Hardcover. San Diego, Thunder Bay, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, color throughout. Nevermind, Achtung Baby, Use Your Illusion 1&2 - the 90s saw some classic albums produced by artists such as Nirvana, U2, Gun n Roses and Red Hot Chili Peppers, as well as a resurgence in country music popularized by Shania Twain and Garth Brooks. Combining information from both the US and UK charts provided by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and British Phonographic Industry (BPI), 100 Best Selling Albums of the 90s features chart-topping work from Michael Jackson, Puff Daddy and Green Day. Each album entry is accompanied by the original sleeve artwork front and back - and is packed full of facts and recording information, including a complete track listing, musician and production credits, and an authoritative commentary on the record and its place in cultural history. Soundtracks featured include the 60s and 70s hits on Forrest Gump, the Elton John/Tim Rice songs in The Lion King, and the orchestral score for Titanic (and Celine Dion's Oscar-winning My Heart Will Go On). Other stand-out albums include the Eagles' reforming to make Hell Freezes Over and Eric Clapton's Unplugged, a career revival for him in the popular 90s back-to-basics semi-acoustic series.
Softcover. US, Laurence King, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 318 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to wrappers. The album cover is a subject of perennial interest among graphic designers. Sleeve design remains a popular subject for college projects, and many young working designers aspire to design for the music industry. Revealing state-of-the-art contemporary music graphics, Cover Art By: is packed with more than 400 examples of sleeve art. As well as CD and album covers, the insides of CD booklets and the backs of vinyl sleeves are shown. The book opens with an in-depth essay reviewing the current scene, then focuses on the work of 30 international designers/labels who are the most influential in the field, making this a must-have for designers and students, as well as music industry professionals and fans.
Softcover. Durham NC, Duke University Press, 2nd pr., 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 342 pages. In Extended Play, one of the country's most innovative music writers conducts a wide-ranging tour through the outer limits of contemporary music. Over the course of more than twenty-five portraits, interviews, and essays, John Corbett engages artists from lands as distant as Sweden, Siberia, and Saturn. With a special emphasis on African American and European improvisers, the book explores the famous and the little known, from John Cage and George Clinton to Anthony Braxton and Sun Ra. Employing approaches as diverse as the music he celebrates, Corbett illuminates the sound and theory of funk and rap, blues and jazz, contemporary classical, free improvisation, rock, and reggae. Using cultural critique and textual theory, Corbett addresses a broad spectrum of issues, such as the status of recorded music in postmodern culture, the politics of self-censorship, experimentation, and alternativism in the music industry, and the use of metaphors of space and madness in the work of African American musicians. He follows these more theoretically oriented essays with a series of extensive profiles and in-depth interviews that offer contrasting and complementary perspectives on some of the world's most creative musicians and their work. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Bologna, Damiani , 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, brown cloth with gilt lettering, cover label on front cover, 160 pages. Diary of a Set Designer is a book of Polaroids taken over 25 years by Happy Massee while traveling the world as a production designer. The photographic journal is a journey through time, with a collection of images taken with the now-defunct Polaroid camera--which, at the time, was essential to the art of designing for film. One of the industry's top production designers, Massee has enjoyed a career spanning the realms of theater, film, commercials and fashion. He has worked with established directors such as Wes Anderson, David Lynch, David Fincher, Michel Gondry and more, while in the world of fashion he has collaborated with the likes of Inez and Vinoodh, Peter Lindbergh and Craig McDean, and worked for brands such as Gucci, Valentino, Armani, Bulgari and Swarovski. His film credits include, among others, Broken English, directed by Zoe Cassavetes, and Two Lovers, directed by James Gray, and he has designed sets for music videos such as Jay Z's "99 Problems" and Madonna's "Take a Bow." In this volume, "the images of personalities, sets, locations and encounters," Massee explains, "all tell a story related to my work and travels, and the people I met while on them. The images, raw and unretouched, are candid, and capture my art as well as my life as I like to travel through it." Still in publisher's shrinkwrap.
