Books — Recently Added  

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 ...

The artier side of album cover art – laid out in a book that's as visually beautiful as the images inside! As you'd guess from the title, the focus here is the idea of visualizing music – less the kind of representational album art that was used in decades past – and more the ...

A wonderful memoir from the glory days of the Italian soundtrack scene – penned by Franco De Gemini (aka "The Man With The Harmonica"), and filled with loads of color photos and images of albums! Franco's memoirs are often quite personal – at a level that sheds tremendous new ...

A wonderful tribute to the Impulse Records label – one that's put together with as much graphic sensitivity as you'll find on the company's album covers of the 60s! The book is incredibly well researched – both from archival material and over 50 interviews with artists and producers ...

Here's a historical hip hop journal that we can get behind in a big way and without reservation – one in which many of hip hop's greatest 80s innovators personally tell the stories behind their best early records! Author Brian Coleman (whom you may know for his XXL column) takes a no BS ...

Posters, comix, and album cover art from Victor Moscoso – the man who's probably best known in the Dusty Groove universe for his legendary cover to Herbie Hancock's Headhunters album! But Moscoso's also got a career that offers up way way more – a few decades' worth of cool, trippy ...

A book we can really get behind – partly because we're a groovy local retailer, just like the ones featured in the pictures! The volume is exactly what's promised in the title – a beautiful look at storefronts in Brooklyn – from local grocery stores, to mom and pop neighborhood ...

A biography of a jazz legacy – portraits of some the best vocalists who flourished in seeds planted by the great Louis Armstrong – and what a diverse line-up it is! Louis Armstrong pretty much pioneered the popular jazz vocal landscape, and this book takes a look at those who inherited ...

We're beyond biased in our love of Steely Dan – and his biography the jazz-rock-soul icons is a good read! Reelin' In The Years was first published in 1994, and does a solid job of detailing the works of Becker & Fagen, and the legends they had in their mindblowing arsenal over the years ...

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 ...

The heady life and even hipper music of Sly Stone – told here by an author who managed to get Stone's participation on the project! The book focuses most strongly on Sly's rise to fame and key late 60s/early 70s years – a time when his records not only changed the face of soul music, ...

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 ...

A beautiful book, and a killer companion to the CD set of the same name – a very rich look at the recorded legacy of the Civil Rights era – particularly the more righteous albums of the late 60s and early 70s! The book's overflowing with great photos of vintage albums and singles, and ...

The second in the anthology project of the mighty Wax Poetics magazine – Issues 6-10 of the deep funk, jazz, soul and hip hop journal of record – an excellent run with pieces on 45 King, Eugene McDaniels, Sun Ra, Roy Ayers, Pete Rock, DJ Premier, Wilson Simonal, Eddie Bo, Oliver Sain, ...

Writer/educator Krin Gabbard pulled together this fresh set of essays about jazz and representation as a companion book to his Jazz Among The Discourses, which is also on Duke. To quote the book, "Jazz has entered the cultural mix through its significant impact on novelists, filmmakers, ...

A great overview on themes in Country Music – with essays on a variety of topics, penned by musical scholars from a number of different fields! The approach is academic, and really gets past obvious historical tropes, to dig deeper into the complexities that have always made us love country. ...

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, ...

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 ...

An incredible look at the all-too-short life and music of Sam Cooke – put together by Peter Guralnick with an amazing amount of historical detail, and an even more important love of Cooke's music! The book is to Cooke what Guralnick's earlier writings were to Elvis Presley – a much ...

An essential overview of the key players in Bebop – divided up to focus on key musicians from the 40s onward, with specific reviews of their best recordings under each artist! Scott Yanow's definitely the man for such a book – given his writing on jazz for AMG and many other ...

A chronicle of African American Singing & Praying Bands in Maryland and Delaware – stirring spiritual music with roots in the Chesapeak Bay of the nineteenth century – and still thrives! It includes the first-person histories of the singers, players and prayers, musical annotion ...

A nice paperback devoted to great live music venues – from the beloved to the decrepit! Tim Burrows' book is not only an exploration of the live music venues themselves, but of the roles these spaces play in musical history – the legendary ballrooms of the US and UK, from the birth and ...

A photobook of the late great indie pop songwriting enigma Elliot Smith! This is a genuine tribute to Elliot – a compilation of hundreds of shots taken by his friend and photographer Autumn De Wilde. It’s got personal, informal and official album-related pics, some live shots and much ...

An excellent book on African American performance in Hollywood musicals – way more than just a star study, or a historical survey – and instead a rich project that interweaves theory and cultural practice – starting with pre-film blackface, moving into an exploration of the ...

