All Categories — Books  

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Stevie Wonder's classic albums as guided though a musicians lens, rather than only the the prism of popular culture – put together by London based musician, columnist and author Steve Lodder – who has worked with Carla Bley, George Russell and Paul McCartney to name a few! The book... read more

A beautiful book on five key forces in American advertising of the 20th Century – and one with an especially strong focus on the important work of the Mad Men generation! The lavish book is filled with full color images, printed on heavy paper in an oversized format – and interspersed... read more

Greil Marcus takes an ambitious look at the life and works Van Morrison – this is no regular rock and roll biography, Marcus goes deeper and approaches Van by observing his most unclassifiable moments in his career. From the transcendent, sublime genius of classics such as Astral Weeks to... read more

The earliest days of cartoon advertising – loads of rare work from a time before the medium had been reduced to Big Boy hawking pancakes, and Batman selling Twinkies! The book offers up some incredible stuff we weren't aware of – images that go as far back as the 1870s, and up to the... read more

A beautiful set of jazz album cover art from the 50s and 60s – hardcover, in full color, and packed with hundreds of classic images! The title's a reflection of the strong scope of material – work from both the east and west coast scenes, pulled from labels like Prestige, Atlantic,... read more

A great re-presentation of this classic look at Blue Note Records – one that brings together material from both the first and second volumes of cover art – all presented in a hardcover volume that's got the dimensions of a 10" LP! The heavy book features over 400 record cover... read more

Fantastic photos of Johnny Cash – mostly 60s and 70s material, plus a few later bits too – all in stunning black and white, and collected here in a magnificent volume! Images include rare pre-show shots from the famous concerts at San Quentin and Folsom Prison, bits from the Johnny... read more

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Pat Martino tells his story – a wonderfully long run of jazz experience that starts in the heady days of the 60s soul jazz scene, moves into key psychedelic modes, suffers a bit of tragedy in later years, then springs wonderfully back more recently! Pat's got help from a co-writer on the... read more

A massive book on the music of Bob Marley and The Wailers – written in collaboration with Aston Barrett and other group members – and offering up a huge amount of detail that we haven't seen in other Marley biographies! The style is great – and offers up loads of personal... read more

A hefty art book on the story of the Stooges – filled with oversized vintage photos in both color and black and white – and supported by writings that tell the history of the band! If you think the front of Raw Power is a striking image, you'll be blown away with the photos in this... read more

A beautiful book on the development of highlife music in Ghana – and one that's way more compelling than the usual historical tome on African music – given the highly visual style of the volume! The book's put together almost like an album cover art collection – as it's... read more

A thick, photo heavy book dedicated to the greats of Latin rock – from the creative firestorm that burst from the 60s San Franisco Haight scene, up to Santana's surprise commercial juggernaut Supernatural in the late 90s. The book goes far deeper Santana, though, with reminiscences from a... read more

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... read more

A lavish book that documents the rich graphic legacy of McSweeney's – a press that makes books as beautiful to view as they are to read – thanks to work from some of the most forward-thinking graphic artists around! The huge volume features hundreds of images – from rough... read more

A really cool guide to an under-researched side of the record business – the decades of albums and singles issued for the younger market – served up in a book that's as colorful as the records themselves! The volume is partly a price guide, partly a discography – and it's printed... read more

Over looked genius in American comics from the 40s to the 80s – a wonderful volume that features material we never would have seen otherwise! Some of the names here are legends, represented by obscure slices of their work – and others are talents that never got the respect they deserve... read more

A beautiful document of a lost Japanese art – the in-person version of manga, in which vividly colored images were used to accompany a live storyteller! The format pre-dated comics and most cinema in Japan – and is presented here in a huge amount of vivid full-color images – some... read more

A tome to the legacy of Island Records – the pretty amazing journey of a record label that began with the goal of bringing reggae to the masses – and in it's heyday, grew to be home to some of the most creative artists in modern pop music of sprawlingly broad styles! From Bob Marley to... read more

The blues boomed big on record in the 20s and 30s – but in order to get that music to market, most labels had to really improvise – come up with whole new ways of recording the artists, and often going far afield with relatively little equipment! This well-done book by blues historian... read more

A Gary Panter extravaganza – an incredibly huge, two-volume set, packaged in a heavy slipcover! The first book features over 1000 different images from Panter – paintings, posters, comics, and more – all from the guy who's become a legend through his underground comix work, and... read more

An incredible collection of revolutionary jazz album cover art from the 60s & 70s – bold, vivid and unforgettable art for bold, vivid and unforgettable jazz – compiled and edited by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker! It's a snapshot of an era in jazz music when cultural and... read more

