Books 147 Items

Cover with damaged spine and corner.

Colour the world’s most prominent graffiti styles on marker friendly paper!
Young and old all over the world love the coloring books published by Dokument Press. This new title: Graffiti
Style Coloring Book features improved paper and format. Use your markers and paint on both sides of the page
without bleeding.
The Graffiti Style Coloring Book covers a range of styles from naïve, playful lettering to razor-sharp wild styles.
Cover artist is the legendary Copenhagen graffiti writer Cave. All illustrations are original artworks made by
experienced graffiti kings worldwide.
The Graffiti Style Coloring Book is the real thing – it’s not copying a graffiti “style”, it’s real graffiti.
This coloring book is an excellent way to start out in graffiti. Explore the medium, be creative, make an impact
and immerse yourself in the world of graffiti. The Graffiti Style Coloring Book offers a relaxing approach to
coloring at the same time as it is an informative art collection.

Hundreds of millions travel by underground train every day. The subway is one of the world’s most common
means of transport and an environment where many of us spend a great deal of time.
Subway cars are important “canvases” for the artists behind one of the most widespread modern art movements
today - graffiti.
Subway Scrawl is a collection of 10 classic subway de- signs in a practical notepad. Bring out your creative side
and add your own personality to the cars. Try your hand at making a New York subway wholecar, scribble diary
notes or write a to do list on a London Underground car.

These 450+ questions will test even the biggest Bowie fanatics’ knowledge of Aladdin Sane, Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke. In what film did he play Andy Warhol? How did he meet Iman? Which of Iggy Pop’s albums did he help write while they lived in Berlin? This interactive trivia book is the ultimate chance to flex your knowledge of our Starman, David Bowie, covering his music, his movies, his personas, family and friends. This book will separate the Heroes from the Super Creeps.

Graffiti for Beginners is an easy-to-follow introduction that presents you with the basics behind graffiti lettering. The two funky yet classic graffiti alphabets created by experienced graffiti artist Mega gives you the opportunity to learn a basic graffiti style, as well as a more advanced wild style. Each of the alphabet’s 26 letters has its own spread where the building blocks of the letter are carefully displayed next to the specified space for you to practice, along with illustrations of how the letters can be used in different words and names. In addition to the letters, you will find examples of characteristic elements used in graffiti such as 3D or shades to add depth to the letters, or arrows, stars, bubbles, highlights and shines to make the piece stand out. Graffiti for Beginners is the fundamental guide for you to learn how to master the alphabet with style and finesse, letter by letter, until you are able to put together complicated words and messages, adding the coloring of your own choice. Learning graffiti has never been easier or more fun! Graffiti for Beginners suits all ages and is a great tool for advertisers, home stylers, school teachers, kids and creative adults alike.

After the overwhelmingly popular Hip Hop Coloring Book, Hip Hop Journal and Hip Hop Coloring Book: East Coast Edition, Mark 563 is back with Hip Hop Coloring Book: West Coast Edition. It’s a fun activity book for kids and adults. The book features a selection of Mark 563’s own illustrative takes on some of Hip Hop’s most important figures – from early electro pioneers like Egyptian Lover, to Gfunk and mega stars like Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube and newer rappers like Tyler, the Creator. The 50 pages are packed with legendary West Coast rappers, spanning from the Golden Era through to today’s rap superstars. A perfect gift for anyone interested in Hip Hop and popular culture. Hip Hop Coloring Book: West Coast Edition is marker friendly! Use your favorite markers without the risk of ruining the illustration on the other side of the paper. Hip Hop Coloring Book: West Coast Edition is the latest in Dokument Press popular coloring book series, with themes such as graffiti, sneakers and lowriders. ”When you are coloring my picture I hope the Music is Boomin’ and you get up and dance every time you change colors.” – Egyptian Lover ”Str8 outta the CPT, long live hip hop Thugsta Eazy E, a Real Compton City G! Salute the inclusion in your art form. From the Original Baby Gangsta Knocc Out.” – B.G. Knocc Out ”The Hip Hop Coloring Book. Now that’s Gangsta homie!!!” – Prodeje – South Central Cartel

An original coloring book for all ages!
After the overwhelmingly popular Hip Hop Coloring Book, Mark 563 is back with Hip Hop Coloring Book: East Coast Edition.
It’s a fun activity book for kids and adults. The book features a selection of Mark 563’s own illustrative takes on some of Hip Hop’s most important figures – from early pioneers like Busy Bee, to 90s NYC profiles like Nine and newer stars like ASAP Rocky – all ready to be colored in.
The 50 pages are packed with legendary East Coast rappers, spanning from the Golden Era through to today’s rap superstars.
A perfect gift for anyone interested in Hip Hop and popular culture. Hip Hop Coloring Book: East Coast Edition is marker friendly! Use your favorite markers without the risk of ruining the illustration on the other side of the paper.
Hip Hop Coloring Book: East Coast Edition is the latest in Dokument Press popular coloring book series, with themes such as graffiti, skateboarding and lowriders.
I went to the High School of Art & Design for illustration, so it’s a particular honor to be immortalized in the hip hop coloring book. My advice when coloring me is never stay within the lines, be free! – Pharoahe Monch
Enjoy Hip Hop and Have Fun.
–Chiefrocker Busy Bee

From New York pioneers who helped create the art form in the 70s, to freight train kings in Florida and hall of fame spray can wizards in California. In the American Graffiti Coloring Book, more than 45 of America’s most prominent graffiti writers have provided the initial outlines – now it is up to you to give them color! With full pages devoted to the artwork, each spread becomes its own unique full color piece of art as you go along filling out the pages, and there is plenty of room for the small details. American Graffiti Coloring Book is printed on marker friendly paper. Use your markers and color-in on both sides of the page with no risk of the ink bleeding through. The content is carefully curated by the influential artist and Museum of Graffiti co-founder Alan KET, and the striking cover and

Take a break from your stressful day-to-day sneaker hunting and amp up your creativity. In the Sneaker Coloring Book you can color your most beloved shoe models in what ever way you want. You can relax your mind with some peaceful coloring fun, or get head on creative adding that complex design you always wished for your favorite sneaker model.

Whether you are an advanced sneaker head or just have the slightest interest in street fashion and sneakers, you can t go wrong with the Sneaker Coloring Book! Equally well suited for kids and adults, the book s 50 pages are packed with illustrations of some of the most iconic sneaker models of all times. From the original Pro Keds, Adidas Superstar and Vans Sk8-Hi, via 80s classics such as Troop and Air Jordan, to recent models like Nike Marty Mcfly, Puma Creeper, Balenciaga triple S and Adidas Yeezy just to name a few of the many models included in the book.

The shoes in the Sneaker Coloring Book are illustrated by Alexander Rosso, a sneaker nerd of rank who has spent the past 12 years working as a graphic designer and illustrator, mainly in the music and streetwear business.

The Sneaker Coloring Book is marker friendly! Use your favorite markers without the risk of ruining the illustration on the other side of the paper. The Sneaker Coloring Book is the latest in Dokument Press popular coloring book series, with themes such as hip hop, graffiti, skateboarding and lowriders.

The work of Banksy has captivated generations over the last 20 years. The brilliant comments about politics and the stateof the world are thought-provoking for young and old.The fact that we don t know who the artist is creates a welcome mysterious dimension at a time when most thingsare just an Internet search away. As a consequence, we canall claim to be Banksy. Just like V for Vendetta inspired theuse of Guy Fawkes masks by participants in street levelprotests around the world, we can all be Banksy too, andparticipate in our physical surroundings.

The Banksy Coloring Book is an original coloring book for all ages. A perfect gift to anyone interested in street art andillustration! The Banksy Coloring Book is filled with illustrations inspired by the great art of Banksy. It gives a first taste of howstencils are made and what it takes to master them. Easyand open to anyone. Enjoy!

A daily planner with facts on what happened on this day in hip hop history! The Hip Hop Journal: A Daily Planner provides you with a notebook as well as a daily update on the most important historical events that took place in hip hop culture on each date. Simply turn to today’s page to and find out what classic records were released on this day in the past, and next to it note your schedule, ideas, grocery list, or even your rhymes. Get inspired by what has happened in hip hop’s past and make the most of your day! The journal offers ers a variety of facts, from record releases and movies to important cultural events relating to the development of hip hop culture over the last 45+ years. The Hip Hop Journal is a loving celebration of the rich body of work that builds one of the most influential cultures of our times, and an invaluable help in planning your day-to-day activities. In the Hip Hop Journal you plan your year accompanied by the many events in hip hop history, visualized by hip hop illustrator Mark 563’s illustrations, depicting the most iconic rappers and hip hop personalities from the ‘70s until today. You may not know them all, but if you spend a little time every day, listening and catching up on the classic record releases listed in this book, you will be close to a PhD in hip hop by the end of the year. The Hip Hop Journal is the latest title in Dokument Press’ publications related to hip hop, graffiti and street art, and it is the third release with illustrator Mark 563, following the tremendously popular Hip Hop Coloring Book and Hip Hop Coloring Book: East Coast Edition.

The Suburbs is an incredibly sentimental and nostalgic album, which generally moved critics but was jarring to others. But it also made a heavy impact on fans and – to the surprise of many – won Album of the Year at the 2011 Grammy Awards. This immensely visceral album triggers a sincere celebration of not formative years spent in a cookie-cutter development, but of feeling self-important, immortal, and desperate to escape. It examines youth and amplifies an innate sense of longing and remembrance.
Eric Eidelstein's The Suburbs explores this weird, utopic recollection of youth by comparing the album to suburban scenes in film and television, such as Blue Velvet, Mad Men, The Americans, and Spike Jonze's Scenes from the Suburbs. Through the close examination of film and televised depictions of the suburbs, both past and present, Eidelstein delves into the societal factors and artistic depictions that make the suburbs such a fascinating cultural construct, and uncovers why the album creates such a relatable and universal sense of reminiscence.

