Music reviews and criticism Books
HarperCollins Publishers Inc Dylans Visions of Sin By Ricks Christopher July
Book Synopsis
£17.09
HarperCollins Publishers Inc Lightning Striking
Book Synopsis“We have performed side-by-side on the global stage through half a century…. In Lightning Striking, Lenny Kaye has illuminated ten facets of the jewel called rock and roll from a uniquely personal and knowledgeable perspective.” -Patti SmithAn insider’s take on the evolution and enduring legacy of the music that rocked the twentieth centuryMemphis 1954. New Orleans 1957. Philadelphia 1959. Liverpool 1962. San Francisco 1967. Detroit 1969. New York, 1975. London 1977. Los Angeles 1984 / Norway 1993. Seattle 1991.Rock and roll was birthed in basements and garages, radio stations and dance halls, in cities where unexpected gatherings of artists and audience changed and charged the way music is heard and celebrated, capturing lightning in a bottle. Musician and writer Lenny Kaye explores ten cro
£25.19
HarperCollins Publishers Inc Lightning Striking
Book Synopsis“We have performed side-by-side on the global stage through half a century…. In Lightning Striking, Lenny Kaye has illuminated ten facets of the jewel called rock and roll from a uniquely personal and knowledgeable perspective.” -Patti SmithAn insider’s take on the evolution and enduring legacy of the music that rocked the twentieth centuryMemphis 1954. New Orleans 1957. Philadelphia 1959. Liverpool 1962. San Francisco 1967. Detroit 1969. New York, 1975. London 1977. Los Angeles 1984 / Norway 1993. Seattle 1991.Rock and roll was birthed in basements and garages, radio stations and dance halls, in cities where unexpected gatherings of artists and audience changed and charged the way music is heard and celebrated, capturing lightning in a bottle. Musician and writer Lenny Kaye explores ten cro
£19.54
Penguin Putnam Inc Barefoot in Babylon The Creation of the Woodstock
Book SynopsisThe perfect gift for music fans and anyone fascianated by Woodstock, Barefoot in Babylon is an in-depth look at the making of 1969’s Woodstock Music Festival—one of Rolling Stone’s “50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll.”“Mr. Spitz feeds us every riveting detail of the chaos that underscored the festival. It makes for some out-a-sight reading, man.”—The New York Times Book Review Fifty years ago, the Woodstock Music Festival defined a generation. Yet, there was much more than peace and love driving that long weekend the summer of 1969. In Barefoot in Babylon, journalist and New York Times bestselling author Bob Spitz gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Woodstock, from its inception and the incredible musicians that performed to its scandals and the darker side of the peace movement. With a new introduction, as well as maps, set list
£14.36
OUP India Global Music Cultures
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£106.99
University of Illinois Press The Beautiful Music All Around Us
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewJudith McCulloh Public Sector Award, Society for Ethnomusicology, 2016. ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, 2013. Award for Excellence for Best Research in Folk, Ethnic, or World Music, Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC), 2013. "Extraordinary. . . . A masterpiece of humane scholarship.”--The Wall Street Journal“These stories and the recordings — capturing the voices of everyday people, not pop stars — simply crackle.”-Los Angeles Times"Offers an understanding not only of a musical thread vital to American culture, but of America itself."--Publishers Weekly "Astonishing. . . . These stories are compelling, moving and revelatory."--Chicago Tribune "As compelling as a good detective story, this investigation of field recordings of a bygone era will be embraced by music fans. This book reminds readers that they don't need pop icons to experience passionate music."--Library Journal"A unique, personal, thoroughly documented book, a labor of love. . . . valuable for those with an interest in folklore, popular music, southern cultures, and race relations. . . . Highly recommended."--Choice"A thorough and creative exploration of the histories of recordings made for the Library of Congress in the 1930s and the artists who made them. Stephen Wade has gathered a prodigious quantity of new information and left no stone unturned. Of interest and use to anyone interested in American music."--Norm Cohen, author of Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong"Superbly illustrated and with a hundred pages of notes and bibliography, The Beautiful Music All Around Us is at once an essential reference work and a thoroughly enjoyable book."--Times Literary Supplement "In revisiting the human transactions at the heart of these recordings, Wade essentially grants the songs a new life for a new age. Among the book's many virtues are its lively and imaginative narrative interpolations, its vivid song descriptions, its fascinating investigative work, its many colorful personalities and absorbing life-histories, and its often astonishingly trenchant accumulation of detail. A magisterial, monumental book of tremendous sympathy, scope, and imaginativeness."--Robert Cantwell, author of If Beale Street Could Talk: Music, Community, Culture "Wonderfully evocative of a lost America."--Shepherd Express "Combines the persistence of an investigative reporter with the loving hand of a storyteller who keeps peeling away the layers of the lives of his subjects. . . . Remarkable."--The Christian Science Monitor
£15.19
University of Washington Press Sailor Song
£19.72
Hachette Books Small Town Talk Bob Dylan the Band Van Morrison
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£18.69
Hachette Books Goth
