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Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-And-Roll's Legendary Neighborhood - Michael Walker
(ISBN-13 : 978-0865479661)
n the late sixties and early seventies, an impromptu collection of musicians colonized a eucalyptus-scented canyon deep in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles and melded folk, rock, and savvy American pop into a sound that conquered the world as thoroughly as the songs of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones had before them. Thirty years later, the music made in Laurel Canyon continues to pour from radios, iPods, and concert stages around the world. During the canyon's golden era, the musicians who lived and worked there scored dozens of landmark hits, from California Dreamin' to Suite: Judy Blue Eyes to It's Too Late, selling tens of millions of records and resetting the thermostat of pop culture.
In Laurel Canyon, veteran journalist Michael Walker tells the inside story of this unprecedented gathering of some of the baby boom's leading musical lights--including Joni Mitchell; Jim Morrison; Crosby, Stills, and Nash; John Mayall; the Mamas and the Papas; Carole King; the Eagles; and Frank Zappa, to name just a few--who turned Los Angeles into the music capital of the world and forever changed the way popular music is recorded, marketed, and consumed. |
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Light My Fire: My Life with The Doors - Ray Manzarek
(ISBN-13 : 978-0099280651)
The Doors were arguably the most important rock-and-roll band of the 1960s, unquestionably a catalyst for American music as we know it. Their music was the product of late-sixties southern California, with its idyllic facades. The Doors looked beyond these facades and wrote music about what they found, making them the ultimate symbol for rebellion and alienation: the key to the 1960s, counter-culture. Keyboardist Ray Manzarek co-founded the Doors with legendary guitarist Jim Morrison in 1965. Together with Robby Krieger and John Densmore they created a musical and cultural legend.
Their original mix of jazz, classical, Californian surf, Flamenco guitar and Chicago blues made an irreversible impact on the music of the day, and the course of pop music ever since. Their worldwide popularity continues today with album sales of nearly two million a year. Ray Manzarek and Jim Morrison were both UCLA Film School graduates, best friends and rarely apart until Morrison moved to Paris shortly before his death in 1971. Ray Manzarek knows secrets about Jim Morrison and The Doors that others could only guess at; until now. In this unique musical biography, Manzarek reveals the truth behind the legendary rock band. His story gives illumination to the dark myths and lays to rest the rumours that have abounded about Jim Morrison and the band for years. Light My Fire truly gives us an insight into the times, the enigmatic lead singer, and the magic circle that was The Doors. |
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Live At The Fillmore East : A Photographic Memoir - Amalie R. Rothschild, Ruth Gruber, Mickey Hart
(ISBN 13: 9781560252795)
From 1968 to 1971 Bill Graham's Fillmore East in New York City was the East coast Mecca for the music that shaped a generation. Not only that: thanks to a visionary technical staff and unsurpassed psychedelic light shows, the Fillmore East stage was the place where rock music became rock theater. Now available in paperback, the highly acclaimed Live at the Fillmore East tells the story of its heyday with more than 200 black and white behind-the-scenes photographs and exclusive interviews. Included here are photos of the Who's premiere of Tommy in 1969; John and Yoko's surprise encore to a Frank Zappa concert; the jam between the Allman Brothers, the Grateful Dead, and Mick Fleetwood in 1970; Janis Joplin's first performance after singing with CBS records; Jimi Hendrix's New Year's Eve concerts; Van Morrison during the first-ever television taping of a rock concert in 1970; and many other defining moments of rock history "Amalie R. Rothschild's pictures bring back the entire Fillmore East experience in vivid detail. Rock and Roll was a baby back then and Bill Graham was it's midwife - he birthed the modern version of a rock and roll concert. " -- Mickey Hart |
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London's Arts Labs and the 60s Avant-Garde - David Curtis (ISBN 978-0861967483)
This is the story of two short-lived artist-run spaces that are associated with some of the most innovative developments in the arts in Britain in the late 1960s. The Drury Lane Arts Lab (1967–69) was home to the first UK screenings of Andy Warhol's twin-screen 3 hour film Chelsea Girls, challenging exhibitions (John and Yoko / John Latham / Takis / Roelof Louw), poetry and music (first UK performance of Erik Satie's 24-hour Vexations) and fringe theatre (People Show / Freehold / Jane Arden's Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven / Will Spoor Mime Theatre). The Robert Street 'New Arts Lab' (1969–71) housed Britain's first video workshop TVX, the London Filmmakers Co-op's first workshop and a 5-days-a-week cinema devoted to showing new work by moving-image artists (David Larcher / Malcolm Le Grice / Sally Potter / Carolee Schneemann / Peter Gidal). It staged J G Ballard's infamous Crashed Cars exhibition and John & Dianne Lifton's pioneering computer-aided dance/mime performances.
The impact of London's Labs led to an explosion of new artist-led spaces across Britain. This book relates the struggles of FACOP (Friends of the Arts Council Operative) to make the case for these new kinds of space and these new art-forms and the Arts Council's hesitant response – in the context of a popular press already hostile to youth culture, experimental art and the 'underground'. |
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Lost in the Woods: Syd Barrett and the Pink Floyd -
Julian Palacios
(ISBN-10 0752223283)
Soon after creating the experimental pop group, Pink Floyd, in 1966, Syd Barrett took to using hallucinogenic drugs, which led to schizophrenia. He has now abandoned his past.
Through interviews with Barrett's family and friends, this book provides an account of the man and his illness.
Please also read this excerpt from the book reporduced with kind permission from Julian Palacios. |
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The Lyrics of Syd Barrett - Rob Chapman
(ISBN-13 : 978-1787602564)
Despite just a three-year tenure with the band, co-founder Syd Barrett's influence on Pink Floyd was profound and long-lasting. If his guitar gave the early Pink Floyd a distinctive hallucinatory sound, his often obscure and surreal lyrics were perhaps even more intoxicating.
The complete lyrics of Syd Barrett - 52 songs written for Pink Floyd and during his subsequent solo career - are presented together for the first time, along with rare photos and artwork, to form this beautifully illustrated book.
Compiled in collaboration with the Syd Barrett estate, and featuring a foreword from former Pink Floyd manager Peter Jenner and a comprehensive introduction by biographer Rob Chapman, The Lyrics of Syd Barrett delves deep into one of rock'n'roll's most imaginative and searing minds. |
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