Hardcover. NY, Harper, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 741 pages. From the archives of the American Film Institute comes a unique picture of what it was like to work in Hollywood from its beginnings to its present day. Gleaned from nearly three thousand interviews, involving four hundred voices from the industry, Hollywood: The Oral History, lets a reader listen in on candid remarks from the biggest names in front of the camera-Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Harold Lloyd-to the biggest behind it-Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Jordan Peele, as well as the lesser known individuals that shaped what was heard and seen on screen: musicians, costumers, art directors, cinematographers, writers, sound men, editors, make-up artists, and even script timers, messengers, and publicists. The result is like a conversation among the gods and goddesses of film: lively, funny, insightful, historically accurate and, for the first time, authentically honest in its portrait of Hollywood. Its the insiders story.Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 281 pages, b&w illustrations. "For, Lo! We live in an Iron Age--In the age of Steam and Fire!" wrote a poet mesmerized by the engines that were transforming American transportation, agriculture, and industry during his lifetime. Indeed, by the nineteenth century fire had become America's leitmotif--for good and for ill. "Keeping the flame" was deadly serious: even the slightest lapse of attention could convert a fire from friendly ally to ravaging destroyer. To examine the cultural context of fire in "combustible America," Margaret Hazen and Robert Hazen gather more than a hundred illustrations, most never before published, together with anecdotes and information from hundreds of original sources, including newspapers, diaries, company records, popular fiction, art, and music. What results is an immensely entertaining and encyclopedic history that ranges from stories of the tragic "great fires" of the century to fire imagery in folktales and popular literature. Dealing more with technology than with fire in nature, the book provides a vast amount of information on fire manipulation and prevention in urban life. Hazen and Hazen discuss the people who worked with fire--or against it. Founders, gaffers, blacksmiths, boilers at saltworks, and housewives knew how to "read" a fire and employ it for their purposes. A few dedicated investigators inquired about the scientific nature of heat and flame. And firefighters gradually progressed from "bucket brigades" to "using fire to fight fire" with the newly invented steam engine. The colorful stories of these Americans--the risks they took and the rewards they received--will fascinate not only social historians but also a broad audience of general readers. Clean copy.
Softcover. Duke University Press, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 424 pages, 29 illustrations. Elvis Presley's television debut in January 1956 is often cited as the moment when popular music and television came together. Murray Forman challenges that contention, revealing popular music as crucial to television years before Presley's sensational small-screen performances. Drawing on trade and popular journalism, internal television and music industry documents, and records of audience feedback, Forman provides a detailed history of the incorporation of musical performances into TV programming during the medium's formative years, from 1948 to 1955. He examines how executives in the music and television industries understood and responded to the convergence of the two media; how celebrity musicians such as Vaughn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, and Fred Waring struggled to adjust to television; and how relative unknowns with an intuitive feel for the medium were sometimes catapulted to stardom. Forman argues that early television production influenced the aesthetics of musical performance in the 1940s and 1950s, particularly those of emerging musical styles such as rock and roll. At the same time, popular music helped to shape the nascent medium of television--its technologies, program formats, and industry structures. Popular music performances were essential to the allure and success of TV in its early years. Like new in publisher's shrinkwrap.
Hardcover. Hal Leonard Corporation, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 226 pages. Haunting the recording studios, jam sessions, concert halls, and nightclubs of New York City, William "PoPsie" Randolph chronicled the postwar transformation of American music from swing and jazz, to rhythm & blues and rock n' roll. The 100,000 negatives left behind after his death in 1978 span the giddy, glitzy heyday of swing in the 1940s, the hot and cool jazz spawned in the clubs of 52nd Street, the rumbling emergence of black R&B and doo-wop, the sudden explosion of rock n' roll in the late '50s, the rise of Brill Building pop and the British Invasion of the '60s, and the growth of rock into a multibillion-dollar industry by the '70s. PoPsie's son Michael has chosen the very best of his father's collection for inclusion in this remarkable book. Here readers will find luscious black-and-white photos of everyone from Benny Goodman and Billie Holiday to Elvis, The Beatles, Hendrix, and the Rolling Stones. Insightful text explains the time, people, and place of each captured moment.
Softcover. privately printed, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 375 pages, b&w illustrations. INSCRIBED BY COLE on the title page. Two days are never the same in the life of Billy Cole, a music instrument repairman. Over the course of nearly 50 years in the music business, Billy has become a personal friend and respected repairman to some of the top musicians in the industry. Through his fine craftsmanship and attention to detail, his small music shop is a welcoming haven for musicians to stop by, to gather and be amongst others that share a common interest in music. He has become a friendly face for a musician on the road, year after year. Come with the band, as you're transported to sound stages, studios and shows that tell the story of just another day with the music technician.