£18.04
Random House USA Inc The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums
Book SynopsisThe author of the magisterial A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers now approaches the great singers and their greatest work in an innovative and revelatory way: through considering their finest albums, which is the format in which this music was most resonantly organized and presented to its public from the 1940s until the very recent decline of the CD. It is through their albums that Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan, Nat King Cole, Judy Garland, and the rest of the glorious honor roll of jazz and pop singers have been most tellingly and lastingly appreciated, and the history of the album itself, as Will Friedwald sketches it, can now be seen as a crucial part of musical history. We come to understand that, at their finest, albums have not been mere collections of individual songs strung together arbitrarily but organic phenomena in their own right. A Sinatra album, a Fitzgerald album, was planned and structured to show these arti
£30.00
Farrar, Straus and Giroux LOVE GOES TO BUILDINGS ON FIRE
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£14.86
W. W. Norton & Company Music Then and Now
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£86.40
W. W. Norton & Company Concise History of Western Music
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£85.12
W. W. Norton & Company Whats That Sound
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£83.00
Penguin Putnam Inc Major Labels
Book SynopsisOne of Oprah Daily's 20 Favorite Books of 2021 • Selected as one of Pitchfork's Best Music Books of the Year“One of the best books of its kind in decades.” —The Wall Street Journal An epic achievement and a huge delight, the entire history of popular music over the past fifty years refracted through the big genres that have defined and dominated it: rock, R&B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance music, and pop Kelefa Sanneh, one of the essential voices of our time on music and culture, has made a deep study of how popular music unites and divides us, charting the way genres become communities. In Major Labels, Sanneh distills a career’s worth of knowledge about music and musicians into a brilliant and omnivorous reckoning with popular music—as an art form (actually, a bunch of art forms), as a cultural and economic force, and as a tool that we use to build our identitie
£15.04
Random House USA Inc Songs of America Patriotism Protest and the Music
Book SynopsisNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A celebration of American history through the music that helped to shape a nation, by Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham and music superstar Tim McGraw“Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw form an irresistible duo—connecting us to music as an unsung force in our nation's history.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin Through all the years of strife and triumph, America has been shaped not just by our elected leaders and our formal politics but also by our music—by the lyrics, performers, and instrumentals that have helped to carry us through the dark days and to celebrate the bright ones.From “The Star-Spangled Banner” to “Born in the U.S.A.,” Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw take readers on a moving and insightful journey through eras in American history and the songs and performers that inspired us. Meacham chronicles our history, exploring the stories behind the songs, and Tim McGraw r
£27.00
Penguin Books Ltd To Anyone Who Ever Asks
Book SynopsisShortlisted for the Plutarch Award for best biographyThe mysterious true story of Connie Converse—a mid-century New York City songwriter, singer, and composer whose haunting music never found broad recognition—and one writer’s quest to understand her lifeThis is the mesmerizing story of an enigmatic life. When musician and New Yorker contributor Howard Fishman first heard Connie Converse’s voice on a recording, he was convinced she could not be real. Her recordings were too good not to know, and too out of place for the 1950s to make sense—a singer who seemed to bridge the gap between traditional Americana (country, blues, folk, jazz, and gospel), the Great American Songbook, and the singer-songwriter movement that exploded a decade later with Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. And then there was the bizarre legend about Connie Converse that had become the prevailing narrative of her life: that in 1974, at the age of fifty, she simply drove off one day and was never heard from again. Could this have been true? Who was Connie Converse, really? Supported by a dozen years of research, travel to everywhere she lived, and hundreds of extensive interviews, Fishman approaches Converse’s story as both a fan and a journalist, and expertly weaves a narrative of her life and music, and of how it has come to speak to him as both an artist and a person. Ultimately, he places her in the canon as a significant outsider artist, a missing link between a now old-fashioned kind of American music and the reflective, complex, arresting music that transformed the 1960s and music forever. But this is also a story of deeply secretive New England traditions, of a woman who fiercely strove for independence and success when the odds were against her; a story that includes suicide, mental illness, statistics, siblings, oil paintings, acoustic guitars, cross-country road trips, 1950s Greenwich Village, an America marching into the Cold War, questions about sexuality, and visionary, forward thinking about race, class, and conflict. It’s a story and subject that is by turn hopeful, inspiring, melancholy, and chilling.
