Rock History

On New Year's Eve, 1970, Paul McCartney told his lawyers to issue the writ at the High Court in London, effectively ending The Beatles. You might say this was the last day of the pop era. The following day, which was a Friday, was 1971. You might say this was the first day of the rock era. And within the remaining 364 days of this monumental year, the world would hear Don McLean's "American Pie", The Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar", The Who's "Baba O'Riley", Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven", and more.

Sex. Drugs. Loud music. Wild costumes. Dazzling light shows. These words can all describe a great rock concert or a hot dance club, but they were also part and parcel of the ancient cultural phenomenon known as the "Mystery religions". In this book, author Christopher Knowles shows how the long-dead Mystery religions got a secular reincarnation when a new musical form called rock 'n' roll burst onto the scene.

Evan Dando, front man of The Lemonheads and “poster boy—and prettiest boy—of Gen X” (The New York Times), spills the true story of his band’s tumultuous history and what it was like to be famous in the pre-internet days in this candid, colorful, and unputdownable memoir. His memoir will remind readers what was so great about the pre-internet ’90s: the innocence, the access, and the anonymity.

Of all the musical developments of rock in the 1960s, one in particular fundamentally changed the music's structure and listening experience: the incorporation of extended improvisation into live performances. While many bands—including Cream, Pink Floyd, and the Velvet Underground—stretched out their songs with improvisations, no band was more identified with the practice than the Grateful Dead. In Get Shown the Light Michael Kaler examines how the Dead's dedication to improvisation stemmed from their belief that playing in this manner enabled them to touch upon transcendence.

From the team that created the ALA Notable Book The Cod's Tale comes the fascinating history of salt, which has been the object of wars and revolutions and is vital for life. Based on Mark Kurlansky's critically acclaimed best seller Salt: A World History, this handsome picture book explores every aspect of salt: The many ways it's gathered from the Earth and sea; how ancient emperors in China, Egypt, and Rome used it to keep their subjects happy; why salt was key to the Age of Exploration; what salt meant to the American Revolution; and even how the search for salt eventually led to oil.

Le cimentier Lafarge, fleuron de l’industrie française, est mis en cause devant les tribunaux pour avoir, dans la Syrie en guerre, maintenu coûte que coûte l’activité de son usine de Jalabiya jusqu’en septembre 2014, versant des millions de dollars à des groupes djihadistes, dont Daech, en taxes, droits de passage et rançons, exposant ses salariés syriens à la menace terroriste après avoir mis à l’abri le personnel expatrié.

Today, yacht rock is one of the most celebrated "yesteryear" styles of pop music, and has resonated with a new generation of musicians. But despite all the hoopla, there has never been a book that told the entire story of the genre. Until now. Featuring interviews with many of the heavy hitters of the genre, including John Oates, Kenny Loggins, and Don Felder, The Yacht Rock Book leaves no sail unturned. This is the definitive story of the yacht rock’s creation, rise, chart-smashing success, fall, and stunning rebirth.

Weaving together more than a hundred interviews with Davis's bandmates, family members, friends, and peers, this book powerfully reconstructs Davis's extraordinary life and career. Washita Love Child thoroughly and finally restores the "red dirt boogie brother" to his rightful place in rock history, cementing his legacy for generations to come.

Rock and roll was birthed in basements and garages, radio stations and dance halls, in cities where unexpected gatherings of artists and audience changed and charged the way music is heard and celebrated, capturing lightning in a bottle. Musician and writer Lenny Kaye explores ten crossroads of time and place that define rock and roll, its unforgettable flashpoints, characters and visionaries, how each generation came to be, how it was discovered by the world.

Matt Pinfield is the ultimate music fan. He's the guy who knows every song, artist, and musical riff ever recorded, down to the most obscure band's B-side single on its vinyl-only EP import. As a child, music helped Pinfield make sense of the world. Later he would approach his music idols after concerts and explain why he loved their music. As an adult, rock music inspired his career, fueled relationships, and, at times, became a life raft.

The History of Starved Rock provides a wonderful overview of the famous site in Utica, Illinois, from when European explorers first viewed the bluff in 1673 through to 1911, when Starved Rock became the centerpiece of Illinois' second state park. Mark Walczynski pulls together stories and insights from the language, geology, geography, anthropology, archaeology, biology, and agriculture of the park to provide listeners with an understanding of both the human and natural history of Starved Rock, and to put it into context with the larger history of the American Midwest.

Using an infamous deception about a fake mountain range in British Columbia as her jumping-off point, Katie Ives explores the lure of blank spaces on the map and the value of the imagination. In Imaginary Peaks she details the cartographical mystery of the Riesenstein Hoax within the larger context of climbing history and the seemingly endless quest for newly discovered peaks and claims of first ascents. Imaginary Peaks is an evocative, thought-provoking tale, immersed in the literature of exploration, study of maps, and basic human desire.

Have you always felt a certain nostalgia to the 1980s even if you didn’t grow up in it? Were you a child, teenager, or young adult in the '80s and want to relive the best years of your life? Well now you can travel back in time and embrace your over the top fashion sense that’s dying to come out!

How can so many people pledge allegiance to punk, something with no fixed identity? Depending on who and where you are, punk can be an outlet, excuse, lifestyle, escapism, conversation, community, ideology, sales category, social movement, punishable offense, badge of authenticity, reason to drink beer forever, or an aesthetic of belligerent incompetence. Sam McPheeters championed many different versions. Over the course of two decades, he fronted Born Against, released dozens of records and fanzines, and toured 17 times across the northern hemisphere.

One of America’s finest historians shows us how Bob Dylan, one of the country’s greatest and most enduring artists, still surprises and moves us after all these years. Growing up in Greenwich Village, Sean Wilentz discov­ered the music of Bob Dylan as a young teenager; almost half a century later, he revisits Dylan’s work with the skills of an eminent American historian as well as the passion of a fan.

However you found your way into indie rock, once you were a listener, it felt like being part of a secret club of people who had discovered something special, something secret, something superior. In Such Great Heights, music journalist Chris DeVille brilliantly captures this cultural moment, from the early aughts and the height of indie rock, until the 2010s as streaming upends the industry and changes music forever.

In Tibet, geologist David R. Montgomery heard a local story about a great flood that bore a striking similarity to Noah’s Flood. Intrigued, Montgomery began investigating theworld’s flood stories and - drawing from historic works by theologians, natural philosophers, and scientists - discovered the counterintuitive role Noah’s Flood played in the development of both geology and creationism.

Sandy Beach of Washington DC. June 1976 at Palm Desert Roundup. Drop the Rock talk. Prefaced with Sandy Beach reading How it Works. Sandy Beach and the classic Drop the Rock talk. A very good AA talk that has been popular for decades. This talk was given at the same Roundup as Chuck Chamberlains New Pair of Glasses. This is a really good AA talk.

Captain Arturo Sanders was having a bad day. First the routine destruction of some ancient automatic defense batteries became a disaster, when his ship’s screens failed, and he had no choice to abandon ship. Then he had to rescue two left behind crew people, which meant he missed the main shuttle evacuation leaving him and his two companions in a shuttle on their own at the rear.

In 1969, in Capitol Records' Hollywood studio, a blonde-haired troubadour named Larry Norman laid track for an album that would launch a new genre of music and one of the strangest, most interesting careers in modern rock. Having spent the bulk of the 1960s playing on bills with acts like The Who, Janis Joplin, and The Doors, Norman decided that he wanted to sing about the most countercultural subject of all: Jesus.