"The Secret DJ returns with the follow-up to their acclaimed debut book. Less a sequel and more a panoramic wide-angle painting of the biggest youth movement in human history, The Secret DJ: Book Two charts the rise of dance music over the last 30 years and its connection to western capitalism and culture.

While never claiming to be instrumental, The Secret DJ was around for every stage of the journey and is a continually wry observer of this unstoppable growth. The Secret DJ’s signature humour and wit are ever-present in this ascent, charting personal ups and downs as well as the buying and selling of the acid house revolution.

Covering topics as wide as drugs, music production, anthropology, the gentrification of the scene, technology, travel, fame, devaluation, inflation, relationships, technique, festivals, rejection, social media, situationism and hypernormalisation; almost no aspect of the last four decades go unmentioned in terms of what we know today as Electronic Dance Music.

“No one in publishing would have the balls to touch this book with a bargepole,” says the Secret DJ. “It takes courage to speak up. There’s not much in the way of reward for telling it like it is, not any more. If you expose an industry, that industry hates you for life with the intensity of the sun. I have nothing but admiration for Velocity Press, they’ve taken a big risk working with me. I appreciate it greatly. It’s good to know there are still people out there willing to stand up.”

“I loved The Secret DJ – some all-too-familiar characters mixed with the highs and lows of what this industry can throw at you. Excited and intrigued to read the second instalment… how much more extreme can it get?!” – Denney

“I never read books about electronic music, why would I? But I guess The Secret DJ is more an anarchist handbook for shattered dreamers than a manual on how to make it big on the scene. Can’t wait for his new adventures.” – Ivan Smagghe

“We all have war stories, us jobbing night-lifers. From having sets ended by soldiers with automatic weapons in Juarez to coming-round in Glasgow city centre suddenly best pals with a gangster who’s most affectionate nickname was ‘Wolf’. I’ve bagged a couple over the years. And yours are undoubtedly more vivid, funnier or more ludicrous than mine. The Secret DJ’s are better still.” – Ewan Pearson

“I loved book one, waiting to live the DJ life vicariously again thru book two!” – Arthur Baker

“The Secret DJ’s first book managed to do something very different to the existing dance music memoirs (and I should know as I have read them all). It functioned not only as a hilarious jaunt through the insanity of the glory years of dance music – i.e. when there was still money in music – but as a harrowing portrayal of the emotionally, physically and mentally taxing straits an international DJ will find themselves in. Anyone with even a passing curiosity about ‘the industry’ should read it and await its follow up, especially if they have any frankly dangerous notions of joining up professionally, which I cannot in all good conscience recommend.” – Manu Ekanayake (music and culture journalist)

“It’s rare for a writer to capture the excitement and absurdity of dance music culture at the same time, but the Secret DJ did that to great effect in the first book. This latest chapter in the story promises to be every bit as exhilarating, providing an important critical voice at a time when ‘the society of the spectacle’ threatens to suck the life out of those clinging to the acid house dream.” – Justin Robertson

“The first book is a raw, effective and bizarrely emotional tale of ‘the life’. Superbly true and direct. I can hardly wait to hear the tale of the music movement being told by The Secret DJ in Book Two!” – Miguel Campbell

“The Secret DJ returns to once again pull back the curtain on the world of dance music and the sometimes harsh, but always hilarious, realities of what lurks behind it. Get ready for a second descent into the far(cical) side.” – Neville Watson

“Really enjoyed the first book, both hilarious debauchery and insightful commentary on a world usually kept behind the curtain. I’m looking forward to the next instalment, hoping for a lot more righteous anger within.” – Posthuman

“Every participant in the music industry will wince at the thought of falling under the glance of the Secret DJ’s withering pen, but still find themselves avidly leafing through his pages for the merest mention.” – Carl Puttnam (Cud)"

This is the definitive biography of rap supergroup, Wu-Tang Clan (WTC). Widely regarded as one of the most influential groups in modern music--hip hop or otherwise--WTC has released seven albums [including four gold and platinum studio albums, as well as the genre-defining Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)] and has launched the careers of famous rappers like RZA, Ol' Dirty Bastard, Ghostface Killah, Method Man, and more. Beyond the musicians in the group itself, WTC has also collaborated with many of the biggest names in the game-from Busta Rhymes and Redman to Nas and Kanye West), and one is hard pressed to find a group who's had a bigger impact on the evolution of the hip hop genre.

Though there have been biographies written about the band, both from members (like RZA) and collaborators (like Cyrus Bozorgmehr), most of the material that's been published so far has either focused on a single member of the group's story, or a narrow timespan of their work. This book will not only feature interviews with all living WTC members and a comprehensive look at their discography, it also includes never-before-revealed insight into their childhoods and the neighborhoods that shaped them growing up. It's unique in its breadth, scope, and access--a must-have for fans of WTC and music bios more generally.

Hardback, 528 pages, 24cm x 16cm, 796g

Love music? Love illustration? Want to know more about some of the best musicians ever to record&;from Bowie and the Beastie Boys to The Smiths and St. Vincent? Then A Guide to Music's Cult Artists is for you.

Featuring 100 of the coolest artists from the last five decades, A Guide to Music's Cult Artists reveals the influencers and tastemakers who have helped to shape the contemporary music scene. Award-winning illustrator and comic artist John Riordan profiles cult musicians from genres including punk, indie, alternative, hip-hop, and electronic music. Not only does John create amazing illustrations, he also outlines key works from the artists and provides engaging trivia to accompany each entry. Enlightening, often amusing, and always stunning to look at, A Guide to Music's Cult Artists is a unique blend of the esthetic and the acoustic and is an essential addition to any music fan&;s collection.

Written by former DJ/producer Harold Heath, Long Relationships: My Incredible Journey From Unknown DJ to Small-time DJ is a biographical account of a DJ career defined by a deep love of music and a shallow amount of success. It’s the first book to detail exactly what DJing is like for the 99% of DJs who never make it big. Covering electro, hip hop, rare groove, acid house, rave and the UK underground club scene, it’s a 30-odd year tale of a life lived in dance music. Long Relationships is full of tales of clubs, raves, warehouses, DJing, music, record production, record deals, low-level international travel, shady promoters, dodgy club security, magical dance floor moments and much more.

apper Bun B lends his street cred and occasionally his face to the creative, hilarious, and just flat-out fun imaginings of Shea Serrano in Bun B's Rap Coloring and Activity Book. Described by the Washington Post as "what every hip-hop head wishes they had as a child," this imaginative work started as a series of printable rap-related coloring and activity images. The 48-page, fully interactive book of coloring pages, unbelievably clever activities, and smart plays on rap culture brings these stars and their music right into your living room.Featured rappers include:
Bun B
Queen Latifah
Drake
Talib Kweli
Ice-T
Common
Wiz Khalifa
Ludacris
LL COOL J
Big Boi
Childish Gambino
Questlove
B.o.B
Mac Miller

And many, many more!

Who had the greatest dunk of all time? Which version of Michael Jordan was the best Michael Jordan? What is allowed and absolutely not allowed in a game of pickup basketball? Basketball and Other Things takes readers through the most pivotal and ridiculous fan disputes in basketball history, providing arguments and answers to basketball’s greatest questions, explained with the wit and wisdom that is unique to Shea Serrano. Serrano breaks down debates that all NBA fans have considered, from the classics (Which years was Kobe at his best?) to the fantastical (If you could assign different values to different shots throughout basketball history, what would they be and why?). With incredible art from Arturo Torres, this book is a must-have for anyone who has ever stayed up late into the night debating basketball’s greatest moments, what-ifs, stories, and legends.

Illustrated by Arturo Torres, foreword by Reggie Miller.

Shea Serrano is an award-winning writer, author, and illustrator. His most recent book, The Rap Year Book, reached the bestseller lists of the New York Times and Washington Post, topped the Arts and Entertainment iBooks bestseller list, and was chosen for the Pitchfork book club. Currently, Serrano is a staff writer for The Ringer. He lives in Houston, Texas.

22,9 x 19,1 cm, 240 pages, paperback

Having designed Roxy Music as an haute couture suit hand-stitched of punk and progressive music, Bryan Ferry redesigned it. He made Roxy Music ever dreamier and mellower-reaching back to sadly beautiful chivalric romances. Dadaist (punk) noise exited; a kind of ambient soft soul entered. Ferry parted ways with Eno, electric violinist Eddie Jobson, and drummer Paul Thompson, foreswearing the broken-sounding synthesizers played by kitchen utensils, the chance-based elements, and the maquillage of previous albums.

The production and engineering imposed on Avalon confiscates emotion and replaces it with an acoustic simulacrum of courtliness, polished manners, and codes of etiquette. The seducer sings seductive music about seduction, but decorum is retained, as amour courtois insists.

The backbeat cannot beat back nostalgia; it remains part of the architecture of Avalon, an album that creates an allusive sheen. Be nostalgic, by all means, but embrace that feeling's falseness, because nostalgia-whether inspired by medieval Arthuriana or 1940s film noir repartee or a 1980s drug-induced high-deceives. Nostalgia defines our fantasies and our (not Ferry's) essential artifice.

