Quirky charm infuses this tale of Old Rock's life story, which is much more exciting than you'd expect. Old Rock has been sitting in the same spot in the pine forest for as long as anyone can remember. Spotted Beetle, Tall Pine, and Hummingbird think just sitting there must be boring, but they are in for a wonderful surprise. Fabulous tales of adventurous travel, exotic scenery, entertaining neighbors, and more from Old Rock's life prove it has been anything but boring. Great storytellers come in all shapes, sizes, and ages, and Old Rock's stories are sure to inspire questions that lead to wonderful conversations about the past and the natural world.
Quirky charm infuses this tale of Old Rock's life story, which is much more exciting than you'd expect. Old Rock has been sitting in the same spot in the pine forest for as long as anyone can remember. Spotted Beetle, Tall Pine, and Hummingbird think just sitting there must be boring, but they are in for a wonderful surprise. Fabulous tales of adventurous travel, exotic scenery, entertaining neighbors, and more from Old Rock's life prove it has been anything but boring. Great storytellers come in all shapes, sizes, and ages, and Old Rock's stories are sure to inspire questions that lead to wonderful conversations about the past and the natural world.
The year is 1983, and Chuck Klosterman just wants to rock. But he's got problems. For one, he's in the fifth grade. For another, he lives in rural North Dakota. Worst of all, his parents aren't exactly down with the long hairstyle which rocking requires. Luckily, his brother saves the day when he brings home a bit of manna from metal heaven, SHOUT AT THE DEVIL, Motley Crue's seminal paean to hair-band excess. And so Klosterman's twisted odyssey begins, a journey spent worshipping at the heavy metal altar of Poison, Lita Ford and Guns N' Roses. In the hilarious, young-man-growing-up-with-a-soundtrack-tradition, FARGO ROCK CITY chronicles Klosterman's formative years through the lens of heavy metal, the irony-deficient genre that, for better or worse, dominated the pop charts throughout the 1980s. For readers of Dave Eggers, Lester Bangs, and Nick Hornby, Klosterman delivers all the goods: from his first dance (with a girl) and his eye-opening trip to Mandan with the debate team; to his list of 'essential' albums; and his thoughtful analysis of the similarities between Guns 'n' Roses' 'Lies' and the gospels of the New Testament.
Lou Gramm rose from humble, working-class roots in Rochester, New York, to become one of rock's most popular and distinctive voices in the 1970s and '80s, singing and cowriting more than a dozen hits with the band Foreigner. Songs such as "Cold As Ice," "I Want to Know What Love Is," "Waiting for a Girl Like You," "Double Vision," "Urgent," and "Midnight Blue" are among 20 Gramm songs that achieved Top 40 status on the Billboard charts and became rock classics still played often, nearly three decades after they first hit the airwaves and the record store shelves. "Juke Box Hero: The My Five Decades in Rock 'n' Roll" chronicles, with remarkable candor, the ups and downs of this popular rocker's amazing life--a life which saw him achieve worldwide fame and fortune, then succumb to its trappings before summoning the courage and faith to overcome his drug addiction and a life-threatening brain tumor. Gramm takes the reader behind the scenes--into the recording studio, back stage, on the bus trips and beyond--to give an insider's look into the life of the man "Rolling Stone" magazine referred to as "the Pavarotti of rock."
Neil Young took on the music industry so that fans could hear his music—all music—the way it was meant to be heard. Today, most of the music we hear is com-pressed to a fraction of its original sound,while analog masterpieces are turning to dustin record company vaults. As these record-ings disappear, music fans aren't just losing acollection of notes. We're losing spaciousness,breadth of the sound field, and the ability tohear and feel a ping of a triangle or a pluckof a guitar string, each with its own reso-nance and harmonics that slowly trail off intosilence. The result is music that is robbed of its original quality—muddy and flat in sound compared to the rich, warm sound artists hear in the studio. It doesn't have to be this way, but the record and technology companies have incorrectly assumed that most listeners are satisfied with these low-quality tracks. Neil Young is challenging the assault on audio quality—and working to free music lovers from the flat and lifeless status quo. To Feel the Music is the true story of his questto bring high-quality audio back to musiclovers—the most important undertaking ofhis career. It's an unprecedented look insidethe successes and setbacks of creating thePono player, the fights and negotiationswith record companies to preserve master-pieces for the future, and Neil's unrelentingdetermination to make musical art availableto everyone. It's a story that shows how muchmore there is to music than meets the ear. Neil's efforts to bring quality audio to his fans garnered media attention when his Kickstarter campaign for his Pono player—a revolutionary music player that would combine the highest quality possible with the portability, simplicity and affordability modern listeners crave—became the third-most successful Kickstarter campaign in the website's history. It had raised more than $6M in pledges in 40 days. Encouraged by the enthusiastic response, Neil still had a long road ahead, and his Pono music player would not have the commercial success he'd imagined. But he remained committed to his mission, and faced with the rise of streaming services that used even lower quality audio, he was determined to rise to the challenge. An eye-opening read for all fans of Neil Young and all fans of great music, as well as readers interesting in going behind the scenes of product creation, To Feel the Music has an inspiring story at its heart: One determined artist with a groundbreaking vision and the absolute refusal to give up, despite setbacks, naysayers, and skeptics.
