History & Criticism

Roy Harper must be one of Britain's most undervalued rock musicians and songwriters. For over fifty years he has produced a series of innovative albums of consistently outstanding quality. He puts poetry and social commentary to music in a way that...

From the ashes of Nirvana, Dave Grohl rose as a one-man band with a self-titled album: The Foo Fighters. Now, 25 years on, and with a rock solid outfit that includes Nate Mendel (bass), Taylor Hawkins (drums), Chris Shiflett (guitar), Pat Smear (rhythm...

A must-read for old-school hip-hop heads and burgeoning fans alikeTime'Hip Hip is not History, it's Our story. Brilliant book'Craig Charles'Hip-Hop Is History melds a detailed chronological retelling of the genre's story with occasionally hair-raising...

'Love this book! It triggers so many memories of the rave era. Thoroughly recommended.' - FATBOY SLIM 'Captures the hedonism and humour of the nineties with a laugh-out-loud honesty. The perfect Ibiza holiday read...if you can get it through customs!' -...

'Absolutely hilarious' - Neil Gaiman'One of the funniest musical commentators that you will ever read . . . loud and thoroughly engrossing' - Alan Moore'A man on a righteous mission to persuade people to "lay down your souls to the gods rock and roll".'...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781929069286Author Art ChantryFormat PaperbackPage Count 276Imprint MiscmediaPublisher MiscmediaWeight(grams) 644gDimensions(mm) 279mm * 216mm * 15mm

On the fiftieth anniversary of David Bowie's magical album, Aladdin Sane 50 is the ultimate celebration of a musical masterpiece - and the most famous photograph in pop history.This landmark book contains hundreds of photographs, including dozens of...

David Toop's extraordinary work of sonic history travels from the rainforests of Amazonas to the megalopolis of Tokyo via the work of artists as diverse as Brian Eno, Sun Ra, Erik Satie, Kate Bush, Kraftwerk and Brian Wilson. Beginning in 1889 at the...

'Literally changed the course of my life' James Murphy'The chapter on Larry Levan alone transformed me into wanting to be your favorite DJ' Questlove'The original and still the best' Gilles Peterson'We can't tell the story of dance music without speaking...

Like all double albums, "Songs in the Key of Life" is imperfect but audacious. If its titular concern - life - doesn't exactly allow for rigid focus, it's still a fiercely inspired collection of songs and one of the definitive soul records of the 1970s...

Abbate and Parker's A History of Opera is the first full new history of opera in sixty years - now in paperback in an updated second edition'The best single volume ever written on the subject' The Times Literary SupplementWhy has opera transfixed and...

Selected writings on three decades of popular music from one of the most influential critics of his generation.Spanning three decades worth of astute, acerbic, and overall astounding music writing, Kick Out the Jams is the first large-scale anthology of...

"Aja" was the album that made Steely Dan a commercial force on the order of contemporaries like Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles and Chicago. A double-platinum, Grammy-winning bestseller, it lingered on the Billboard charts for more than a year and spawned...

'A dense and colourful account of one of the most vibrant musical centres in the world, In the City almost puts you on that train to London' GuardianIn this fascinating history of London's music, which was the 2009 Sunday Times 'Music Book of the Year',...

The Ultimate Guide To Great Reggae celebrates (and helps you find) the greatest songs of reggae. It focuses on every style of reggae, from mento to Jamaican R&B, ska, rock steady, dub, DJ roots, dancehall and more. It opens with an exceptionally...

Singing Like Larks opens a rare window onto the ancient song traditions of the British Isles, interweaving mesmerising lyrics, folklore and colourful nature writing to uncover the remarkable relationship between birds and traditional folk music. Birds...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.About the AuthorCarolyn McHugh is an editor and writer specializing in popular music, fashion, and culture. From the birth of rock and roll in the mid-1950s through to modern...

'Skilfully written, engaging and sensitive' HELEN O'HARA'Hugely readable' MOJO'A compelling, moving book' THE TIMESIn the early 1980s, the pop charts were dominated by musicians tarted up in Day-Glo colours, who fought it out for coverage on our TV...

This new biography of Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), by one of the leading scholars of nineteenth- and twentieth-century French music, is based on a wealth of written and oral evidence, some newly translated and some derived from interviews with the...