He is known as the Mark Twain of American songwriting, a man who transformed the everyday happenings of regular people into plainly profound statements on war, industrialization, religion, and the human condition. Marking the 50th anniversary of the album's release, John Prine chronicles the legendary singer-songwriter's Middle American provenance, and his remarkable ascent from singing mailman to celebrated son of Chicago.“Illegal Smile,” “Hello in There,” “Sam Stone,” “Paradise,” “Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore,” “Far from Me,” “Donald and Lydia,” and “Angel from Montgomery” are considered standards in the American Songbook, covered by legions of Prine's peers and admirers. Through original interviews, exhaustive research, and incisive commentary, author Erin Osmon paints an in-depth portrait of the people, places, and experiences that inspired Prine's landmark debut.

After exploring his roots in rural Western Kentucky and suburban Maywood, Illinois, the book takes readers on an evocative journey through John Prine's Chicago. Its neighborhoods, characters, and clubs of the 1960s and 70s proved a formative and magical period in Prine's life, before he was a figurehead of the new Nashville scene. It's both a journalistic inquiry and a love letter: to Prine's self-titled debut and the Midwestern city that made him.

There has recently been a sharp increase in cases where corporations have been sued by street and graffiti artists because their artworks had been used and exploited without the artists’ authorisation, for example in advertising campaigns, as backdrops in promotional videos, or as decorating elements of products. This trend shows and confirms that these forms of art are vulnerable. They are actually more exposed to unauthorised exploitation (and destruction as well) than works of fine art, because they are placed in the public eye. Protecting Art in the Street explains, with words and images, how copyright laws apply to street art and graffiti, and how they can be of help to creators within these artistic communities. Knowledge about these issues does matter. There has recently been a spike in legal actions or complaints against corporations and individuals that have tried to exploit commercially street artworks without the artists’ consent; and more importantly without sharing with them any profit. Also, legal actions have been brought by street artists to fight destruction of their pieces. By adopting a simple language, Protecting Art in the Street constitutes an easy-tounderstand guide aimed at navigating street artists and graffiti writers through otherwise difficult and intricate legal issues concerning the protection of their artistic outputs.

Vol 3 of the interviews series – Includes interviews with: DJ Hen Boogie & Izadoe from Bay Area crew The Dereliks, Izniz [Ghettolandz/The Madness/Burn UNI/Boom Bap Nation], Eddie Meeks Insane Cirkle & Southern Vanguard Radio , Charlie Dawk The Superstar from Da Phlayva/Langston, Joseph Caldwell from Lower Level, Supreme The Rudeboy aka DJ Supreme, Dope artwork by AzhqOne.

Geechi Suede and Sonny Cheeba are Camp Lo. These two emcees from the Bronx, NY entered the American hip hop scene with an insider slang that bewildered listeners as they radiated the look of a bygone era of black culture. In 1996, they collaborated with producer Ski and a host of other contributors to create Uptown Saturday Night, featuring the seminal single “Luchini (a.k.a. This is It).” While other 1990s rappers referred to 1970s Blaxploitation culture, Camp Lo were self-described “time travelers” who weaved the slang and style of a soulful past into state-of-the-art lyrical flows.

Uptown Saturday Night is a tapestry of 1970s black popular culture and 1990s New York City hip hop. This volume will detail how the album's fantastic world of “Coolie High” reflected classic films like Cooley High and the Sidney Poitier film from which the album's title is derived, and promoted vintage slang and fashion. The book features new interviews with Camp Lo, producer Ski, Trugoy the Dove from De La Soul, Ish from Digable Planets, and others, and offers musical and cultural analyses that detail the development of the album and its essential contributions to a post-soul aesthetic.

Voodoo, D'Angelo's much-anticipated 2000 release, set the standard for the musical cycle ordained as "neo-soul," a label the singer and songwriter would reject more than a decade later. The album is a product of heightened emotions and fused sensibilities; an amalgam of soul, rock, jazz, gospel, hip-hop, and Afrobeats. D'Angelo sets to music his own pleasures and insecurities as a man-child in the promised land. It was both a tribute to his musical heroes: Prince, Sly Stone, Marvin Gaye, J Dilla ... and a deconstruction of rhythm and blues itself.

Despite nearly universal acclaim, the sonic expansiveness of Voodoo proved too nebulous for airplay on many radio stations, seeping outside the accepted lines of commercial R&B music. Voodoo was Black, it was definitely magic, and it was nearly overshadowed by a four-minute music video featuring D'Angelo's sweat-glistened six-pack abs. "The Video" created an accentuated moment when the shaman lost control of the spell he cast.

The pearls of the Gulf have stoked the imagination and desire of people around the world for centuries their magnificence matched only by the courage of the divers who found them. This project aims to honor the memory of these valiant free-divers, their culture and their music by the means of a transmedia object including: A 240 pages art book (Arabic – English) featuring the contributions from artist, writers and experts in this tremendously rich theme such as Monira al Qadiri, Toufik Kerbage and Talal Mattar.

Strange Things Behind Belgian Windows is exactly whatits title describes: a series of photos of the strange andintriguing objects people display behind their windows, for passers-by to look at. These tableaus will make you smile, or maybe even stop and reflect. A stuffed fox, a portrait of Christ, a dusty Egyptian bust, a globe with gaudy colours...They are exhibited like treasures behind a glass screen, inviting you to wonder about the stories behind them, or about the daily lives going on behind the facade. Photographer Jean-Luc Feixa roamed the streets and avenues of Brussels for months, with his camera in hand, curious about the hidden spots and the unique colors of his new hometown.

Count up to 25 with all of the friendly faces who call Sesame Street home, including Elmo, Big Bird, the Count, and more, in the latest title of the Abrams Block Book series! Each exciting spread highlights beloved characters for the board book age group, teaching counting with a fun Sesame twist, and making this book perfect for the youngest fans as well as seasoned collectors. As in previous Block Book titles, this title will include die-cut pages and the stylish art of British design team Peski Studio.

Shelved for over 20 years, Sam Cooke's Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963, stands alongside Otis Redding's Live in Europe and James Brown's Live at the Apollo as one of the finest live soul albums ever made. It also reveals a musical, spiritual, emotional, and social journey played out over one night on the stage of a sweaty Miami club, as Cooke made music that encapsulated everything he had ever cut, channeling forces that would soon birth “A Change is Gonna Come,” the most important soul song ever written.

This book covers Cooke's days with the Soul Stirrers, the gospel unit that was inventing a strand of soul in the 1950s, and continues on to his string of hit singles as a solo artist that reveal far more about this complex man and the complex music he was always fashioning. A writer and an agent of social change, he absorbed the teachings of Billie Holiday and Bob Dylan while reconciling his own identity and what fans expected of him. Fleming explores how this towering soul artist came to reconcile so many disparate elements on a Florida stage on a winter night in 1963-a stage that extended well into the future, beyond Cooke's own life, beyond the 1960s, and into a perpetual here-and-now. Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963 will resonate so long as we all have need to look into ourselves and square our differences and become more human, and more connected with others in our humanity.

Daft Punk’s Discovery is a record that looked into the future and liked what it saw; an album that predicted the electronic music explosion, YouTube and the end of privacy, while dragging soft rock back into vogue. Discovery was not only one of the best albums of the 2000s, it was one of the most prophetic, the kind of record that makes you wonder: how did they know?

You can draw lines from Discovery to Glass Swords, Kanye West, EDM, Autotune, iTunes, Beyoncé, Guilty Pleasures, social media and more. Discovery's footprints can be found all over the modern world but it also looked back to Daft Punk’s childhood, to Van Halen records, Japanese cartoons and even Johann Sebas-tian Bach.

Discovery was a record that confounded many fans when it was released in 2001, thanks to its blatant pop hooks and unlikely sonic bricolage. It was a record that was - and still is - widely misunderstood; Discov-ery’s impact has only become clear with the passing of time, as Daft Punk have been proved right time and time again.

This book is a homage to a fascinating, troubled beast of an album that casts a huge shadow over the 21st Century, as Discovery reaches its 20th anniversary.

In the summer of 1989, when Trip City was first released with a five-track cassette EP by A Guy Called Gerald, there had been no other British novel like it. This was the down and dirty side of London nightclubs, dance music and the kind of hallucinogenic drug sub-culture that hadn't really been explored since Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Maybe this is why Trip City is still known as "the acid house novel" and an underground literary landmark. Over the decades, Trip City became shrouded in scandal and mystery. The original London book launch literally descended into a riot - shut-down by the Metropolitan Police. Everyone from the makers of Raiders Of The Lost Ark through the director of Candyman tried to adapt the book into a movie - but imploded in the process. And the galleys of the 25th-anniversary edition were destroyed in a fire before they could even be proofed or printed. Perhaps Trip City is uniquely summed-up by the original publisher, sci-fi legend Brian Aldiss, who wrote of the novel: "In the vintage of Thomas De Quincey's Confessions Of An English Opium Eater - but smack up to date. It's about a young man's descent into hell - a hell that looks very much like London."

As immediately believable as they were cartoonish, as much an inner city cipher as a suburban boys gang, the foursome that made up the Pharcyde were the most relatable MCs to ever pass the mic. On their debut and magnum opus Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde, they created a record almost overstuffed with possibility, the sound of four restless man-children fresh out of their teens, finding a perfect outlet in a form of music that was just as young and fertile.

