considered one of the finest and friendliest beach-side holiday destinations in the world. Situated on the West coast of Mexico this is an all-year-round destination.

Jimmy Martin was just twenty-two years old when Bill Monroe asked him to join the Blue Grass Boys. That invitation was the start of a career that spanned half a century and culminated with Martin's induction into the International Bluegrass Music Association's Hall of Honor. Always an enigmatic figure, Martin was as famous for his temper as he was for his talent. On assignment from the Oxford Americanmagazine, fiction writer and music critic Tom Piazza drove from his home in New Orleans to Nashville to interview Martin and found himself pitched headlong into a world he couldn't have anticipated. Martin's mercurial personality drew the writer into a series of escalating encounters (with mean dogs, broken-down cars, and near electrocution), culminating in a harrowing and unforgettable expedition, with Martin, to the Grand Ole Opry. Though, or perhaps because, visits to the Opry like the one Piazza recounts were common for Martin, and though he frequently played on its stage and always hoped to become a member, he died before seeing his dream fulfilled. True Adventures with the King of Bluegrassis the funny, scary, and powerfully poignant portrait of one of the legends of American music. Co-published with the Country Music Foundation Press

Not too far away from the flea markets, dusty attics, cluttered used record stores and Ebay is the world of the vinyl junkies. Brett Milano dives deep into the piles of old vinyl to uncover the subculture of record collecting. A vinyl junkie is not the person who has a few old 45s shoved in the cuboard from their days in high school. Vinyl Junkies are the people who will travel over 3,000 miles to hear a rare b-side by a German band that has only recorded two songs since 1962, vinyl junkies are the people who own every copy of every record produced by the favorite artist from every pressing and printing in existance, vinyl junkies are the people who may just love that black plastic more than anything else in their lives. Brett Milano traveled the U.S. seeking out the most die-hard and fanatical collectors to capture all that it means to be a vinyl junkie. Includes interviews with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Peter Buck from R.E.M and Robert Crumb, creator of Fritz the cat and many more underground comics.

Adventure Guide to North Florida & the Panhandle is not your everyday guide book. No boring historical leads! What you will find is a witty, fact filled guide to fun and adventure - including how to measure an alligator without losing your hand, where to find UFO encounters and an artistic elephant.

Music journalist Dean Goodman sneaks you backstage to hang with surly stars, paranoid publicists, and righteous reporters in Strange Days: The Adventures of a Grumpy Rock 'n' Roll Journalist in Los Angeles. Strange Days documents unusual encounters with 22 musicians and bands, from a tearful David Bowie, a combative Phil Collins, and a gloomy Michael Hutchence to warring members of Aerosmith, the Doors, Guns N' Roses and Lynyrd Skynyrd. It also details the nuts-and-bolts of music journalism: deep research, the thrill of a successful interview, the agony of a disastrous one, the drudgery of transcribing the contents, and relief at turning the nuggets of wisdom into a story.

Covers those bands and artists who have rejected the mainstream in favor of innovation, originality and the pursuit of their own unique musical identity.

Acclaimed writer Charles Shaar Murray's Boogie Man is the authorized and authoritative biography of an extraordinary musician. Murray was given unparalleled access to Hooker, and he lets the man from Clarksdale, Mississippi, tell his own story. "Everything you read on album covers is not true, and every album reads different," he told Murray. Murray helps Hooker set the record straight, disentangling the myths and legends from truths so rock-ribbed that we understand, as if for the first time, why they have provided the source for a lifetime of unforgettable sound. Murray weaves together Hooker's life and music to reveal their indissoluble bonds. Yet Boogie Man is far more than merely an accomplished and brilliant biography of one man; it gives an account of an entire art form. Grounded in a time and place in American culture, the blues are universal, and in the hands of the greatest practitioners its power resides in the miracle of using despair to transcend it. "The preacher's mantle," Murray tells us, "passes to the bluesman." This bluesman traveled a hard road out of the American South, from obscurity to adulation and back-and back again. John Lee Hooker has seen it all and sung it all, and his music is both a living legacy and an American treasure. Here is the book that does him and his music full justice.

