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.

   
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Out of the Vinyl Deeps
Ellen Willis on Rock Music
Ellen Willis, Nona Willis Aronowitz
Ellen Willis captures the excitement, danger and kicks inherent in the 60s and 70s NY music scene, creating a passageway back to a long gone era with insights that are disarming, politically charged, and hilarious, while at the same time transmitting...
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Traveling the Spaceways
Sun Ra, the Astro Black and other Solar Myths
John Corbett, Anthony Elms, Terri Kapsalis
Sun Ra (1914-93) - self-proclaimed visionary extraterrestrial of the "Angel Race," prophetic jazz band leader and composer, and lyrical proponent of Afro-futurism - was one of the most influential figures of twentieth-century music. Though many of his...
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Just Kids
Patti Smith
Winner of the National Book Award. Just Kids illuminates the impressive lover of literature that Patti Smith is. Her memoir will be of particular interest to City Lights enthusiasts as she is our quintessential reader, a fan of the Surrealists...
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Girls to the Front
The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution
Sara Marcus
In the early 1990s a group of friends in Olympia, Washington decided to tell the world what it felt like to be young and female in America. Through consciousness-raising meetings, zine exchanges, and numerous kick-ass all-girl punk bands, with the...
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Head Hunters
The Making of Jazz's First Platinum Album
Steven F. Pond
". . . [a] very readable dissection of all the different ways in which Herbie Hancock's 1973 album Head Hunters broke the mould. . . . An entertaining and thought-provoking read." ---Jazzwise Magazine "An important and timely book. Pond's work...
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A Power Stronger Than Itself
The AACM and American Experimental Music
George E. Lewis
Founded in 1965 and still active today, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) is an American institution with an international reputation. George E. Lewis, who joined the collective as a teenager in 1971, establishes the...
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The Rest Is Noise
Listening to the Twentieth Century
Alex Ross
In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties...
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Delightfulee
The Life and Music of Lee Morgan
Jeff McMillan
One of the most individual stylists of his time, trumpeter Lee Morgan began his professional career in Philadelphia at age fifteen. At eighteen, after a short stint with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Morgan joined Dizzy Gillespie's orchestra, where...
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The House That Trane Built
The Story of Impulse Records
Ashley Kahn
"A jazz-lover's delight."—Ray Olson, Booklist Noted jazz author Ashley Kahn brings to life the behind-the-scenes story of Impulse Records, one of the most significant record labels in the history of popular music. "Kahn mingles engaging stories...
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Kind of Blue
Ashley Kahn
A stunning new edition, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Miles Davis's timeless Kind of Blue, with a new afterword by the author. This acclaimed tribute to the most popular jazz album of all time is now available in a beautiful 50th...
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Pathways to Unknown Worlds
Sun Ra, El Saturn and Chicago's Afro-Futurist Underground, 1954-68
Philosopher, Afro-futurist, and jazz legend Sun Ra (1914–93) constructed much of his complicated public persona during his sojourn in Chicago in the mid-1950s. Working with a still-shadowy underground fraternal organization, Ra amassed a library...
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R. Crumb's Heroes of Blues, Jazz, & Country
R. Crumb
Anyone who knows R. Crumb's work as an illustrator knows of his passion for music. And all those who collect his work prize the Heroes of the Blues, Early Jazz Greats, and Pioneers of Country Music trading card sets he created in the early to-...
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Please Kill Me
The Uncensored Oral History of Punk
Gillian McCain, Legs McNeil
A Time Out and New York Daily News Top Ten Book of the Year upon its release, Please Kill Me brings the sound of the punk generation to life. Iggy Pop, Danny Fields, Dee Dee and Joey Ramone, Nico, Patti Smith, and scores of other famous and infamous...
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Punk
The Definitive Record of a Revolution
Stephen Colegrave, Chris Sullivan
Recreating the complete story of the punk phenomenon — including where it came from and what it turned into — Punk is a massive and visually stunning record of five years that changed the world: from 1975 to 1979. Collecting the testimony of...

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