Books — All Formats  

The All Music Guide Required Listening collection of essential classic rock – featuring 1000 album reviews from the excellent All Music Guide reviewers – from the uber-legendary likes of Dylan, Springsteen, The Beatles, Hendrix and the like – to just as important and less mainstream celebrated greats like The Move, The Pretty Things, Grin, Tommy Bolin and so many more! Paperback, 271 pages.

A unique account of the oft-told history of Chess Records by author Rich Cohen – focusing on the business acumen the the Chess Brothers, and the brazen approach that brought the music of juke joints to the mainstream. Cohen doesn't pull any punches when it comes to the exploitational side of the Chess story, telling the story of the Chess Brothers and the artists that changed music forever, with a focus on the facsinating and complicated business behind it. Hardcover, 220 pages.

A brilliant look at the early days of the comic book industry – a very well-written history that intermingles economic history and personal biography – in ways that really get at the complexity of the early days of comics! Gerard Jones covers a wide range of roots at the start of the book – then really zeroes in on a few key figures who help give structure to his portrait of the young comic book industry – the team of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who created Superman; and the businessmen Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz, who moved from sleazy pulp to mainstream fame with their work at DC Comics. Jones introduces a number of other figures along the way – and does a brilliant job of laying out the landscape of youth in the depression and World War years – and he really illuminates darker corners of this history, and gets way way past some of the over-told chestnuts of the early years, to link the growth of the industry to the rise of corporate-owned culture in the 60s and beyond. 384 pages, hardcover, with some black and white images.

The history of Harlem in the 20th Century – told through a wealth of vintage images and newspaper snippets – all laid out beautifully to present a vivid portrait of this uniquely American community! The subject matter varies a lot, especially as the years go by – and by taking straight snippets from the press, Allon Schoener manages to present Harlem's history through a shifting set of lenses – portrayals of the community that change greatly over the space of decades – showing a growing voice and empowered sense of identity, even as struggles increase and get more mainstream attention. The oversize book is softcover, 258 pages, and has almost as many vintage images as it does text!

Yeah, THIS is the Nick Tosches we want! Tosches has a way of chronicling the diseased, mobbed up underbelly of the 20th Century music rackets that's simply unrivaled – it's gut level brilliant and street smart writing like no one does anymore. Save The Last Dance For Satan is a more fleshed out and newly spun continuation of material published more than a decade ago as Hipsters And Hoodlums in Vanity Fair (boy, mainstream magazine content sure has changed a bunch since 2000) – chronicling the sleaze and criminality at the core of the 50s & 60s music biz. It's great! His best stuff has often read with the sweaty, intoxicating allure of seedy pulp storytelling, so it's with the utmost pleasure to see his work put out by Kicks Books - which literally puts Tosches' work in just that kind of old school hip pocket paperback! He joins Andre Williams (whose "Jailbait" single is mentioned early in this book as the badass antidote to mid 50s candy-coated rock & roll that it most certainly was) and Sun Ra at Kicks. A couple of Tosches' more recent books have been a tough slog – more about his own near obsessive search for impossibly hidden subjects than anything else – but this slim 120 page tome is the opposite – it has us slobbering for more!

Quite possibly the most beautiful record we've ever seen from the folks at The Numero Group – and that's saying a lot, given the quality of all their top-shelf releases! This beautiful edition features a hardcover book of vintage black and white photographs taken on Chicago's south side in the mid 70s – images of patrons and proprietors from long-lost nite spots that include Perv's House, Pepper's Hideout, The High Chaparral, and The Showcase Lounge – all the kind of clubs that were likely to feature the sort of Chicago funk and soul that Numero's been reissuing for the past few years! The images are amazing – a really rare look into the community that supported this sort of music – caught far far from the mainstream, in placed that were almost even private, compared to more well-travelled entertainment outlets. Photographs come from the collection of Michael Abramson – and are beautifully reproduced on LP-sized pages, in a book that also features some vintage flyers, posters, and business cards from the clubs! And if that's not enough, Numero also throws in some great notes of their own, and a bonus 2LP set with music that includes "I'm A Streaker Baby" by Arelean Brown, "No Better Time Than Now" by Ricky Allen, "The Same One" by Malcolm Simmons, "You Made Me Suffer" by Andrew Brown, "This Is My Prayer" by Lady Margo, "It's A Dream" by Little Ed & The Soundmasters Band, "I Sayed That" by Slim Willis Band, "Bring It Down Front" by Hugh Hawkins, "Womans Lib" by Lucille Spann, "Gimmie Some Of Yours" by Artie White, "Baby" by Walter Butterball Davis, "Is It Because I'm Black (inst)" by Syl Johnson, "Goose Walk" by Little Mack, "Young Blood" by Detroit Jr, "California Lady" by James Kinds & Stack, and "I Learned My Lesson" by Willie Davis. The albums are packaged in their own Numero-like cover – then nestled in a slipcover with the book – a hell of a sweet set at this price, and it also comes with an introduction by Nick Hornby!

The amazing story of Ahmet Ertegun – the driving force behind Atlantic Records, and a crucial figure in popular music in the 20th Century! Ahmet's story is the stuff of legend – and this book delivers the whole thing in stunning detail – from Ertegun's early years as the child of the Turkish ambassador, to his adolescent love of jazz and blues, to his launching Atlantic with his brother – initially to dominate the field of rhythm and blues, then jazz and soul, then even mainstream rock and roll! The hefty book is over 400 pages in length, and features a handful of black and white images too.

A highly detailed, heavily researched biography of the great Oscar Micheaux – one of the first important African-American film directors, even though he's only finally getting his due in the mainstream during more recent years! Patrick McGilligan's handled previous books on Hitchock and George Cukor, so he's already got his game when it comes to telling the story of folks behind the films – but the great thing about his account of Micheaux is that it also includes great information on his pre-film years, and really sets the context that helped African-American cinema emerge. 402 pages, paperback, with some black and white images.

Incredible images from one of the most legendary reggae labels ever – the mighty Studio One, home to decades of classic music, put together with equally-classic images on the record covers! The book is maybe even more of a treasure than some other album art books you'll find – because over the years, many of the Studio One images were pretty watered-down on the market – either pressed up on poor paper that never stood the test of time, or cropped and cribbed from for mainstream reissue packages – but never with the same sort of beauty you'll find in these images! The book is done in the same totally great style as other Soul Jazz books – and features full album images on 12" by 12" pages – all in brilliant color, too. There's some helpful notes at the beginning, and throughout in a few spots – and the book is super-heavy, and 216 pages in all – with some smaller images at the back.