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Showing 201 - 220 of 3927 items
Recounts the life and achievements of the lead singer of the Staple Singers, revealing how her family fused diverse musical…
genres to transcend racism and oppression through song, and discussing her collaborations with fellow artists and her impact on civil rights culture. 2014.By Bif Naked. 2016
Bif Naked was born in secret to a teenager living in India, hidden away in a mental hospital, adopted by…
missionaries and then moved to North America. Targeted by girl gangs and facing other abusive situations, she joined a punk rock band, went on tour, married the drummer and hit a downward spiral that found her on the floor of a Vancouver drug den. She eventually found her voice as a solo artist, started her own record company, appeared in several feature films and multiple television roles, only to be struck down with breast cancer at the age of 37. Bif would discover her passion for advocacy, as a triumphant survivor and someone who helps others first. This is Bif Naked’s story - so far. 2016.By Anna Russell, Janet Vickers. 1985
Anna Russell began her career singing folk songs for the BBC and eventually performed at such places as Albert Hall…
and Carnegie Hall. She was known for her madcap musical routines, her most famous being "How to write your own Gilbert and Sullivan opera." 1985.By Sylvie Simmons. 2013
Exploring the many facets of Cohen's life, an intimate portrait of the influential songwriter draws upon his private archives and…
interviews with many of his closest associates, colleagues, and other artists whose work he has inspired. 2013.By Jon Wiederhorn, Scott Ian. 2014
Ian tells his life story, starting with his upbringing as a nerdy Jewish boy in Queens and evolving through his…
first musical epiphany when he saw KISS live on television and realized what he wanted to do with his life. He chronicles his adolescence growing up in a dysfunctional home, sets down the details of his fateful escape into the turbulent world of heavy metal, and lays bare the complete history of Anthrax, from the band's formation to their present-day reinvigoration, as they wrote and recorded thrash classics like Spreading the Disease, Among the Living, and State of Euphoria. He also admits his foibles and reveals the mistakes made along the way to becoming a fully-functioning adult. He celebrates finally finding peace and a true sense of family with his wife, singer/songwriter Pearl Aday, and examines how his world changed after the birth of their first son. 2014.By Eartha Kitt. 1989
"I have no idea how old I am. Believe it or not, I have no paper that says I was…
ever born. Maybe that's why they call me a legend, because I don't really exist". Written in her own words, this is the full story of the incredible life of Eartha Mae Kitt. 1989.By Peter Ames Carlin. 2006
Using first-person interviews and unreleased recording-session transcriptions, former People magazine writer analyzes the life of Beach Boys songwriter Brian Wilson.…
Describes the Wilson brothers' emotional abuse at the hands of their father, Brian's descent into depression, and his comeback with the 2004 album Smile. Some strong language. 2006.By Randall Riese. 1993
This is a revealing and intimate portrait of one of the biggest names in 20th century American entertainment. Streisand had…
a troubled childhood, but went on to carve a life of stardom and paradoxical fame. Her obsessive control over her talent created dazzling results in performance, but it also made her more than a few enemies. 1993.By Eileen Sisk. 2010
Buck Owens was the top-selling country act of the 1960s, with 21 number-one hits and 35 consecutive top-ten hits, a…
total surpassed only by the Beatles. Inventor of the Bakersfield sound, he was popular not only with country fans, but rock fans too. At least five marriages, several TV shows, and a publishing and media empire followed, and a number of current country stars, ranging from Dwight Yoakam to Marty Stuart, owe their sound to him. Some descriptions of sex, some strong language. 2010.By Paul Quarrington. 2010
Paul Quarrington had a favourite recording as a kid: a boy fashions a banjo from a cigar box, sets off…
for a contest in the next town, and wins with a song that weaves in the sounds he hears along the way. As a grown-up writer and musician, Quarrington still loved the tale. And after he learned he had stage IV lung cancer, the story took on a whole new meaning for him. Cigar Box Banjo tracks a life lived in music and words. Some people with a terminal illness find mountains to climb; Quarrington decides to go out singing. 2010.By Barry Grills. 1997
Celine Dion was only a teenager when she began to take the French-Canadian music scene by a storm. When she…
began to sing in English she quickly became a superstar throughout the world. Here the story of her life from her girlhood in Quebec to her fairytale marriage to her manager Rene Angelil is told with emphasis on her musical and personal successes. c1997.By John Einarson. 1995
By Neil Peart. 2002
After the deaths of his daughter and then his common-law wife, musician Neil Peart got on his motorcycle and drove…
for over a year, traveling Canada, the U.S. and Central America. The need to do something, to move, kept Neil going and pushed him toward healing. 2002.By Steve Turner. 2018
Music journalist and Beatles expert Steve Turner investigates in detail the enormous changes that took place in the Beatles' lives…
