I'm With the Band

All Music Guide to Rock: The Definitive Guide to Rock, Pop, and Soul  edited by Vladimir Bogdanov, Stephen Thomas Erlewine, and Chris Woodstra (016.781 ALL)
This 1,400-page tome is the most complete guide ever published on various artists and recordings. Compiled by dozens of music critics, it reviews and rates more than 14,000 albums by more than 2,200 artists and groups in more than 400 styles – both mainstream and alternative – including bootlegs, import-only releases, important out-of-print recordings, and lesser-known cult artists.

A Pirate Looks at 50 by Jimmy Buffett (B Buffett)
As hard as it is to believe, the irrepressible Jimmy Buffett has hit the half-century mark, and, in A Pirate Looks at 50, he brings us along on the remarkable journey he took through the Southern hemisphere to celebrate this landmark birthday. Jimmy takes us from the legendary pirate coves of the Florida Keys to the ruins of ancient Cartegena. Along the way, we hear a tale or two of how he got his start in New Orleans, how he discovered his passion for flying planes, and how he almost died in a watery crash in Nantucket Harbor. We follow Jimmy to jungle outposts in Costa Rica and on a meandering trip down the Amazon, through hair-raising negotiations with gun-toting customs officials and a 3-year-old aspiring co-pilot. And he is the inimitable Jimmy Buffett through it all. For Parrotheads, for armchair adventurers, and for anyone who appreciates a good yarn and a hearty laugh, here is the ultimate backstage pass.

Can't Stop, Won't Stop : a history of the hip-hop generation by Jeff Chang (306.4 Chang)
Forged in the fires of the Bronx and Kingston, Jamaica, hip-hop became the Esperanto of youth rebellion and a generation-defining movement. In a post-Civil Rights era defined by deindustrialization and globalization, hip-hop crystallized a multiracial, polycultural generation's worldview, and transformed American politics and culture. But that epic story has never been told with this kind of breadth, insight and style. Based on original interviews with DJs, b-boys, rappers, graffiti writers, activists and gang members, with unforgettable portraits of many of hip-hop's forebears, founders and mavericks, including DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Chuck D and Ice Cube, Can't Stop Won't Stop chronicles the events, the ideas, the music and the art that marked the hip-hop generation's rise from the ashes of the 60s into the new millennium.

Rock and Roll Year By Year  by Luke Crampton and Dafydd Rees (781.66 Cramp)
Produced with the cooperation of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the book is as notable for the careful research behind the text as for the striking pictorial layouts. Beginning with January 1950, when Sam Phillips opened his first recording studio in Memphis, rock history is chronicled month by month through December 2002, ending with the sudden death of punk star Joe Strummer of The Clash. In addition to the facts, figures and personalities highlighted within each month, lively essays summarize significant developments of each decade, charts compare No. 1 hits in the U.S. and the U.K. during identical periods, and entertaining sidebars provide expanded commentary and quotations. Every page includes fascinating historical photographs and color images of artifacts from the museum's rich collections.

Room Full of Mirrors: a biography of Jimi Hendrix by Charles R. Cross (B Hendrix)
With a storyteller's eye, Cross captures Hendrix's difficult, poverty-stricken childhood with alcoholic and largely absent parents, rendering it as tragic yet not without its happy, tender moments. While replete with tales of rock star excess, Cross's narrative, based on more than 300 interviews, describes Hendrix as thoughtful and craving some semblance of order to his life, even as it became steeped in drug use.

Riders on the Storm: My Life With Jim Morrison and the Doors  by John Densmore (B Densmore)
Doors drummer Densmore, who had a love-hate relationship with lead singer Morrison, sympathetically chronicles the self-destructive Lizard King's rise and fall.

Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan (B Dylan)
Dylan, true to mercurial form, manages to be obscure and forthright in the long-anticipated first volume of his autobiography. For all his frankness, which catches many reviewers by surprise, he omits as much as he reveals. Less a straight biography than a series of well-written and compassionate vignettes, Dylan describes hundreds of past acquaintances in stunning detail, but then excludes or downplays what many consider to be key points of his biography.

Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur by Michael Eric Dyson (B Shakur)
A poor, urban, high school dropout and book-devouring autodidact who'd quote Shakespeare in conversation, Shakur would also sing along to Sarah McLachlan. Dyson, a Baptist minister, reveals the complexity of Shakur and shows why even five years after his death his records, poetry and films continue to sell. "He was not hip-hop's most gifted emcee. Still, Shakur may be the most influential and compelling rapper of them all," writes Dyson. Complementing Dyson's articulate perspectives on the short life and extraordinary impact of the icon are his emotive interviews with writer Toni Morrison, actress Jada Pinkett Smith, rapper Mos Def and more than a dozen others.

Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin  by Alice Echols (B Joplin)
Janis Joplin was the skyrocket chick of the sixties, the woman who broke into the boys' club of rock and out of the stifling good-girl femininity of postwar America. With her incredible wall-of-sound vocals, Joplin was the voice of a generation, and when she OD'd on heroin in October 1970, a generation's dreams crashed and burned with her. Alice Echols pushes past the legacy Joplin – the red-hot mama of her own invention – as well as the familiar portrait of the screwed-up star victimized by the era she symbolized, to examine the roots of Joplin's musicianship and explore a generation's experiment with high-risk living and the terrible price it exacted.

Exile on Main St.: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones by Robert Greenfield (782.421 Green)
In 1971 The Rolling Stones took their decadent circus to the French Riviera to escape British taxes and record an album. In a slang-filled present tense, Greenfield gives good gossip about the mayhem that ensued at the Villa Nellcote, the palatial mansion – and supposed former Gestapo headquarters – that Keith Richards rented as his getaway. The central story is the struggle between Keith and Mick Jagger, who was increasingly drawn to high society, typified by his marriage to Bianca Perez-Mora. In the last analysis, it's amazing that the Stones managed to record an album at all, but Exile on Main Street may well be their greatest.

Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley  by Peter Guralnick (B Presley)
Last Train to Memphis was hailed on publication as the definitive biography of Elvis Presley. Peter Guralnick's acclaimed book is the first to set aside the myths and focus on Elvis's humanity, as it traces Elvis's early years, from humble beginnings to unprecedented success. At the heart of the story is Elvis himself, a poor boy of great ambition and fiery musical passions, who connected with his audience and the age in a way that has yet to be duplicated. The book also brings to life the world Elvis arrived in, America in the fifties, and the people who, together with Elvis, would change that world forever.

Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles (B McCartney)
Based on hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with Barry Miles and complete access to McCartney's own archives, this book is Paul McCartney in his own words. A history from the inside of one of the greatest songwriting partnerships of the century, it is also the private life of a man made public property. There have been countless words written – and not a few sung – about Paul McCartney. This first, full, authorized biography sets the record straight.

Ordinary People: Our Story by Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne (B Osbourne)
In their own words (and we all know how colorful those can be), the five members of the notorious Osbourne clan tell the amazing story of the first family of rock.

The Beatles: The Biography by Bob Spitz (782.421 Spitz)
The product of almost a decade of research, hundreds of unprecedented interviews, and the discovery of scores of never-before-revealed documents, Bob Spitz's The Beatles is the biography fans have been waiting for – a vast, complete account as brilliant and joyous and revelatory as a Beatles record itself.

Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley by Timothy White (B Marley)
Catch a Fire is assiduously researched. White includes much of his primary source material, ranging from full interviews with band members to unearthed CIA documents, and devotes a whole section to describing his exhaustive research process. The final product is rich with elements of spiritual tome, rock biography, and history text.