Everyone loved The Hollies. They were the 'group's group'. Never confrontational or rebellious, always smartly suited, always smiling. The band had an unbroken run of immaculate pop singles which, while they seldom had that must-buy factor of the latest...

The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical provides a comprehensive academic survey of British musical theatre offering both a historical account of the musical's development from 1728 and a range of in-depth critical analyses of the unique forms and...

The Royal Marines are renowned for their military skill and also for having one of the finest military bands in the world. These highly trained and talented musicians are equally at home parading at Buckingham Palace, playing at the Royal Albert Hall, or...

Opening with the psychedelic haunts of the 1960s New York pop art scene and closing more than half a century later with the rise of post-club happenings, Temporary Pleasure shows how nightlife spaces have evolved to meet the needs of their generation,...

Discover the stories behind the songsTHE LIFE OF A SONG contains the stories of 100 songs exploring each song's biography and how they took on a new life following their release. Packed with intriguing factoids, these bite-sized essays will delight music...

A new edition as part of the Faber Greatest Hits - books that have taken writing about music in new and exciting directions for the twenty-first century.Disco emerged from the fall-out of the Black Power Movement and an almost exclusively gay scene in a...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780593237434Author Warren ZanesFormat PaperbackPage Count 320Imprint Random House IncPublisher Random House USA Inc

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781627310673Author Ika JohannessonFormat PaperbackPage Count 240Imprint Feral House,U.S.Publisher Feral House,U.S.

The full story of Taylor Swift's stratospheric rise to fame; all any dedicated Swifty needs to know about the pop superstar who's taking over the world A small-town girl with an incredible talent, and the strength to...

Of all the recordings to emerge from the Athens-via-Denver collective called "Elephant 6", Neutral Milk Hotel's second album is the one that has worked its way under the most skins. "Magnet" magazine named it the best album of the 1990s, and "Creative...

Miles: The Autobiography, like the man himself, holds nothing back. He talks about his battles against drugs and racism, and discusses the many women in his life. But above all, Miles talks about music and musicians, including the legends he has played...

Bach for Violin contains a varied collection of 14 attractive and popular pieces arranged for upper-intermediate standard violinists (Grades 5-7), exploring a range of keys, finger patterns, styles, and moods. The collection covers simpler dance...

A SUNDAY TIMES MUSIC BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023#2 UNCUT BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023A RESIDENT BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023In 1979, 2 Tone exploded into the national consciousness as records by The Specials, The Selecter, Madness, The Beat, and The Bodysnatchers burst onto...

As dazzling as the decade they dominated, The Beatles almost single-handedly created pop music as we know it. Today, their songs are cited as seminal influences by stars like Oasis and Blur. Eloquently giving voice to their time, The Beatles quite simply...

What resonated about "Endtroducing" when it was released in 1996, and what makes it still resonate today, is the way in which it loosens itself from the mooring of the known and sails off into an uncharted territory that seems to exist both in and out of...

The BBC Proms is the world's biggest and longest-running classical music festival and one of the jewels in the crown for the BBC. Held every summer at the Royal Albert Hall in London and across the UK, it is one of the strongest brand names in the music...

'Superb celebration of his life and work ... a must-read tribute' CLASSIC POP, 5/5'The funniest and most revealing of all music journalists' - NEIL TENNANT 'A laugh riot' - CLASSIC ROCK4/5 - Mojo 4/5 - Record Collector8/10 - Uncut Idiosyncratic...

Fifty years after their first practice in a Soho basement, Led Zeppelin continues to fascinate new generations of listeners. While their back-stage debauchery has been the focus of other books, All the Songs is about the music, detailing the Page's...

The Eagles are the most popular, enduring rock band in America. With singles and albums hitting the top of the charts for a quarter century and a greatest hits collection that has sold more copies than any other recording in history, the Eagles have...

Who's better? Billie Holiday or P.J. Harvey? Blur or Oasis? Dylan or Keats? And how many friendships have ridden on the answer? Such questions aren't merely the stuff of fanzines and idle talk; they inform our most passionate arguments, distil our most...

Factory Records has become the stuff of legend. The histories of the label have been told from many perspectives, from visual catalogues and memoirs to exhibitions. Yet no in-depth history has ever been told from the perspectives of the women who were...