Timme Rosenkrantz (1911-1969) was a journalist, author, concert and record producer, broadcaster, and entrepreneur with a consuming passion for jazz and little head for business. He was the first European journalist to cover the jazz scene in Harlem from 1934 to 1969. In this English translation and adaptation of the original Danish-language memoir published in 1964, Harlem Jazz Adventures: A European Baron's Memoir, 1934-1969 recounts Rosenkrantz's happy stranding in New York City, where he would record jazz artists and bands in his midtown apartment, organize his own jazz band, and run a record shop with his life companion, the black journalist and singer Inez Cavanaugh. Jazz lovers and social historians interested in the intersection of race and the music business will find in Rosenkrantz's memoir an invaluable primary source on Harlem's social scene and its musical legacy.

A love song to an American icon: the first full-length biography of Carly Simon, from an acclaimed music journalist who has known her for decades Carly Simon has won two Grammys and an Academy Award, and her albums have sold more than forty million copies. Her music has touched countless lives since her debut in the 1970s, yet her own life story has remained unpublished-until now. Tapping private archives, family interviews, and a forty-year friendship with the legend herself, Stephen Davis at last captures Carly Simon's extraordinary journey from shy teenager to superstar. More Room in a Broken Heart candidly covers everything her fans want to know, including: Growing up with her father, publishing mogul Richard Simon The Bob Dylan turning point that launched her career The real story behind "You're So Vain" Carly's severe stage fright (she's the only musical guest to pretape an SNL segment) Romantic involvements with Mick Jagger, Warren Beatty, and Cat Stevens How Carly and James Taylor went from being pop music's reigning couple to independent souls living at opposite ends of Massachusetts Surviving breast cancer Her recent financial and spiritual crises Along the way, Davis vividly takes readers back to some of the most powerful eras in American music history and delivers a tribute worthy of the artist and her loyal fans, who know that nobody does it better than Carly Simon.

As the nineteenth-century drew to a close, women became more numerous and prominent in British journalism. This book offers a fascinating introduction to the work lives of twelve such journalists, and each essay examines the career, writing and strategic choices of women battling against the odds to secure recognition in a male-dominated society.

Describing how the city of London helped transform a little-known musician named Jimmy James into rock legend Jimi Hendrix, this revealing volume details how Hendrix helped transform London into a dynamo of popular music and social rebellion. The book examines Hendrix's impact on London's leading musicians—including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Eric Clapton—and follows Hendrix as he acquires a savvy manager, a tight band, and a forgiving girlfriend and launches himself into a breakneck career that whisked him from dingy clubs to Woodstock and recording and television studios. Each chapter introduces unforgettable characters and takes readers on a trip through the psychedelic era, concluding with Hendrix's tragic death in a London apartment. It explores the public as well as the private man, capturing the contrast between the wild showman on stage and the unassuming guy behind the scenes.

Extensive research into the band members and families of the Grateful Dead, as well as interviews with staff and Deadheads, enlivens this chronicle of one of the greatest rock bands of all time. Reprint.

A joyous and poignant exploration of the meaning of fandom, the healing power of art, and the importance of embracing what moves you, “The Dylanologists is juicy…artfully told…and an often moving chronicle of the ecstasies and depravities of obsession” (New York Daily News). Bob Dylan is the most influential songwriter of our time, and, after a half century, he continues to be a touchstone, a fascination, and an enigma. From the very beginning, he attracted an intensely fanatical cult following, and in The Dylanologists, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist David Kinney ventures deep into this eccentric subculture to answer a question: What can Dylan’s grip on his most enthusiastic listeners tell us about his towering place in American culture? Kinney introduces us to a vibrant underground: diggers searching for unheard tapes and lost manuscripts, researchers obsessing over the facts of Dylan’s life and career, writers working to decode the unyieldingly mysterious songs, fans who meticulously record and dissect every concert. It’s an affectionate mania, but as far as Dylan is concerned, a mania nonetheless. Over the years, the intensely private and fiercely combative musician has been frightened, annoyed, and perplexed by fans who try to peel back his layers. He has made one thing—perhaps the only thing—crystal clear: He does not wish to be known. Told with tremendous insight, intelligence, and warmth, “entertaining and well-written…The Dylanologists is as much a book about obsession—about the ways our fascinations manifest themselves, about how we cope with what we love but don’t quite understand—as it is a book about a musician and his nutty fans” (The Wall Street Journal).