and work during 1966. He looks at the historical events that had an impact on the group, the music they made that in turn profoundly affected the culture around them, and the vision that allowed four young men from Liverpool to transform popular music and serve as pioneers for artists from Coldplay to David Bowie, Jay-Z to U2. 2018.By Bruce Springsteen. 2016
Over the past seven years, Bruce Springsteen has privately devoted himself to writing the story of his life, bringing to…
these pages the same honesty, humor, and originality found in his songs. He describes growing up Catholic in Freehold, New Jersey, amid the poetry, danger, and darkness that fueled his imagination, leading up to the moment he refers to as "The Big Bang": seeing Elvis Presley's debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. He vividly recounts his relentless drive to become a musician, his early days as a bar band king in Asbury Park, and the rise of the E Street Band. With disarming candor, he also tells for the first time the story of the personal struggles that inspired his best work, and shows us why the song "Born to Run" reveals more than we previously realized. Bestseller. 2016.By Ben Ohmart. 2016
Buddy Baker was Disney music. Mostly known as the composer of the Haunted Mansion song and score, he was also…
a composer of films (Wicked Woman, The Fox and the Hound), television shows (the original Mickey Mouse Club), and numerous theme park attractions (World of Motion, Wonders of China, Kitchen Kaberet, Impressions de France) around the globe. From a humble beginning in Springfield, Missouri, Buddy Baker began composing and arranging music at an early age. He worked for many of the top big bands, then began arranging music on hit radio shows (the Bob Hope show, the Eddie Cantor show, the Jack Benny program) before getting into film. His thirty-plus-year career with the Walt Disney Company put him at the top of his field, working alongside many of the greats, including Walt Disney himself. 2016.By Mary Lou Sullivan. 2018
Best known as an irreverent cigar-chomping Jewish country-and-western singer, turned author, turned politician, Kinky has dined on monkey brains in…
the jungles of Borneo, supped with presidents, and vacationed with Bob Dylan in the tiny fishing village of Yelapa, Mexico. A satirist who loves pushing the envelope, he's been attacked onstage, received bomb threats, and put on the only show in Austin City Limits' history deemed too offensive to air. From the 1970s music scene in L.A. with Tom Waits and the Band, to political platforms advocating legalized marijuana, to friendships with John Belushi, Joseph Heller, Don Imus, Willie Nelson, Dwight Yoakam, and Billy Bob Thornton, this is the candid account based on years of interviews of the larger-than-life Texan who is still writing books and songs, recording albums, and performing for enthusiastic audiences throughout the world. 2018.By Rob Rufus. 2016
Part memoir, part love song, and part tale about overcoming the odds, this is not a cancer story but an…
account of a teenager's life becoming derailed and the one thing that helped him pull it back together: music. Punk's not dead in rural West Virginia. It screams from the basement of Rob and Nat Rufus -- identical twin brothers with spiked hair, black leather jackets, and the most kick-ass record collection in Appalachia. The brothers start their own band, but their plans are cut short when Rob is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that has already progressed to an advanced stage. While Rob suffers through nightmarish treatments and debilitating surgery, Nat continues on their band's road to success alone. But as Rob's life diverges from his brother's, he learns to find strength with himself and through his music. 2016.By John F Szwed. 2015
When Billie Holiday stepped into Columbia’s studios in November 1933, it marked the beginning of what is arguably the most…
remarkable and influential career in twentieth-century popular music. Her voice weathered countless shifts in public taste, and new reincarnations of her continue to arrive, most recently in the form of singers like Amy Winehouse and Adele. Most of the writing on Holiday has focused on the tragic details of her life - her prostitution at the age of fourteen, her heroin addiction and alcoholism, her series of abusive relationships - or tried to correct the many fabrications of her autobiography. “Billie Holiday” stays close to the music, to her performance style, and to the self she created and put into print, on record and on stage. 2015.By Denise Donlon. 2016
Donlon chronicles her days at MuchMusic and the music journalism show The NewMusic, where her mandate was relevance, during a…
time when music videos became a medium that would change pop music and popular culture forever. She became the first female president of Sony Music Canada, where she navigated the crisis in the music industry with the rise of Napster and the new digital revolution. She then joined CBC English Radio as General Manager and Executive Director when the corporation absorbed funding cutbacks, leading to mass reductions in people and programming and leaving a shadow over the future of Canada’s national public broadcaster. She shares stories of growing up in east Scarborough; interviewing musical icons such as Keith Richards, Run-DMC, Joni Mitchell, and Sting; working with media pioneer Moses Znaimer, and her co-host on the current affairs magazine show The Zoomer, Conrad Black. Also details her experiences with War Child Canada and her work with other charitable organizations, including Live8 and the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership. 2016.