And like the product of any adolescent, Bizarre Ride wears its contrarianism and contradictions on its sleeve. It's a party album about shyness and unrequited love. A swirl of jubilant L.A. psychedelia recorded in the midst of the Rodney King trial. A blast of black consciousness that still makes room to poke fun at Public Enemy and reference the Pixies. A dense, sophisticated sonic stew punctuated by yo mama jokes and prank calls. While hip-hop was already calcifying its tropes of steely machismo and aspirational fantasy, Bizarre Ride was a pure distillation of the average hip-hop listener's actual lifestyle-the joys and sorrows of four guys who were young, broke, sexually frustrated, and way too clever for their own good. A touchstone for Kanye West, Drake, Lil B and a whole generation of off-center MCs, Bizarre Ride sketched out a whole strata of emotions that other rappers hadn't yet dared to tackle, and to a certain extent, still haven't.

In recent years, Björk's artistry has become ever more ambitious and ever more respected. With the release of her conceptual app-album Biophilia in 2011, and a huge retrospective exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art coinciding with her most recent album, Vulnicura, in 2015, her status as artpop auteur has been secured. The album that made all this possible, though is 1997's Homogenic, a turning point in Björk's career and still among her finest musical achievements. Produced under great strain, it moves beyond the stylistic magpie rush of Debut and the urbanophile future-pop of Post, to something darker, stronger and braver, full of dramatic assertions of independence, sharp, stuttering beats, rich strings and raw outbursts of noise. It created, as the Alexander McQueen designed sleeve clearly asserted, a new Björk, one who would never stop hunting.

Written by award-winning Black British children’s author Sharna Jackson, Black Artists Shaping the World celebrates the diversity of work being produced today by Black artists from around the globe, introducing young readers to twenty-six contemporary artists from Africa and of the African diaspora.

Sharna Jackson’s experience as a children’s author who has worked for over a decade in the cultural sector, both at Tate in London and at Site Gallery in Sheffield, is combined here with the curatorial expertise of Dr Zoé Whitley, Director of London’s Chisenhale Gallery and co-curator of the landmark Tate exhibition ‘Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power’. Their book features artists working in a variety of media from painting, sculpture and drawing to ceramics, installation art and sound art. Artists featured include British Turner Prize-winning painters Lubaina Himid and Chris Ofili; renowned South African visual activist Zanele Muholi; Nigerian sound artist Emeka Ogboh; Sudanese painter Kamala Ibrahim Ishag; Kenyan-British ceramicist Magdalene Odundo; African-American artists Kerry James Marshall, Faith Ringgold, Amy Sherald and Kehinde Wiley; performance artist Harold Offeh; and moving image artist Larry Achiampong.

The result is a refreshingly contemporary celebration of Black artists at work today that will serve as inspiration to a new generation of aspiring young artists.

The perfect guide for those who want to explore a different, trendy side of Berlin. Photographer Silvie Bonne presents 100 scenic, impressive and 'Instagrammable' spots in Berlin. Some are classics but most are hidden gems only locals know about. Every hotspot is accompanied by a fascinating background story, some fun facts, and practical information. The true eyecatchers are of course the original Instagram images, along with some expert tips and trips on how to shoot them.

"As government legislation, standardised music and bad drugs forced the euphoria of the rave phenomenon into the darkness, a new underground movement emerged – the jungle and drum & bass nexus.

It was the sound of the beating heart of Britain’s multi-cultural urban rave, produced by the children of the Windrush and their closest friends, and distilled via the journey from a Tivoli Gardens soundclash, to the UK’s inner city blues parties and onto jazz-funk all-dayers and soul weekenders.

It was a space that was forged in the hidden edges of urban warehouses and the darkened recesses of clubland’s backrooms; schooled in the swagger of dancehall, the thunder of hardcore, the fury of bebop and the depth charge of dub.

Jungle and drum & bass was like nothing else the world had experienced before – simultaneously black and white, urban and suburban, old skool attitude and new school innovation. A socio-cultural melting pot of early-90s broken Britain seizing the wheel and taking control of the machine.

Originally published in 1997, State of Bass explores the scene’s roots through its social, cultural and musical antecedents and on to its emergence via the debate that surrounded the apparent split between jungle and drum & bass. Drawing on interviews with some of the key figures in the early years State of Bass explores the sonic shifts and splinters of new variants, styles and subgenres as it charts the journey from the early days as the deliberately hidden underground, ignored by the media in favour of the post-rave progressive house scene, to its position as a global phenomenon.

State of Bass: The Origins of Jungle and Drum & Bass extends the original text to include the award of the Mercury Prize to Roni Size & Reprazent for the groundbreaking New Forms album and brings new perspectives to the story of the UK’s most important subterranean urban energy.



Quotes

“Cogent, well researched and hardly oblivious to the nutty charisma of jungle’s lexicon and nomenclature. The first serious attempt to document the drum & bass realm is a total success.”
Select

“Exceedingly well researched, endlessly authoritative and undeniably ace…”
Melody Maker

“(State of Bass) deserves a special mention. A thorough account of the story of jungle.”
Ben Osborne, author of The A-Z of Club Culture

“The best book so far on the evolution of drum & bass”
Sheryl Garratt, author of Adventures in Wonderland: a decade of club culture

“Martin James comes up trumps with an in-depth examination of Jungle’s roots, history and even a recommended listening guide.”
Muzik

“Essential reading for anyone who is interested not only in the jungle scene… but in dance in general, in the music industry as a whole or even British society and its infrastructures.”
DJ

“An acutely perceptive and thought-provoking account of the circumstances and celebrities surrounding the development of a modern music that we can finally call our own.”
The Scotsman

“Well worth rattling through if you can track it down.”
FACT

Related products
Bedroom Beats & B-sides book cover
BEDROOM BEATS & B-SIDES
Laurent Fintoni
£9.99 – £12.99
Join The Future book
JOIN THE FUTURE
Matt Anniss
£9.99 – £12.99
Kmag book
KMAG 25 YEAR ANNIVERSARY
£20.00
Secret DJ book two cover
THE SECRET DJ BOOK TWO
The Secret DJ
£9.99 – £19.99
Privacy Policy | Cookies Policy | Terms & Conditions

Website by Edge Web Design
"

The dozens of artists and craftspeople featured in this volume create miniature representations of real-world scenes—everything from housewares, such as a thumb-sized rice cooker, to storefronts and cliffside dwellings suspended in test tubes, all the way up to entire multi-story buildings, with every detail preserved inside and out. Each of these exquisite works tells an intriguing story, encapsulating history, culture and memory, and elevating everyday items—the signage on the side of a garbage can, a rusted downspout—to objects worthy of artistic representation, prompting us through this striking shift of scale to perceive the world in whole new ways.

Among the featured artists, Tatsuya Tanaka brings Japanese iconography into his master work “Miniature Calendar,” while Joshua Smith, from Australia, keeps streets and addresses and memory alive by re-creating them in miniature, freezing them in time, complete with weeds and water stains. This book not only digs into the stories behind the works, but provides guidance for those who are ready to try their own hand at mini crafts. Three masters share their inspirations and techniques by revealing a detailed process of a single masterpiece.

New York City in the 1970s was an urban nightmare: destitute, dirty, and dangerous. As the country collectively turned its back on the Big Apple, two musical vigilantes rose out of the miasma. Armed only with amplified AC current, Suicide's Alan Vega and Marty Rev set out to save America's soul. Their weaponized noise terrorized unsuspecting audiences. Suicide could start a riot on a lack of guitar alone. Those who braved their live shows often fled in fear--or formed bands (sometimes both). This book attempts to give the reader a front-row seat to a Suicide show.

Suicide is one of the most original, most misunderstood, and most influential bands of the last century. While Suicide has always had a dedicated cult following, the band is still relatively unknown outside their musical coterie. Arguing against the idea of the band's niche musical history, this book looks at parallels between Marvel Comics' antiheroes in the 1970s and Suicide's groundbreaking first album. Andi Coulter tells the origin story of two musical Ghost Riders learning to harness their sonic superpower, using noise like a clarion call for a better future.

The question of control for Black women is a costly one. From 1986 onwards, the trajectory of Janet Jackson's career can be summed up in her desire for control. Control for Janet was never simply just about her desire for economic and creative control over her career but was, rather, an existential question about the desire to control and be in control over her bodily integrity as a Black woman.

This book examines Janet's continuation of her quest for control as heard in her sixth album, The Velvet Rope. Engaging with the album, the promotion, the tour, and its accompanying music videos, this study unpacks how Janet uses Black cultural production as an emancipatory act of self-creation that allows her to reconcile with and, potentially, heal from trauma, pain, and feelings of alienation. The Velvet Rope's arc moves audiences to imagine the possibility of what emancipation from oppression--from sexual, to internal, to societal--could look like for the singer and for others. The sexually charged content and themes of abuse, including self-harm and domestic violence, were dismissed as “selling points” for Janet at the time of its release. The album stands out as a revelatory expression of emotional vulnerability by the singer, one that many other artists have followed in the 20-plus years since its release.

In a bar called The Bucket of Blood, a man shoots the bartender four times in the head. In the small town of Millhaven, a teenage girl secretly and gleefully murders her neighbors. A serial killer travels from home to home, quoting John Milton in his victims' blood.

Murder Ballads, the ninth studio album from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, is a gruesome, blood-splattered reimagining of English ballads, American folk and blues music, and classic literature. Most of the stories told on Murder Ballads have been interpreted many times, but never before had they been so graphic or profane. Though earning the band their first Parental Advisory warning label, Murder Ballads, released in 1996, brought Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds their biggest critical and commercial success, thanks in part to the award-winning single, “Where the Wild Roses Grow,” an unlikely duet with Australian pop singer, Kylie Minogue.