£25.60
HAL LEONARD PUB CO Bachs Fight for Freedom
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£11.66
Hal Leonard Corporation The Road to Robert Johnson The Genesis and
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£12.34
DK Opera
Book SynopsisExperience the passion and drama of the world’s greatest operas with this sumptuously illustrated visual guide.Immerse yourself in more than 400 years of the world’s most celebrated operas and discover the fascinating stories behind them. Explore the lives of singers such as Maria Callas, Luciano Pavarotti, and Jonas Kaufmann. Meet composers like Mozart, Wagner, and Britten, and the librettists with whom they collaborated to create the magical blend of words and music that make up opera.From its origins in the 17th-century courts of Italy to live screenings in public spaces today, Opera: The Definitive Illustrated Story follows the history of opera from Monteverdi’s L'Orfeo in 1607, to Cosi fan Tutte, La Bohème, and modern operas such as Brokeback Mountain. It explains musical terminology, traces historical developments, and sets everything in a cultural context.This awe-inspiring opera book further features:
£40.00
DK Kerrang Living Loud
Book SynopsisRelive the greatest moments in the last 40 years of hardcore, punk, and metal with this incredible book by Kerrang!, alternative music’s most trusted publication. Celebrate 40 years of Kerrang! with this year-by-year review of the greatest artists and moments in metal and alternative music. Kerrang! has an unparalleled reputation as one of the world's best-loved rock-focused publications. It continues to be at the forefront of alternative music, flying the flag for metal, hardcore, punk, and beyond, introducing millions to their new favorite bands. Anyone who’s anyone in the metal scene has featured Kerrang’s hallowed pages and this unique book chronicles these appearances. If it happened in metal, Kerrang! covered it, as confirmed in this year-by-year survey of alternative music. By highlighting the heaviest albums, the most outlandish stars, the rowdiest mosh pits and the most incredible mom
£25.50
The History Press Ltd King City
Book SynopsisMusings on Birmingham's contemporary music cultureTrade Review"Brum Bastion champions the city once more!""King City celebrates Birmingham's contribution to the music of yesterday, today and tomorrow.""It's a 65,000 word love letter to the Birmingham music scene, and we love it!""With a nod to the past, the book also touches on the city’s prestigious history, as well as the more recent indie scene which emerged in Digbeth in the early 2010s."
£19.86
Crown Publishing Group (NY) A Long Strange Trip
Book SynopsisThe complete history of one of the most long-lived and legendary bands in rock history, written by its official historian and publicist—a must-have chronicle for all Dead Heads, and for students of rock and the 1960s’ counterculture. From 1965 to 1995, the Grateful Dead flourished as one of the most beloved, unusual, and accomplished musical entities to ever grace American culture. The creative synchronicity among Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan exploded out of the artistic ferment of the early sixties’ roots and folk scene, providing the soundtrack for the Dionysian revels of the counterculture. To those in the know, the Dead was an ongoing tour de force: a band whose constant commitment to exploring new realms lay at the center of a thirty-year journey through an ever-shifting array of musical, cultural, and mental landscapes. Dennis McNally, the band’s historian and publicist for more than twenty years, takes readers back through the Dead’s history in A Long Strange Trip. In a kaleidoscopic narrative, McNally not only chronicles their experiences in a fascinatingly detailed fashion, but veers off into side trips on the band’s intricate stage setup, the magic of the Grateful Dead concert experience, or metaphysical musings excerpted from a conversation among band members. He brings to vivid life the Dead’s early days in late-sixties San Francisco—an era of astounding creativity and change that reverberates to this day. Here we see the group at its most raw and powerful, playing as the house band at Ken Kesey’s acid tests, mingling with such legendary psychonauts as Neal Cassady and Owsley “Bear” Stanley, and performing the alchemical experiments, both live and in the studio, that produced some of their most searing and evocative music. But McNally carries the Dead’s saga through the seventies and into the more recent years of constant touring and incessant musical exploration, which have cemented a unique bond between performers and audience, and created the business enterprise that is much more a family than a corporation. Written with the same zeal and spirit that the Grateful Dead brought to its music for more than thirty years, the book takes readers on a personal tour through the band’s inner circle, highlighting its frenetic and very human faces. A Long Strange Trip is not only a wide-ranging cultural history, it is a definitive musical biography.