The most sparely beautiful of Nick Drake's legendary three albums – the immortal Pink Moon – and as perfectly suited for the 33 1/3 classic albums biography series as any album could ever be! After the comparably ornate Five Leaves Left and Bryter Later, Drake's songs are stripped her... read more

A totally great little book – with a cover that's actually made from plywood! The package is a fitting one for Wisconsin cartoonist Norman Pettingill – who started as a trapper, then grew into a cool home-grown cartoonist – one with a great eye for the underbelly of outdoor life!... read more

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Weird and wonderful collages from Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices – accompanied by some of his lyrics, but mostly focusing on full-color reproductions of the original creations! There's a great use of juxtaposition here – images that have a nice sense of surprise, and a good sense... read more

A beautiful book of vintage hard rock album covers – starting in the late 60s, and running through the early 80s – all to provide a perfect showcase of the best images of the genre from the vinyl generation! The book's got way more than pictures, though – as each oversize page... read more

Vintage album covers from the 70s – all hand-picked by Aubrey Powell of Hipgnosis – a company responsible for some of their own classic images back in the day! Powell does a great job with the package – and manages to go way beyond just Hipgnosis covers, to include a really wide-s... read more

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The Science Fiction Poetry of Sun Ra – complete and unabidged – in a great, kinda old school hip pocket paperback-styled tome from Kicks Books! As revered as Sun Ra is, was, and will forever be as one of the great avant garde bandleaders and all around musical innovators of the 20th... read more

One of the headiest books we've ever seen on The Walker Brothers – and certainly much deeper than any of the pop press that used to come out on the group! Author Anthony Reynolds relates a wealth of details here – the rise of The Walker Brothers, the dissolution of the group, the key... read more

A nicely-done biography of Louis Armstrong's late life and career – one that takes deep look at the last 25 years of this giant in American musical culture! It's a fascinating period for Satchmo – in which he actually made his highest charting recordings in "Mack The Knife"... read more

The Rittor Music Japan Bible Of Extreme Metal – a discography book that covers brutal music in a beautiful way! The cover art is extremely metal – but the book actually covers more than just "extreme metal" – it spans the metal genre from it's origins to today –... read more

A beautifully-drawn sci-fi strip from the great Jerry Robinson – material that's even more vibrant than Jerry's famous 40s work on comic books – thanks in part to the lavish style of this volume! Jet Scott was a short-lived continuity strip – one that mixed rocket stories with... read more

Great source material on the legendary Jimi – a wealth of interviews from 1967 through 1970, all pulled together in one super-packed book! The interviews are presented chronologically – in a way that not only shows the changing perception of Hendrix as he's handled by different... read more

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A nice photographic history of Our Town's Lake Shore Drive – which the author's hail as Urban America's Most Beautiful Roadway, and awe shucks, we're kinda proud! As lifelong Chicagoans, we can almost take the view for granted. . .especially if you get trapped there in a blizzard or during... read more

A great counterpart to the Sampling Dictionary – one that offers up most of the same material, but in reverse! Like that volume, this one offers up a huge list of tracks that have been sampled by hip hop songs – over 17,000 listings of different samples from the past few decades,... read more

An essential book for detail-oriented beatheads – a "Sampling Dictionary", and one that spells out original samples used for thousands of hip hop tracks! The book's of Japanese origin, and it's done with a thoroughness that blows away previous efforts like this – completely... read more

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Think that funk, rock, and soul are the only styles of music that get groovy record covers? Think again – as this book from Horst Scherg definitely sets the record straight – by culling forth a cornucopia of covers from the late 40s onwards, all filled with some really cool images! ... read more

A beautifully illustrated little book devoted to the coolest musical toys of the past half century – from the collection of Eric Schneider – and featuring a forward by DJ Spooky! It's all about the images in this book, photographs of these incredible, colorful musical kitsch relics of... read more

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... read more

A really heavy duty book on Led Zeppelin – one that's as big as an oversized volume of photos, but also includes a rich amount of text, too! There's a great array of vintage black and white photos in the book – lots of candid and backstage images we've never seen before – all... read more

The excellent annual roundup of out-of-print issues of Shindig – plus a pair of previously unpublished articles from the groovy magazine for psyche, garage, prog, powerpop, soul, folk and more! Annual Number Three comes hardbound with cool, foil on black cover art – and items on Pretty... read more