Closely examining each of the ten songs on the album, Santi Elijah Holley investigates the stories behind the songs, and the numerous ways these ballads have been interpreted through the years. Murder Ballads is a tour through the evolution of folk music, and a journey into the dark secrets of American history.

Vs. is the sound of a band on fire. The same confluence of talent, passion, timing, and fate that made “grunge” the world's soundtrack also lit a short fuse beneath Pearl Jam. The band combusted between late 1992 and mid-1994, the span during which they planned, recorded, and supported their sophomore record. The spotlight, the pressure, the pace-it all nearly turned the thriving act to ash. Eddie Vedder, the reluctant public face of the band, responded by lashing out lyrically. Jeff Ament, Mike McCready, and Stone Gossard, who beheld success with varying degrees of anxious satisfaction, attacked their instruments in solidarity. Dave Abbruzzese welcomed the rock-star lifestyle, and left his mark on the record with more than just potent percussion. Vs. roils with fury-and at times, gently steams-over the trappings of fame, human faults, and societal injustice. The record is a thrashing testament to Pearl Jam's urgent creativity and greater-good interests, and the band's logistical calculations behind it drew a career-defining line in the sand. It promised the world that Pearl Jam would neither burn out nor fade away. This book weaves research, little-known details, and band members' memories into a definitive account of how Vs. set them on a path toward enduring integrity and relevance.

In the '80s, the Birmingham, England, band Duran Duran became closely associated with new wave, an idiosyncratic genre that dominated the decade's music and culture. No album represented this rip-it-up-and-start-again movement better than the act's breakthrough 1982 LP, Rio. A cohesive album with a retro-futuristic sound-influences include danceable disco, tangy funk, swaggering glam, and Roxy Music's art-rock-the full-length sold millions and spawned smashes such as "Hungry Like the Wolf" and the title track.

However, Rio wasn't a success everywhere at first; in fact, the LP had to be buffed-up with remixes and reissued before it found an audience in America. The album was further buoyed by colorful music videos, which established Duran Duran as leaders of an MTV-driven second British Invasion, and the group's cutting-edge visual aesthetic. Via extensive new interviews with band members and other figures who helped Rio succeed, this book explores how and why Rio became a landmark pop-rock album, and examines how the LP was both a musical inspiration-and a reflection of a musical, cultural, and technology zeitgeist.

In Janelle Monáe's full-length debut, the science fiction concept album The ArchAndroid, the android Cindi Mayweather is on the run from the authorities for the crime of loving a human. Living in 28th century Metropolis, Cindi fights for survival, soon realizing that she is in fact the prophesied ArchAndroid, a robot messiah meant to liberate the masses and lead them toward a wonderland where all can be free. Taking into account the literary merit of Monáe's astounding multimedia body of work, the political relevance of the science fictional themes and aesthetics she explores, and her role as an Atlanta-based pop cultural juggernaut, this book explores the lavish world building of Cindi's story, and the many literary, cinematic, and musical influences brought together to create it. Throughout, a history of Monáe's move to Atlanta, her signing with Bad Boy Records, and the trials of developing a full-length concept album in an industry devoted to the production of marketable singles can be found, charting the artist's own rise to power. The stories of Monáe and of Cindi are inextricably entwined, each making the other more compelling, fantastical, and deeply felt.

"The first decades of the 21st century saw dramatic changes in the music industry as new technology transformed creation, communication, and consumption. Amid this turmoil one change occurred relatively quietly, almost naturally: so-called bedroom producers, music makers raised on hip-hop and electronic music, went from anonymous, often unseen creators to artists in their own right.

In Bedroom Beats & B-sides: Instrumental Hip Hop & Electronic Music at the Turn of the Century, Laurent Fintoni details the rise of a new generation of bedroom producers at the turn of the century through the stories of various instrumental hip-hop and electronic music scenes. From trip-hop, jungle, illbient, and IDM in the 1990s to just “beats” in the late 2000s, the book explores how these scenes acted as incubators for new ideas about composition and performance that are now taken for granted.

Combining social, cultural, and musical history with extensive research, the book tells the B-side stories of hip-hop and electronic music from the 1990s to the 2010s and explores the evolution of a modern beat culture from local scenes to a global community via the diverse groups of fringe idealists who made it happen and the external forces that shaped their efforts.

Includes quotes and stories drawn from more than 100 interviews with producers, DJs, label owners, and more including James Lavelle, Charlie Dark, Luke Vibert, Mark Pritchard, Flying Lotus, Georgia Anne Muldrow, El-P, Hudson Mohawke, Kode9, Prefuse 73, Anti Pop Consortium, Dabrye, Waajeed, Tekilatex, Ghislain Poirier, Kutmah, LuckyMe, Benji B, The Bug, and many more.

Bedroom Beats & B-sides is the first comprehensive history of the instrumental hip-hop and electronic scenes and a truly global look at a thirty-year period of modern music culture based on a decade of research and travel across Europe, North America, and Japan.

Laurent Fintoni says: “This book is a deeply personal project that has consumed me for over 20 years. I hope it can do some justice to the vibrancy and importance of the culture it seeks to celebrate and its people. I am grateful to Velocity Press for taking a chance on me as a first-time author and giving me space and support to tell the first, but hopefully not the last, version of this story.”

Quotes

“Laurent Fintoni has created an epic tome of information. It’s one of the best examples of connecting the dots between many facets of electronic music. He writes similar to a DJ seamlessly transitioning from one point to the other, with visual vigour. Not since Kwodo Eshun’s More Brilliant Than The Sun, has someone delved this deep between the beats.”

King Britt

“As hip-hop has erupted over four decades to become the dominant genre of the 2020s, this work casts essential analysis on an influential set of producers who rose from obscurity to influence pop culture. It’s a story of changes in music technology and musical education, but crucially of how a small set of outsiders sought to hack, adapt, and break their technology in pursuit of making something expressive and new. In appropriation of tech and genre, the beat scene is a worthy analogue to consider a culture facing the failures of postmodernism, and the opportunities of a new age in media.”

Dominic Flannigan (LuckyMe)

“Finally a deep dive into one of the more interesting new musical trajectories of the modern era.”

Sam Valenti IV (Ghostly)

“The music industry was caught looking the other way, head in the sand, handing out golden parachutes. In the used bins we would marvel at their trash, what they couldn’t sink their teeth into, upcycling it in our way.”

Daedelus (Brainfeeder)

The world’s first practical coursebook on the art of graffiti.

If you want to learn how to write graffiti this is the book you need.

Find out how to: - design your own letter style - use effects to create a unique tag - create throw-ups - include fills and motifs - paint wildstyle, bubblestyle and blockbusters - build up large burners - handle a spray can - get your work up safely and legally

Teachers, this is the book you need if you want to teach graffiti.

It contains: - plans for lessons on graffiti - theory and practice - practical advice for staging safe, hands-on graffiti lessons - guidance on marking students' work - resources covering the origins and cultural history of graffiti - clear step-by-step explanations to suit students of all abilities - exercises and solutions

'The step-by-step demonstrations of techniques are surprisingly comprehensive, making this a perfect birthday or Christmas present for a teenage relative with a creative streak' Artists & Illustrators

About the Author: Chris Ganter is a former winner and judge of the Montana Style Combat competitions (Stuttgart and Munich). He also won the Stuttgart graffiti contest for public walls and Write4Gold (south Germany). His work has been exhibited in Germany and Australia, and he has contributed to many publications, including Street Fonts and Graffiti School.

Format:Paperback with flaps Size:29.7 x 21.0 cm Extent:176 pp Publication date:2 September 2013 ISBN:9780500290972

From Crooked Grinds to Kickflips and Ollies to Wallies, the Skateboard ABC Collection is a fun way to teach the next generation about skateboarding – and who knows, maybe even mommy and daddy will learn a trick or two.

Made in Europe with non-toxic inks and finishes, so you can be sure your little one's first taste of skateboarding is a safe one.

Every letter a legend: The Rap ABC is a board book with stylized art of 26 iconic hip-hop artists for each letter of the alphabet.

Made in Europe with 100% non-toxic inks
158 x 158 mm x 26 mm
56 pages of premium card stock.

Vier Männer müssen eine Band gründen. Deshalb begeben sie sich aufs Land in Meeresnahe. Sie wollen dort in mehrtägigen Sessions gemeinsam Songs erarbeiten. Durch Umwelteinflusse (Wetter, Unterkunft, Küche, Wald und Tiere) entsteht etwas: Es ist unvorhergesehene Musik. Jeder der vier schreibt währenddessen heimlich eine Art Tagebuch, um die unerträglichen Spannungen im Bandgefüge abzuleiten. Das Buch versammelt diese illustrierten Aufzeichnungen. Eine absurde Welt, beherrscht von größenwahnsinnigen wie liebevollen Figuren. Es passiert viel, sogar unerklärliches. Doch lasst sich die Erde das alles gefallen?

"If there’s a cultural artefact capable of withstanding the vagaries and fickleness of the digital age as well as the printed book, it’s the vinyl record . . .

In Listening to the Wind, Ian Preece (editor, and co-author of In The Heyday of The Football Annual) sets out on an international road trip to capture the essence of life for independent record labels operating in the twenty-first century. Despite it all – from algorithms and streaming to the death of the high street and the gutting of the music press – releasing a record to serve its ‘own beautiful purpose’, as 4AD’s Ivo Watts Russell once said, is a flame that still burns through these pages. With countless labels, albums and artists to be discovered, this book is for those who share that inextinguishable love for music.

