From an acclaimed music journalist, the gripping story of Los Angeles rock from its fifties beginnings to its eighties prime, told through its most influential pacesetter: Lou Adler.From the fifties through the eighties, Joe Adler was the key architect of Los Angeles rock—from the birth of soul to surf music to rock festivals and rock films, no one else had Adler’s reach or his success. In California Dreamin’, music journalist Michaelangelo Matos introduce...

Joining the ranks of Please Kill Me and Can't Stop Won't Stop—"a clear-eyed, authoritative account" of EDM's rise in America ( Rolling Stone)." The Underground Is Massive is a book about the rise of electronic music . . . anyone who cares even a little about music will love this book. Dance music's growth took place largely away from the spotlight, in cross-pollinating scenes around the globe; Michaelangelo Matos tells the...

A Rolling Stone-Kirkus Best Music Book of 2020The definitive account of pop music in the mid-eighties, from Prince and Madonna to the underground hip-hop, indie rock, and club scenesEverybody knows the hits of 1984 - pop music's greatest year. From "Thriller" to "Purple Rain," "Hello" to "Against All Odds," "What's Love Got to Do with It" to "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go," these iconic songs continue to dominate advertising, karaoke...

From an acclaimed music journalist, the gripping story of Los Angeles rock from its fifties beginnings to its eighties prime, told through its most influential pacesetter: Lou Adler.From the fifties through the eighties, Lou Adler was the key architect of Los Angeles rock—from the birth of soul to surf music to rock festivals and rock films, no one else had Adler’s reach or his success. In California Dreamin’, music journalist Michaelangelo Matos introduce...

The definitive account of pop music in the mid-eighties, from Prince and Madonna to the underground hip-hop, indie rock, and club scenesEverybody knows the hits of 1984 - pop music's greatest year. From "Thriller" to "Purple Rain," "Hello" to "Against All Odds," "What's Love Got to Do with It" to "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go," these iconic songs continue to dominate advertising, karaoke nights, and the soundtracks for film classics (Boogie Nights) and TV h...

A companion to the #1 music podcast on Spotify, this book takes readers through the greatest hits that define a weirdly undefinable decade.The 1990s were a chaotic and gritty and utterly magical time for music, a confounding barrage of genres and lifestyles and superstars, from grunge to hip-hop, from sumptuous R&B to rambunctious ska-punk, from Axl to Kurt to Missy to Santana to Tupac to Britney. In 60 SONGS THAT EXPLAIN THE '90s, Ringer music critic Rob ...

A New York Times bestseller, Music Is History combines multi-Grammy Award winner Questlove’s deep musical expertise with his curiosity about history, examining America over the past fifty years.Focusing on the years 1971 to the present, Questlove finds the hidden connections in the American tapestry, whether investigating how the blaxploitation era reshaped Black identity or considering the way disco took an assembly line approach...

Beloved music critic Tom Breihan's fascinating narrative of the history of popular music through the lens of game-changing #1 singles from the Billboard Hot 100.When Tom Breihan launched his Stereogum column in early 2018, “The Number Ones”—a space in which he has been writing about every #1 hit in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, in chronological order—he figured he’d post capsule-size reviews for each song. But there was so much more to uncover. The...

The late 1970s brought us an eclectic mix of popular music--everything from big hits (and even bigger hair) to cult favorites, along with the dawn of disco and punk, the coming of corporate rock, the rise of reggae and new wave, and some of the most progressive, inventive songwriting of the century.Whether you cranked up your radio for Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Supertramp, the Bee Gees, Talking Heads, Rickie Lee Jones, or Earth, Wind and Fire, you'll relive those heady days ...

‘This band has no past’ was the first line of the farcical biography printed on the inner sleeve of Cheap Trick’s first album, but the band, of course, did have a past—a past that straddles two very different decades: from the tumult of the sixties to the anticlimax of the seventies, from the British Invasion to the record industry renaissance, with the band’s debut album arriving in 1977, the year vinyl sales peaked.This Band Has No Past tells the story o...

Throughout the 1990s, Prince feuded with his record label, Warner Bros., over his rights as an independent recording artist—and made some of the most brilliant music of his career. During that time, Jim Walsh covered Prince for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and wrote about him passionately, thoughtfully, exhaustively. Here, in real time, is that coverage: a clip-by-clip look back at Prince in the ‘90s. Walsh’s newly unearthed interviews, essays, columns, and reviews make Gold Exp...

Steve Martin's riveting, mega-bestselling, beloved, and highly acclaimed memoir of a life, a vocation, and an era—named one of the ten best nonfiction titles of the year by Time and Entertainment Weekly.In the mid-seventies, Steve Martin exploded onto the comedy scene. By 1978 he was the biggest concert draw in the history of stand-up. In 1981 he quit forever. This book is, in his own words, the story of “why I did stand-up and why I walked away.”...