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 ...

The story of the vocoder – presented in the coolest way possible! The book is way more than just a study of the famous voice-transforming technology – as it's put together with lots and lots of vintage photos, color images, and other illuminating features – all of which make the ...

A big beautiful book on the disco generation of the 70s – oversized, filled with color images, and broken into great little segments that serve up the period in sweet little slices! The book's a lot better than we might have guessed – thoughtfully put together, with a look at disco ...

A great chronicle of the 90s Riot Grrrl movement – with pieces on the roots, genesis and inspiring forces of the scene, snapshots of the writings, poems and voices, the art, music and politics, timeline, the Brit scene, zines directory and more! Edited by Nadine Monem, it's got a forward by ...

Iceberg Slim, eat your heart out! Andre Williams finally has a book of his own – a set of late life writings that are surprisingly great! The work came out of a post-rehab effort to get his thoughts down on paper, but without putting them in song – and the material is surprisingly ...

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 ...

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 ...

Cultural historian Alice Echols explores the massive shifts in American culture during and as impacted by the disco era – not only in fashion and record sales – but the racial, sexual and behavioral landscape at large! Echols is a biographer and historian, but she's also former disco ...

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 ...

An amazing little book – at a new low price – and an essential guide to all things funky and groovy! For nearly a decade, Peter Wermelinger's been compiling information about rare 60s and 70s records on his well-trafficked website – cover art, session details, catalog numbers, ...

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 ...

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 ...

Magnificent art from the great Jamie Hernandez – our favorite half of Los Brothers Hermanos, known for their brilliant work on Love & Rockets! The volume is part art book, part critical essay – with very thoughtful material from Todd Hignite that not only fills in some key ...

Yeah, baby – a very very groovy book about spy gadgets from the 60s! The jumping off point is the world of James Bond, Maxwell Smart, and UNCLE – but the images here go way past those familiar sources too – showing not just cool spy creations for films and TV of the 60s, but also ...

A rememberance of Tim Buckley from someone who knew him well – Lee Underwood, who toured, recorded and played lead guitar with Tim during the 60s & 70s and remained a close friend until his death in 1975. It's both a bit of a memoir for Underwood and a biography of Buckley, with tales of ...

A magnificent document of a very unique cultural moment – the voguing ballroom world of the New York scene at the end of the 80s! The book is filled with beautiful vintage photographs that really get at the complexity of the ballroom scene – the cross-gender, cross-class, cross-fashion ...

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 ...

The Beach Boys – day by day, year by year, presented in a very compelling diary format that really gets past some of the overblown mythos about the group! Author Badman goes for a "just the facts" sort of approach – and lists key days in the group's career from the 60s onward ...

A biography of jazz coronet pioneer Bix Beiderbecke – a bit that's been awarded for the deep research that author Jean Peirre Lion put into it! Bix's story is a fascinating one – a heavy drinker during The Prohibition era, when one swag of bad hooch could kill you – and one of ...

A massive hardcover tome to the enduring music of Bill Monroe – the Father Of Bluegrass! Of course, bluegrass roots and traditions go a couple hundred years deep, but there's no overstating the mandolin player and Blue Grass Boys leader – and this book is really all about the music. ...

A thick, heavy duty history of US and UK Top 20 Hit Singles charts – from the mid 50s onward! This is the 5th edition of the book, published in 2004 – and it covers the charts, month-by-month, up to this books publication. It's a fascinating read that's serves as a detailed history ...

A really cool look at Jewish album covers – with commentary by some great writers! It's got art decades old albums, many of which aren't in print or available commercially in any format – from the 40s to 80s. Features commentary by Aimee Bender, Etgar Keret, Shalom Auslander and ...

Urban radio from the inside – the third volume in Marcus Chapman's very detailed memoirs – covering his important late 90s years at Chicago's WGCI! Unlike other books of this nature, which are usually just history – and ancient history at that – Chapman's volume really digs ...

One of the greatest pairings of talent in 60s newspaper comics – and a legendary strip that's won countless accolades over the years! Secret Agent X-9 was originally created by Dashiell Hammett and comic legend Alex Raymond back in the 30s – but during the 60s, the strip was re-christen ...

One of the deepest explorations of the disco era we've come across from author Peter Shapiro – not at all a nostalgic look back, really more of a cultural study that looks into the music and the world around it. Shapiro does a great job of putting it all into perspective, from the social ...

A damn good collection of writing on comics – and not just the usual highbrow words on lowbrow subjects you might think! Editor Ben Schwartz brings together material from a wide range of writers – some of them even comics figures themselves – and divides the book into a few ...