Features extensive, original interviews with the likes of Analog Africa, Light in the Attic, Thrill Jockey, International Anthem, Dust-to-Digital, Pressure Sounds, Heavenly, Touch, Mississippi, Sublime Frequencies and more! [like Japan Blues for instance] "

"you can't help warming to his anti-populist folly, and soon acquire a shopping list as long as your arm" **** Mojo

"A garrulous, engaging and deeply informed travelogue" The Wire

Featuring never-before-seen unit photography, storyboards, costume and concept designs, and behind-the-scenes photos from Academy Award–winning director Steven Spielberg’s first musical, West Side Story: The Making of the Steven Spielberg Film is a loving chronicle of the years of effort that went into bringing a beloved story back to the screen for a new generation. Author Laurent Bouzereau was embedded with the film’s cast and crew and conducted original interviews with director and producer Steven Spielberg, screenwriter and executive producer Tony Kushner, Tony Award–winning choreographer.

From his own adolescence, when his allegiance was to punk rock, to his work as one of the essential voices of our time on music and culture at the New York Times and the New Yorker, Kelefa Sanneh has made a deep study of how our popular music unites and divides us. Distilling a career’s worth of knowledge, Sanneh explores the tribes music forms, and how its genres, shape-shifting across the years, give us a way to track larger forces and concerns. He debunks cherished myths, reappraises beloved heroes and upends familiar ideas of musical greatness, arguing that sometimes the best popular music isn’t transcendent: it expresses our grudges as well as our hopes, and is motivated by greed as well as inspiration. Throughout, race is a powerful touchstone: just as there’s always been a ‘Black’ audience and a ‘white’ audience (with some overlap) there is Black music and white music and a whole lot of expropriation. This is a book to shock and awe the deepest music nerd, and at the same time to work as a heady gateway drug for the uninitiated.

Kouhei Matsunaga's 'Drawings' is a book and a 7" vinyl single. The book is the first ever major showcase of his drawing skills. Here, smiling horses meet floating people in a strictly minimalist, slightly psychedelic black and white ink world. The hardcover book is cloth bound, 88 pages, 40 drawings, a few words and lots of space. The four track 7" vinyl single accompanying the book, credited to his alias Koyxen Mattsunagnen, takes Matsunaga's music a step further towards a more dance oriented approach, as with his minimal techno project NHK and the recent NHK'Koyxen material released by the PAN label, whilst still clearly and firmly rooted in contemporary, experimental music.

Written in Japanese!

Story of CAN / Stockhausen and WDR Studio / Postwar German landscape that nurtured krautrock / Euro Free Jazz Mixture / CAN's Constituent molecules / CAN's DNA / Long interview for members / Disc Guide.

Who had the greatest dunk of all time? Which version of Michael Jordan was the best Michael Jordan? What is allowed and absolutely not allowed in a game of pickup basketball? Basketball and Other Things takes readers through the most pivotal and ridiculous fan disputes in basketball history, providing arguments and answers to basketball’s greatest questions, explained with the wit and wisdom that is unique to Shea Serrano. Serrano breaks down debates that all NBA fans have considered, from the classics (Which years was Kobe at his best?) to the fantastical (If you could assign different values to different shots throughout basketball history, what would they be and why?). With incredible art from Arturo Torres, this book is a must-have for anyone who has ever stayed up late into the night debating basketball’s greatest moments, what-ifs, stories, and legends.

Illustrated by Arturo Torres, foreword by Reggie Miller.

Shea Serrano is an award-winning writer, author, and illustrator. His most recent book, The Rap Year Book, reached the bestseller lists of the New York Times and Washington Post, topped the Arts and Entertainment iBooks bestseller list, and was chosen for the Pitchfork book club. Currently, Serrano is a staff writer for The Ringer. He lives in Houston, Texas.

Zwölf Tocotronic-Alben, zehn Künstler, zehn Songs. Titel wie Slogans für Häuserwände, harte aber melo­dische Gitarren, live noch energetischer und intensiver. Seit über 25 Jahren haben Tocotronic die deutschsprachige Popkultur geprägt wie kaum eine andere Band. Und das ohne musikalische oder politische Kompromisse. Statt den immer gleichen Sound zu bedienen, hat die Band sich immer wieder verwandelt, neue Konzepte und Ästhetik erprobt und politisch immer klar Position bezogen, gegen Deutschtümelei, Nationalismus oder die europäische Abschottungspolitik.

»Sie wollen uns erzählen« fängt die zahlreichen Facetten von Tocotronic ein: Zehn Songs aus der gesamten Schaffensphase werden von ausgewählten Comic­künstler*innen und Illustrator*innen interpretiert. Im gezeichneten Songbook von Tocotronic haben sich Jim Avignon, Julia Bernhard, Tine Fetz, Eva Feuchter, Anna Haifisch, Sascha Hommer, Katja Klengel/Piwi, Moni Port, Jan Schmelcher und Philip Waechter je einem Tocotronic-Song angenähert, mal mehr Comic-Strip, mal mehr im illustrativen Stil. Herausgeber Michael Büsselberg, selbst Musikkenner und Comicfan, hat die die Idee des illustrierten Band-Songbooks aus der angloamerikanischen und französischen Popkultur »importiert« und kongenial auf seine liebste deutschsprachige Band adaptiert.

Als Zugabe hat Tocotronic-Schlagzeuger Arne Zank einen Comic-Strip über das Kennenlernen der Band-Mitglieder beigesteuert. Und Sänger Dirk von Lowtzow hat die ausgewählten Songs mit exklusiven Statements und Anmerkungen versehen.

Anywhere, California is another close look by Rudy VanderLans into the cultural landscape of his favorite subject, the Golden State. Whether it’s the garage where Apple started in Los Altos, or the former location where the Manson Family lived in Chatsworth, or an anonymous abandoned storefront in Calexico, VanderLans finds beauty in the unlikeliest of locations. Yet he rarely divulges the why or what of his photographs. Instead he stresses that things aren’t always what they appear to be, leaving much to the imagination of the reader.

Stylistically diverse, and meticulously composed, his pictures are as sundry in nature as California itself. Presented in unencumbered page layouts, with well-considered sequencing, this publication is another testament to VanderLans’ dual mastery of design and photography. It continues his preference for the book format as his primary vehicle to show his photography, making this limited first edition another instant collectible.

"From acid house to prog-rock, there is no form of modern popular music that hasn’t been propelled forward by the synthesizer. As a result, they have long been objects of fascination, desire and reverence for keyboard players, music producers and fans of electronic music alike. Whether looking at an imposing modular system or posing with a DX7 on Top of the Pops, the synth has also always had an undeniable physical presence.

Synthesizer Evolution: From Analogue to Digital (and Back) celebrates their impact on music and culture by providing a comprehensive and meticulously researched directory of every major synthesizer, drum machine and sampler made between 1963 and 1995. Each featured instrument is illustrated by hand and shown alongside its vital statistics and some fascinatingly quirky facts.

From its invention in the early 1960s to the digital revolution of the 1980s right up until the point that analogue circuits could be modelled using software in the mid-1990s, this book tells the story of synthesizers from analogue to digital – and back again.

Tracing that history and showing off their visual beauty with art-book quality illustrations, this a must for any self-respecting synth fan. The book has 128 pages, is 23cm x 17.4cm in size and printed on high quality 130gsm matt art paper.

Author Oli Freke says: “This book has grown out of a life-long obsession with synthesizers and electronic music, and it’s fantastic to be able to share this with my fellow synth obsessives and music fans who celebrate the synth’s role in modern music. I’m eternally grateful to Velocity Press for going with me on this journey and supporting the project so keenly.”

Reviews

“When the author’s passion for synths combines with his artistic talent the result is a book with a difference. The hand-sketched illustration style sets this book apart helping turn the technical facts and figures into a visual feast insightfully embellished with interesting anecdotes. This book is a joy to look at and a delight to read.” – Sound On Sound magazine

“Like a Victorian botanist climbing mountains in search of a rare flower to sketch, Oli Freke tracks down scarce examples of synthesizers to lovingly sketch and share with the rest of us to marvel at. His collection is an essential bookshelf addition for the analogue obsessive.” – Electronic Sound magazine

“Such a fascinating survey of the synthesizer world, demonstrating a depth of passion that will amaze even the greatest synth-head.” – Benge (Expanding Records)

“Every tweak of a button, every plug of a wire, every minute detail examined on some of the most iconic synths ever made… its really geeky & strange, but its the bible on every great synthesizer behind all of your favourite songs.”

Lotus Capo (Sony ATV Publishing)

EAT 17 is a beautiful 237 page, perfect bound book filled with the brilliant collage art of Robert Pollard.

The Belgian illustrator Tom De Geeter brings a fresh new look to the top ten list with Tens: he asked hundreds of artists, TV makers, musicians, famous and less well-known people to put together their so-called tens, and set them neither themes nor limitations. It is a unique and out-of-the-box insight into the interests and hobbys of various people, brought with great attention to craftsmanship and detail. No perishable or predictable lists, but a quirky, surprising, and extremely varied collection, illustrated by Tom De Geeter with contrast-rich yet delicate line drawings.

This book is a journey – a ride through the depths of Germany’s modern musical roots:

At the beginning of the 1970s, experimental and progressive music in Germany developed far from the mainstream. Although few initially noticed it, it is now internationally celebrated as a cult phenomenon called „Krautrock“. Today, bands like Kraftwerk, Can, Amon Düül II, NEU!, Cluster, and Tangerine Dream are considered pioneers of groundbreaking sound experiments.

