Music : Rock

We're Here for a Good Time — ''Raise a Little Hell'' — ''The Boys in the Bright White Sportscar'' — all Canadian anthems — all recorded by Trooper. The Globe and Mail calls them ''honest-to-God Canadian legends.'' The Toronto Sun lauds the ongoing strength of their ''Boomer/Gen X cachet.'' They have sold millions of albums, have travelled tens of thousands of miles, and, for thirty years, have borne first-hand witness to an amazing era in popular music: ''sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll'' and the long hard road where careers are made and broken. Ra McGuire, Trooper's charismatic leader, singer, and songwriter, still travels that road, performing 100 shows a year from Tofino to Torbay and everywhere in between. Famous for his quick wit and sometimes too-candid stage banter, McGuire has always had a knack for keeping audiences on the edge of their seats. In Here for a Good Time: On the Road with Trooper — Canada's Legendary Rock Band, he reveals the peaks and valleys of his life on the road and the joys and challenges of being a fifty-something rock star at large in the country he knows like the back of his hand. more...

Price: $16.95

"There are no definitive histories," writes Elijah Wald, in this provocative reassessment of American popular music, "because the past keeps looking different as the present changes." Earlier musical styles sound different to us today because we hear them through the musical filter of other styles that came after them, all the way through funk and hiphop. As its blasphemous title suggests, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll rejects the conventional pieties of mainstream jazz and rock history. Rather than concentrating on those traditionally favored styles, the book traces the evolution of popular music through developing tastes, trends and technologies--including the role of records, radio, jukeboxes and television --to give a fuller, more balanced account of the broad variety of music that captivated listeners over the course of the twentieth century. Wald revisits original sources--recordings, period articles, memoirs, and interviews--to highlight how music was actually heard and experienced over the years. And in a refreshing departure from more typical histories, he focuses on the world of working musicians and ordinary listeners rather than stars and specialists. He looks for example at the evolution of jazz as dance music, and rock 'n' roll through the eyes of the screaming, twisting teenage girls who made up the bulk of its early audience. Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, and the Beatles are all here, but Wald also discusses less familiar names like Paul Whiteman, Guy Lombardo, Mitch Miller, Jo Stafford, Frankie Avalon, and the Shirelles, who in some cases were far more popular than those bright stars we all know today, and who more accurately represent the mainstream of their times. Written with verve and style, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll shakes up our staid notions of music history and helps us hear American popular music with new ears. more...

Price: $18.95

It's been said that Jann Arden can bring an audience to tears through song only to have them rolling in the aisles moments later with her off-the-cuff comedy. It's this juxtaposition, the poet's gift for poignant love songs paired with a comedian's timing and self-deprecating wit, that has earned Jann a legion of loyal fans on the stage as well as the page. more...

Price: $16.95

This volume examines the powerful ways in which identity can be shaped by rock music. Through the music, imagery and discourse surrounding one of the most innovative and commercially successful rock bands ever, Susan Fast probes such issues as constructions of gender and sexuality, the creation of myth and the use of ritual, the appropriation of Eastern musics and the blues, the physicality of the music, and the use of the body in performance. The band's influence is examined through socially-situated musical analysis, as well as an ethnographic study of Led Zeppelin fans. Fast draws on academic and journalistic writing as well as a new interview with band member John Paul Jones. Specific pieces examined include "Dazed and Confused," "Kashmir," "Stairway to Heaven," and "Whole Lotta Love."  more...

Price: $45.00

Draws on unpublished journals and recordings as well as numerous original interviews to cover every aspect of the musician's life and work, in a portrait that includes discussions of Morrison's military upbringing, emergence as a rock icon, and mysterious death. By the author of Hammer of the Gods. Reprint. 35,000 first printing. more...

Price: $17.00