The birth of rock 'n roll ignited a firestorm of controversy--one critic called it "musical riots put to a switchblade beat"--but if it generated much sound and fury, what, if anything, did it signify? As Glenn Altschuler reveals in All Shook Up, the rise of rock 'n roll--and the outraged reception to it--in fact can tell us a lot about the values of the United States in the 1950s, a decade that saw a great struggle for the control of popular culture. Altschuler shows, in particular, how rock's "switchblade beat" opened up wide fissures in American society along the fault-lines of family, sexuality, and race. For instance, the birth of rock coincided with the Civil Rights movement and brought "race music" into many white homes for the first time. Elvis freely credited blacks with originating the music he sang and some of the great early rockers were African American, most notably, Little Richard and Chuck Berry. In addition, rock celebrated romance and sex, rattled the reticent by pushing sexuality into the public arena, and mocked deferred gratification and the obsession with work of men in gray flannel suits. And it delighted in the separate world of the teenager and deepened the divide between the generations, helping teenagers differentiate themselves from others. Altschuler includes vivid biographical sketches of the great rock 'n rollers, including Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Buddy Holly--plus their white-bread doppelgangers such as Pat Boone. Rock 'n roll seemed to be everywhere during the decade, exhilarating, influential, and an outrage to those Americans intent on wishing away all forms of dissent and conflict. As vibrant as the music itself, All Shook Up reveals how rock 'n roll challenged and changed American culture and laid the foundation for the social upheaval of the sixties.
A trio of seventh graders become one another's first friends as they discover the secrets of a Civil War soldier in this middle grade novel for fans of Gordon Korman and Jack Gantos. Twelve-year-old Oliver Prichard is obsessed with the Civil War. He knows everything about it: the battles, the generals, every movement of the Union and Confederate Armies. So when the last assignment of seventh-grade history is a project on the Civil War, Oliver knows he'll crush it--until he's partnered with Ella Berry, the slacker girl who does nothing but stare out the window. And when he finds out they'll have to research a random soldier named Private Raymond Stone who didn't even fight in any battles before dying of some boring disease, Oliver is sure he's doomed. But Ella turns out to be much more interesting than Oliver expected, and Oliver's lunch buddy Kevin Kim comes to their project's rescue as head writing consultant. Things seem to be going pretty okay until Oliver discovers some big secrets buried in the past--and the present. Oliver knows he can unravel the mystery. But as he keeps digging, he has to decide if it's worth blowing up the project--and his newfound friendships--in order to discover the truth.
A New York Times Best Illustrated Book of 2019 Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year The Boring Book is a humorous picture book that follows the story of one particularly bored boy. As the story progresses, our protagonist discovers there's actually more to boredom than what meets the eye—more questions, more theories, and heaps of humor. This exploration of boredom from acclaimed author-illustrator Shinsuke Yoshitake playfully—and hilariously—unpacks the ways in which a seemingly stagnant state is actually a portal into a dynamic, life-enriching experience. • Embraces the topic of boredom—an ever-so-popular kid complaint—and runs with it • The unique comic format, fast pace, smart humor, and narrative approach makes it ideal for reluctant readers • A universally hilarious book that will amuse children ages 5 to 8, as well as adults In addition to banishing boredom, Yoshitake's distinctive illustrations promote visual literacy and show young readers what the process of creative thinking looks like. This smart, laugh-out-loud picture book just might change your child's perspective on the state of boredom forever. • A wonderful gift for parents, teachers, educators, librarians, caregivers, and anyone who has to answer to the statement "I'm bored!" • Perfect for readers of early chapter books • Great for fans of the Fox & Chick series by Sergio Ruzzier, Waiting Is Not Easy! (An Elephant and Piggie Book) by Mo Willems, and I'm Bored by Michael Ian Black
• A New York Times Summer Reading List selection • A Publishers Weekly Best Summer Book of 2015 • A Business Insider Best Summer Read • An Esquire Father’s Day Book selection • A New York Observer Best Music Book of 2015 • A memoir charting thirty years of the American independent rock underground by a musician who knows it intimately Jon Fine spent nearly thirty years performing and recording with bands that played various forms of aggressive and challenging underground rock music, and, as he writes in this memoir, at no point were any of those bands “ever threatened, even distantly, by actual fame.” Yet when members of his first band, Bitch Magnet, reunited after twenty-one years to tour Europe, Asia, and America, diehard longtime fans traveled from far and wide to attend those shows, despite creeping middle-age obligations of parenthood and 9-to-5 jobs, testament to the remarkable staying power of the indie culture that the bands predating the likes of Bitch Magnet--among them Black Flag, Mission of Burma, and Sonic Youth --willed into existence through sheer determination and a shared disdain for the mediocrity of contemporary popular music. In indie rock’s pre-Internet glory days of the 1980s, such defiant bands attracted fans only through samizdat networks that encompassed word of mouth, college radio, tiny record stores and ‘zines. Eschewing the superficiality of performers who gained fame through MTV, indie bands instead found glory in all-night recording sessions, shoestring van tours and endless appearances in grimy clubs. Some bands with a foot in this scene, like REM and Nirvana, eventually attained mainstream success. Many others, like Bitch Magnet, were beloved only by the most obsessed fans of this time. Like Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, Your Band Sucks is an insider’s look at a fascinating and ferociously loved subculture. In it, Fine tracks how the indie-rock underground emerged and evolved, how it grappled with the mainstream and vice versa, and how it led many bands to an odd rebirth in the 21 st Century in which they reunited, briefly and bittersweetly, after being broken up for decades. Like Patti Smith’s Just Kids, Your Band Sucks is a unique evocation of a particular aesthetic moment. With backstage access to many key characters in the scene—and plenty of wit and sharply-worded opinion—Fine delivers a memoir that affectionately yet critically portrays an important, heady moment in music history.