In order to understand the Krautrock era and its impact, it’s worth delving deeper into the history of German rock music and taking a closer look at the overall picture.Times & Sounds offers a comprehensive insight into the mechanisms of post-war Germany’s music industry and sheds light upon its diverse musical styles, as well as their mutual influences and connections, which have received little attention until now: From the onset of German Jazz and Swing orchestras to the first Rock ‚n‘ Roll bands around Hamburg‘s Star Club and electronic synthesizer pioneers. From the intact world of Schlager to agitprop and left-wing protest songs. From the avant-garde compositions of Stockhausen and his presumed disciples of Krautrock to the Neue Deutsche Welle.

This book is a journalistic diary tracing Germany’s dynamic culture from the late 40s to the early 90s. Those who take this journey experience the ups and downs of five decades, thus developing an understanding deeper than any other of the Krautrock phenomenon.

– Foreword by Hans-Joachim Roedelius (Kluster/Cluster/Harmonia)
– Hardcover with coloured headband and ribbon
– 536 pages including coloured endpaper with infographics

For seven years, photographer and psychotherapist Caroline Jensen has traveled back and forth between Stockholm and New York to photograph graffiti writers.

Faces of Graffiti shows intimate portraits of writers that Caroline Jensen has established a deep and personal connection with.

The book portrays New York graffiti pioneers who began writing in the late 1960s, writers who grabbed the baton and established graffiti in Stockholm in the 1980s, and younger writers who have further developed the graphic design of graffiti.

To understand how graffiti affects writers’ lives, Caroline Jensen asked them about their driving forces. Rooted in her work as a psychotherapist, she reflects on self-development and the role graffiti plays in the lives of the writers.

Charmin 65, Nic 707, Riff 170, Rubin, Snake 1, Kaos, Shiro and Taki 183 are some of the artists portrayed in the book, accompanied by images of their graffiti art.

Caroline Jensen is a photographer based in Sweden with the world as her field. She is also a licensed psychotherapist with her own practice for twenty-two years. She combines her two professions with a deep interest in the process of change. Dokument Press has previously published her book Room for Therapy.

“Page after page after page, this book is the photographic art book of the year. If you have little knowledge about this art form this is the ultimate platform to see its beauty and energy. This book shows the passion, unique style, creativity and expression of some of today’s most talented aerosol artists.”

James TOP

"Showcasing the mastermind behind some of the most iconic rave flyers and record covers of the late eighties and early nineties, Junior Tomlin: Flyer & Cover Art is a comprehensive insight into Junior Tomlin’s incredible back catalogue.

Rave culture transformed the way people experienced music, sparking a revolution in British society and spreading across the globe during the late eighties. Its influence is still being felt today, as millions of people around the world attend clubs and festivals that embody the spirit of rave culture. Intrinsic to the spread of the culture in those pre-internet days was the dissemination of flyers, giving ravers information on where and when their favourite promoters would be organising parties. In order to stand out from the competition, it was imperative that the most respected events had distinctive flyer artwork.

Junior Tomlin’s visionary capabilities led to a long-running career as a flyer artist. His fantastical projections of the future and often surreal imagery earned him the title The Salvador Dali of Rave. Tomlin’s iconic work was highly sought after, with ravers collecting his remarkable work and promoters queuing up to commission him to produce imagery for their flyers. Junior’s imagination conjured up alternate worlds, references to outer space and gave us a peek into the endless possibilities presented by an unknown future. It was the perfect representation of the brave new world being cultivated by rave promoters and the community that sprung up around the culture.

Junior worked with a range of seminal rave promoters from 1992 onwards including Telepathy, Dreamscape, Slammin’ Vinyl, One Nation, Dream Odyssey and Ravealation. 30 years since he designed his first flyer Junior Tomlin: Flyer & Cover Art documents his work across 160 pages, with commentary and draft sketches provided by Junior himself. Divided into two distinct sections – Record Covers and Flyers – the book also features an in-depth interview with Junior and a foreword by Chelsea Louise Berlin (artist, flyer collector and author of Rave Art) plus words from former clients.

Chronicling the work of a pioneering artist whose art was intrinsic to early rave culture, Junior Tomlin: Flyer & Cover Art marks a critical time in British history. In a time where division and conflict seem to be more prevalent than ever, the book allows us to escape into Junior’s fantasy worlds and travel back in time to an era when social barriers were being broken down.

The book is 25cm x 25cm, printed on premium 130gsm full-colour paper. It is the first time his work has been documented and presented in such a comprehensive, cohesive fashion.

“His record sleeves are classic examples of a hugely important artform now sadly deceased in the digital age.”
Danny Briottet (Renegade Soundwave)

“When I think of music and the concept of what I wish to express, I always want the visual representation to be in total synergy with that I am creating. Artwork is so important! This is why I did not hesitate when it came to choosing an artist and legend like Junior for specific work projects I had in mind.”
DJ Rap"

By the mid 1970s the Southern African nation known as the Republic of Zambia had fallen on hard times. Though the country’s first president, Kenneth Kaunda, had thrown off the yoke of British colonialism, the new country found itself under his self-imposed autocratic rule. Kaunda protected Zambia from war, but his country descended into isolation and poverty. This is the environment in which the 70s rock revolution known as Zamrock flourished. Fuzz guitars were common, as were rhythms influenced by James Brown’s funk. Songs, mainly sung in the country’s constitutional language, English, were often bleak. In present day Zambia, Zamrock makers were few. It was not a likely scene to survive — but it did. Welcome To Zamrock! Vols. 1 and 2 are an overview of the movement’s most beloved groups, and trace its ascension, fall, and finally, resurgence. Each volume chronicles the the history of the Zamrock scene with never before seen photographs and ephemera. Volume 2 Includes 18 track CD.

56 pages, 5,75 x 8,75 inches, paperback.

hardback cloth-bound book of lyrics, poems and photographs, designed in collaboration with Oliver Van Der Lugt, with single-use download code included. For those only familiar with her previous releases, aya sinclair's `im hole' will be a dramatic revelation. Under the Loft pseudonym, she attracted global acclaim for her fwd-thinking club inversions that juxtaposed the British addiction to breaks 'n bass with critical, self-sluicing logic and untethered abstraction, tearing down dance music's hallowed pillars of respectability while winking knowingly to voyeuristic onlookers. On `im hole' this routine has evolved; aya has distilled the incisive sonic experimentation of her earlier releases, the tongue-in-cheek giggles of her DJ sets and edits, and the identity-fluxing lyricism of her live shows. Contorting language, dialect, gender and sexuality between intermittently controlled bursts of rhythm, noise and aural goop, she has sculpted a set of autobiographical vignettes that challenge established norms, question supposed truths and affirm a spectrum of interlocking experiences. But while it's wide open and personal, `im hole' also challenges queer art's tendency to veer towards repetitive solipsism, the music fragmenting familiar sounds and twinning them with familiar words, assembled in unfamiliar ways. Stories are muddled with phonetics just as dubstep is macrodosed with microtonal drone. The anxious, explorative personality that made aya's past releases so magnetic is magnified here, and her sense of humour is completely naked. It's a Gregg Araki animated biopic of Burial. It's Shakespeare with hoop earrings and a busted skateboard.

This is the first book from New Orleans organist and inventor, Quintron: a multi-layered tome that pays tribute to the perilous world of devoted musical road-dawgs. The setting is Europe, but the book is just as much about the myriad illusions of American identity. A not-so-glamorous life in rock gets pulled apart to reveal vivid blood vessels running beneath the obvious. The tales are funny and thrilling—and mostly true. Someone almost dies on every page!

Renowned puppeteer Panacea Theriac (aka Miss Pussycat) has contributed drawings throughout. Foreword by novelist and psychoanalyst Timothy Lachin.

“If Dr. Frankenstein were working with raw material from Madame Curie, Delia Derbyshire, James Brown, and Wilhelm Reich, the result might be something like Quintron. Underground inventor, composer, record maker, impresario, and performer par excellence. There is nothing and no one like him and this is his first book and it’s a gas!” —Ian Svenonious

“Great reading! Microtel description was right on. Stockholm to Helsinki ferry was always a Dead Moon curse. How do you get 86’d out of a cafeteria? Way cool.” —Fred Cole, Dead Moon

Bestselling author and Sundance award-winning director Questlove offers a thrilling, music-driven ride through the last fifty years of American history​.

In Music Is History, bestselling author and Sundance award-winning director Questlove harnesses his encyclopedic knowledge of popular music and his deep curiosity about history to examine America over the past fifty years. Choosing one essential track from each year, Questlove unpacks each song’s significance, revealing the pivotal role that American music plays around issues of race, gender, politics, and identity.

Music Is History focuses on the years 1971 to the present, not only the country’s most complex and rewarding half-century when it comes to the ways that pop culture and culturally diverse history intersect and interact, but also the years that overlap with Questlove’s own life. Music Is History moves fluidly from the personal to the political, examining events closely and critically, to unpeel and uncover previously unseen dimensions, and encouraging readers to do the same. Whether he is exploring how Black identity reshaped itself during the blaxploitation era, analyzing the assembly-line nature of disco and its hostility to Black genius, or remembering his own youth as a pop fan and what it taught him about America, Questlove finds the hidden connections in the American tapestry.

Complete with playlists organized around personal, playful themes that touch on everything from the relationship of hip-hop to music’s past to the secret ingredient in all funk songs, Music Is History is filled with and informed by Questlove’s preferences, perspectives, and particularities. It feels like both a popular history of contemporary America and a conversation with one of music's most influential and unique voices.