All the articles from the out of print Volume early issues of Shindig! Magazine – with additional photos and redesigned for this deluxe book treatment – hardcover bound, and beautifully so! Features those excellent articles on class psychedelic, garage and other 60s & 70s titans... read more

A surprisingly beautiful book from Patti Smith – her memoirs of her years with Robert Mapplethorpe, told with an even more sensitive voice than we might have expected from her music! The book has earned Patti a whole new range of appreciation – and for good reason too – and in... read more

Maybe the deepest book we've ever read on the life and music of James Brown – and certainly one to really get past the monolithic moments, and really serve up the full details of The Godfather at work! There's a surprising amount of research that went into the project – way more than... read more

Denise Sullivan's history of Black Power and a broader look at the marriage of music and social change – from blues to hip hop! Crawdaddy columnist Sullivan features interviews with John Sinclair, Yoko Ono, Richie Havens, Solomon Burke, Phranc, Wayne Kramer, Len Chandler, Michael Franti and... read more

One of the harder-hitting books we've ever seen on James Brown – an account of his famous Boston performance on April 5, 1968 – the night after Martin Luther King was assassinated – but one that also looks at Brown's lasting impact on race in America as well! We appreciate author... read more

The compelling story of Alan Lomax – the man who recorded so much music around the globe, he was practically a rock star himself! Lomax's efforts with a tape recorder are the stuff of legend – and he's left behind a huge legacy of important recordings that would have never happened... read more

British punk, right up from the trenches – presented here in a surprisingly well-detailed book that really gets at the heart of the key years of 1976 and 1977! Dave Thompson writes the book as compelling narrative – history, but filled with the sort of passion that would have grabbed... read more

Classic albums in a variety of genres – some rare, some famous, all of them pretty darn groovy! This lavish hardcover volume presents over 200 images in beautiful color – starting with the "suits" at the start of the decade, some especially nice jazz images, then moving into... read more

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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... read more

A treasure trove of vintage work by one of the greatest talents in comic books – captured here during some of his most fruitful years! The package brings together rare material from the early 50s – pre-code gems by Alex Toth, one of the most mature, most thoughtful comics artists of... read more

A giant-sized tribute to the fanzine movement! The book is devoted to DIY zines from the 70s onward – not just the iconic underground music journals – all the great personal and passionate self-published subcultural screeds. Teal Triggs' book is beautiful, served well by the oversized... read more

A really unique look at The Velvet Underground – a book that traces their late 60s experience and existence at a day-by-day level – offering up crucial dates in their career with very vivid happenings, and lots of photos and images too! The book is way way more than a diary – as... read more

Finally – a chance for American listeners to get a look into the life of Serge Gainsbourg – served up here in a massive biography on one of the greatest singer/songwriters of the 20th Century! The book is way more than we could have hoped for – not a sensational fluff piece on... read more

An amazing little book – quite possibly one of the first-ever graphic novels, and an amazing hybrid of pulp crime and postwar comics! This unique volume was originally designed as a comic-style paperback – no full text at all, just black and white images from the amazing Matt Baker... read more

A very personal tale of this wonderful group – one that's brought together out of recollections by each of the group members, as well as by key members of the Minneapolis scene as well! Jim Walsh isn't really the author so much as the moderator – he structures the book like one long... read more

A really compelling project that's very much in the spirit of work by Lynda Barry or Debbie Dreschler – served up in a cool slipcover package! The book is loosely based on a teenage diary found in a gas station bathroom in the 80s – and tells the tale of a high school sophomore in 1985... read more

Not just the "why" of jazz, but the "who", "how", and "when" as well – all laid out in a really unique format by jazz critic Kevin Whitehead! The book is roughly chronological, based on the history of jazz – but the approach is quite unusual... read more

We're not usually fans of books on a single album – but in this case, we gladly make an exception – as the creation and circulation of Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue is definitely powerful enough to fill volumes of writing! Author Richard Williams does a great job of exploring this crucial... read more

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Way more than you might expect! Once again, comic historian Craig Yoe blows us away with the breadth of his knowledge – as the book's a huge range of anti-war images that span the space of a century – from early drawings by Daumier and Thomas Nast, to expressionist work by George Grosz... read more

Way more than some of the star-type bios on Scott Walker that have littered the market over the years – and instead, a well-chosen collection of writings on Walker that really get at the full depth of his genius! The book's a co-production with The Wire – and definitely lives up to the... read more

A download-only version of the Numero Omnibus – no vinyl, but a beautiful booklet, and download code for all 90 tracks in the 45 collection! The price is high, but you get a hell of a lot of value for the package – the digital version of a funky 45 collection to rival longtime... read more