Popular music

Madchester may have been born at the Hacienda in the summer of 1988, but the city had been in creative ferment for almost a decade prior to the rise of acid house. The end-of-the-century party is the definitive account of a generational shift in popular...

A tour diary of life on the road with one of Minnesota's greatest bands-with nearly 100 never-before-seen photographs"Don't bore us, get to the chorus" is Bill Sullivan's motto, which will come as no surprise to anyone who opens Lemon Jail. A raucous...

How sampling remade hip-hop over forty years, from pioneering superstar Grandmaster Flash through crate-digging preservationist and innovator MadlibSampling-incorporating found sound and manipulating it into another form entirely-has done more than any...

In this classic work of American music writing, renowned critic Albert Murray argues beautifully and authoritatively that "the blues as such are synonymous with low spirits. Not only is its express purpose to make people feel good, which is to say in...

The chapters deal with such compelling topics as the environment, race relations, the counterculture, the sexual revolution, the war in Vietnam, the appeal of punk rock, the fall of Richard Nixon, the rise of Ronald Reagan, the murder of John Lennon, and...

Bob Dylan's cultural production in the second half of the twentieth century, his songs, but also his changing images and self-fashionings have informed and productively re/shaped certain images of America from outside and within. Refractions of Bob Dylan...

Presents a highly original and detailed investigation into the nature of American visual, musical and cultural influences on British youth between 1945 and 1960. It looks at the spread of youth culture, juke boxes, coffee and milk bars, dress styles and...

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...

Stunningly designed flexibound book profiling the top 40 most famous Australian pop and rock songs. What a famous song is about and what you think it's about aren't always the same thing. National Anthems names the top 40 classic Australian songs and...

To mark the first anniversary of Eddie Van Halen's early death comes this new, full-length biography. 'The game changing guitar legend gets the biography he deserves ... Diligently researched, perceptive and well-written.' 8/10, Classic Rock 'An...