Music
Books in this online selection represent only a sliver of what we offer in the store. If you've got a particular book in mind and want to check on its availability, call us at 415-362-8193.

   
1 2 3 >>>
    sort list by title | author


Product image
Satan Is Real
The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers
Charlie Louvin
Born the same year as Ralph Stanley and growing up very similarly on a hardscrabble Appalachian farm, Charlie Louvin gained fame in a brother act, too. Like the Stanleys, Charlie (1927–2011) and Ira (1924–65) Louvin made songs their mother taught...
Product image
Guitar Zero
The Science of Becoming Musical at Any Age
Gary Marcus
Just about every human being knows how to listen to music, but what does it take to make music? Is musicality something we are born with? Or a skill that anyone can develop at any time? If you don't start piano at the age of six, is there any hope?
Product image
The Last Holiday
A Memoir
Gil Scott-Heron
The stunning memoir of Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner Gil Scott-Heron, The Last Holiday has been praised for bringing back to life one of the most important voices of the last fifty years. Now in paperback, The Last Holiday provides...
Product image
Shotgun Seamstress
Zine Collection
Osa Atoe
Shotgun Seamstress collects all of the issues of a fantastic punk fanzine into one book that focuses on African American queer & feminist artists and musicians. Full of interviews, reviews, and so much more, Shotgun Seamstress was put out from 2006-2012
Product image
Where the Heart Beats
John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists
Where the Heart Beats is the first book to address the phenomenal importance of Zen Buddhism to John Cage's life and to the artistic avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s, a time when the arts broke away from centuries of tradition and reinvented themselves.
Product image
Gainsbourg
The Biography
Gilles Verlant
Gilles Verlant's biography of Gainsbourg is the best and most authoritative in any language. Drawing from numerous interviews and their own friendship, Verlant provides a fascinating look at the inner workings of 1950s–1990s French pop culture and...
Product image
The Dozens
A History of Rap's Mama
Elijah Wald
In tracing the form and its variations over more than a century of African American culture and music, The Dozens sheds fascinating light on schoolyard games and rural work songs, serious literature and nightclub comedy, and pop hits from ragtime to rap
Product image
Always in Trouble
An Oral History of ESP-Disk', The Most Outrageous Record Label in America
Jason Weiss
In 1964, Bernard Stollman launched the independent record label ESP-Disk' in New York City to document the free jazz movement there. A bare-bones enterprise, ESP was in the right place at the right time, producing albums by artists like Albert Ayler...
Product image
The Grey Album
On the Blackness of Blackness
Kevin Young
Taking its title from Danger Mouse's pioneering mashup of Jay-Z's The Black Album and the Beatles' The White Album, Kevin Young’s encyclopedic book combines essay, cultural criticism, and lyrical chorus to illustrate the African American tradition of...
Product image
Carlos Aldama's Life in Batá
Cuba, Diaspora, and the Drum
Umi Vaughan, Carlos Aldama
This book recounts the life story of Carlos Aldama, one of the masters of the batá drum, and through that story traces the history of batá culture as it traveled from Africa to Cuba and then to the United States.
Product image
The Last Holiday
A Memoir
Gil Scott-Heron
This posthumous publication of The Last Holiday is a fitting testament to the career and achievements of Gil Scott-Heron. But it is also a heartfelt and highly personal account of his growing up in the South, a touching portrait of Stevie Wonder...
Product image
Bob Dylan in America
Sean Wilentz
Wilentz is an historian by trade and it shows in his almost-anthropological survey of Dylan and the highlights of his life. It's almost as if Dylan himself were whispering the stories of his successes and travails into Wilentz's ear. But this book is...
Product image
Violence Girl
East L.A. Rage to Hollywood Stage, a Chicana Punk Story
Alice Bag
The proximity of the East L.A. barrio to Hollywood is as close as a short drive on the 101 freeway, but the cultural divide is enormous. Born to Mexican-born and American-naturalized parents, Alicia Armendariz migrated a few miles west to participate...
Product image
Bob Dylan
Like a Complete Unknown
David Yaffe
Bob Dylan is an iconic figure in American musical and cultural history, lauded by Time magazine as one of the hundred most important people of the twentieth century. For nearly fifty years the singer-songwriter has crafted his unique brand of music...

1 2 3 >>>