A journey through dreamlike landscapes, bizarre buildings, and whimsical interiors floating between reality and fantasy.

Digital renderings have long served architects and interior designers to help visualize spaces before the building begins. But a new generation of digital artists are taking this craft a step further to create otherworldly scenes that can’t, and won’t, ever be built.

This inspiring compilation of the most innovative projects in digital art covers the work of the artists and creatives at the forefront of this aesthetic. Discover Filip Hodas and his captivating pop culture dystopia artwork series, explore Massimo Colonna's surrealist urban landscapes and dive into the abstract compositions of Ezequiel Pini, founder of Six N. Five studio.

Dreamscapes & Artificial Architecture presents the work of leading creatives from across the globe, exploring the infinite ways to conceptualize utopian oases and dystopian nightmares. With their roots in spatial design, their ideas present a new creative current defined by the fusion of digital techniques such as computer rendering and 3D art, and an aesthetic that moves between fantasy and reality. Freed from the constraints of the physical world, these dreamscapes expand the possibilities for architecture and interior design.

Format: 21 × 26 cm Features: Full color, hardcover, stitch bound, 208 pages Isbn: 978-3-89955-249-2

This book has been printed in Trento, Italy. Fsc™️ (Forest Stewardship Council™️) Certified.

he exiting story about how the street wear pioneers Shirt Kings created a style that would define hip hop culture in the 1980s and beyond. Jamaica, Queens, New York in the mid 1980s. Rappers, celebrities and hip hop fans came from all over the city to get their own customized T-shirt by the Shirt Kings. The style traveled all over the world through record covers and music videos, and the Shirt Kings designs soon became synonymous with hip hop and the culture of making something out of nothing. Shirt Kings: Pioneers of Hip Hop Fashion looks at the early days of street wear through the lens of the pioneering group of artistic entrepreneurs known as the Shirt Kings. By adapting the graffiti skills from the trains and spray cans to shirts and airbrush they created a new look for a new generation. Edwin Phade Sacasa is a founding artist of the group and it is through his archives that we are transported to the 1980s in New York City where the fashion was loud, colorful, and filled with cartoon imagery. But not just any cartoon imagery for the cartoons where urbanized. Mickey Mouse with a Fila suit, Casper the Friendly Ghost with gold teeth and Pink Panther with gold chains. People from across the city made their way to Jamaica, Queens to a small shopping mall known as the Coliseum where you could easily bump into the biggest names in hip hop of the day. From DJ Red Alert to LL Cool J to Big Daddy Kane to Mike Tyson – they all had to have their Shirt Kings designs. Shirt Kings: Pioneers of Hip Hop Fashion chronicles the art, the styles, and the people who where loyal supporters of the Shirt Kings, and takes us on a trip down memory lane to when customization and art reigned supreme in New York City. After the hardcover has been sold out for years, just in time for Hip Hop’s 50th anniversary comes another chance to take part of the Shirt Kings’ inspiring history as pioneers of hip hop and street wear in this beautiful soft cover edition. “Shirt Kings brought the hip hop element into the clothes for real and integrated it, and it was the first time I saw hip hop culture completely merged with clothing.” — LL Cool J “The Shirt Kings network was fashion TV of the times, and advertising and promotion way before it became trendy.” — Chuck D, Public Enemy ”Phade and the Shirt Kings are pioneers of hip hop fashion, also it is duly noted that the graffiti element has been elevated and made fashionable thru their airbrushing work.” – RZA ”Phade has been my go to guy since the eighties for all airbrush collabos!” – Dapper Dan Born in East New York, Brooklyn, Edwin Phade Sacasa founded the Shirt Kings in the mid 1980s, where he serviced many of todays Hip Hop stars and pioneers, such as Jay Z and Run DMC. Phade is working with youth in the inner city and have developed a program that teaches urban fashion through art therapy and entrepreneur skills. Alain KET is an artist, photographer, author, artistic consultant, marketing professional and frequent lecturer on the topic of graffiti.

First published in 1963 and updated in 1979, this classic was an essential handbook for anyone who studies, surfs, protects, or is fascinated by the ocean. The original author, Willard Bascom, was a master of the subject and included a wealth of information, based on theory and statistics, but also anecdotal observation and personal experience. It brought to the general public understanding of the awesome and complex power of the waves.

This revision from Kim McCoy adds recent facts and anecdotes to update the book’s relevance in the time of climate change. One of the most significant effects of global warming will be sea-level rise. What will this mean to waves and beaches, and what effects are we already seeing? New text and photos cover events such as the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, Hurricane Katrina flooding of 2005, and the 2011 earthquake and resulting devastation in Fukishima.

As well as students, surfers, and the general public, this updated edition of a beloved classic is an essential handbook for climate scientists and ocean activists, providing clear explanations and detailed resources for the constant battle to preserve the shore.

"Legendary drum & bass magazine Knowledge returns for a one-off special book to celebrate their 25th anniversary. It's been ten years since the last issue and five years since they called it a day and over the years people have clamoured for its return but Knowledge always resisted the temptation. So why are they bringing it back now? Well, they feel they have unfinished business. Reaching 20 years was such an important milestone but it was a bittersweet moment and they didn't celebrate it at all because they knew the end was coming. What better way to mark their 25th anniversary than with one last issue?

Knowledge Magazine returns with a special one-off book celebrating their 25th anniversary. There have been some special issues in the past but this is the biggest and best Knowledge ever. This is one for the collectors:

10” x 10” large format book
Hardback material cover with debossed logo
Premium 130gsm matt art paper
160 full-colour pages featuring new and classic long-form features and interviews"

Discover the exciting world of Africa's diverse and visually dazzling street art scene.

This visually rich survey – the first of its kind – showcases the work of over 200 artists and celebrates the explosion of street art in Africa over the last decade. Including twelve in-depth interviews with street artists active in Africa today as well as coverage of the continent’s major street art projects, collectives and festivals, it takes the reader on an introductory tour of the many African street art scenes, with a deeper focus on the most prominent players in Kenya, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia.

Topics and projects covered include the monumental project Murais da Leba in Angola, which saw 6,000 square metres of wall covered by local graffiti and visual artists in the Serra da Leba mountain range; the cultural influences and idiosyncrasies of individual street art scenes, and how they mesh with local communities; and eL Seed’s project ‘Perception’, a huge multi-part mural stretching across more than fifty buildings in Cairo’s Zaraeeb neighbourhood, revealing a message of hope to its marginalized community in the artist’s distinctive ‘calligraffiti’ style.

Text commentaries elaborating on styles and processes, and social and cultural context, are peppered throughout the book, giving the reader further insight into a wealth of striking contemporary visual cultures – and helping make this a must-have for street art fans and practitioners.

About the Author: Cale Waddacor is a South African artist, musician, photographer and documentarian. Skateboarding through his home city, Johannesburg, he developed a passion for urban art and graffiti. He began photographing street artworks to document the country’s rising street art scene and launched the website Graffiti South Africa in 2011, which was made into a book of the same name in 2014.

Format:PLC (no jacket) Size:23.5 x 22.0 cm Extent:272 pp Illustrations:536 Publication date:17 September 2020 ISBN:9780500022825

Black & White & Weird ALL Over Highlights Rare Glimpses OF ''Weird Al'' Yankovic's Comic Genius

Book Featuring Unreleased Black-And-White Photographs Taken By Yankovic Drummer Jon ''Bermuda” Schwartz Due From 1984 Publishing October 27, 2020

''See funny music's greatest star as he bursts into fame! Weird Al's drummer takes you into the studio, backstage, and offstage for the making of a superstar. Hey, I was there too-but Bermuda brought his camera!'' - Dr. Demento

''This book will undoubtedly appeal to both Weird Al completists and those who enjoy black-and-white photographs taken by drummers.'' - ''Weird Al'' Yankovic

''Weird Al'' Yankovic is one of music's most beloved figures. A skilled accordion player and songwriter, the California native is known for his meticulous parodies of popular songs, hilarious originals, and, of course, for upbeat polkas!

For much of Al's career, one man has been by his side, photographing and documenting the fun and weirdness: longtime drummer Jon ''Bermuda'' Schwartz. Since meeting Al in 1980, Jon has taken more than 20,000 images of Al in his element: on tour, in the studio, and on video sets.

Black & White & Weird All Over presents hundreds of images of Al, culled from Jon's personal collection of black-and-white photography. These photos only existed on contact sheets - out of mind and out of sight - until now! From behind-the-scenes shots taken on the sets of Al 's iconic videos for ''Ricky,'' ''I Love Rocky Road,'' ''Eat It,'' and ''Living With A Hernia,'' to studio sessions for Al's Dare to Be Stupid and Polka Party! LPs, Black & White & Weird All Over is the ultimate photographic essay of Weird Al 's undisputed comedic genius.

Biographies Jon ''Bermuda'' Schwartz (author I photographer) has been the drummer with ''Weird Al'' Yankovic since 1980 and is seen and heard on all of Weird Al's albums, videos, and concert and television performances. He is also the group's archivist with an unmatched collection of memorabilia, audio & video releases from around the world, and photos.

''Weird Al'' Yankovic (foreword) is an American comedian and actor who is known for his music parodies and original songs that make light of popular culture. He has sold more than 12 million albums, performed more than 1,000 live shows, and earned five Grammy Awards. His last LP, Mandatory Fun, went to #1 on the Billboard 200, the first comedy album to do so since 1963.