£22.10
Beacon Press Woody Guthrie
Book SynopsisDismantles the Woody Guthrie we have been taught—the rough-and-ready rambling’ man—to reveal an artist who discovered how intimacy is crucial for political struggleWoody Guthrie is often mythologized as the classic American “rambling’ man,” a real-life Steinbeckian folk hero who fought for working-class interests and inspired Bob Dylan. Biographers and fans frame him as a foe of fascism and focus on his politically charged folk songs. What’s left unexamined is how the bulk of Guthrie’s work—most of which is unpublished or little known—delves into the importance of intimacy in his personal and political life. Featuring an insert with personal photos of Guthrie’s family and previously unknown paintings, Woody Guthrie: An Intimate Life is a fresh and contemporary analysis of the overlapping influences of sexuality, politics, and disability on the art and mind of an American folk icon.Part biogr
£15.29
Te Herenga Waka University Press The NZSO National Youth Orchestra 50 Years and
Book SynopsisTelling the story of the first 50 years of New Zealand's National Youth Orchestra, this account covers its successful international tours and performances in cities around New Zealand as well as its 2009 concert season. The first history of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra's (NZSO) Youth Orchestra, the chronicle is enlivened by the memories and stories of past members. Including photographs, posters, and programs drawn from the group's archives as well as personal collections, this warm and accessible compilation celebrates the orchestra's unique character.
£25.60
Rosemary Corporation, the Bach to Rock
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£18.00
498 Productions, LLC The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow
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£26.99
498 Productions, LLC The Beatles Rubber Soul to Revolver
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£33.99
Picador USA Reinventing Bach
£18.70
McGraw-Hill Companies Looseleaf for World Music Traditions and
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£144.56
Abrams Vinyl Me Please 100 Albums You Need in Your
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£28.45
Pelican Publishing Company Bluegrass Newgrass OldTime and Americana Music
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£22.46
Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co ,U.S. Music Works A Music Appreciation Workbook
Book SynopsisTable of Contents Music Interview Music Interest Survey Relating Music to Other Subjects Music Theory Music Theory Staff Paper Form in Music Music Science Instruments Voice Types Ancient Instrument Report Medieval Music Terms Medieval Composer Report Medieval Music Discussion Questions Medieval and Renaissance Dance Music Renaissance Music Terms Renaissance Composer Report Renaissance Music Discussion Questions Baroque Music Terms Baroque Composer Report Baroque Music Discussion Questions Classical Period Music Terms Classical Period Composer Report Classical Period Discussion Questions Romantic Period Music Terms Romantic Period Composers Discussion Questions Romantic Period Discussion Questions Romantic Period Music Drawing Twentieth Century Terms Twentieth Century Music Questions Jazz Styles and Artists Music Theatre Composer Report Screen Music Composer Assignment Social Reform and Messages in Music Listening Report Forms Concert Report Forms Movie Music Reviews Music History Period Worksheet
£58.50
DK The Classical Music Book
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£25.00
DK El libro de la música clásica The Classical Music
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£25.19
DK The Complete Classical Music Guide
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£25.19
Arcadia Publishing Gennett Records and Starr Piano Images of America
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£21.24
Arcadia Publishing Carolina Bluegrass A High Lonesome History
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£18.69
History Press A History of Pittsburgh Jazz Swinging in the
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£18.69
History Press The Birth of Seattle Rap
£21.04
Hal Leonard Publishing Corporation Chart Hits of 20142015 19 of the Hottest Hits for Guitar Strum Sing
£11.69
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Dona Ivone Laras Sorriso Negro
Book SynopsisMore than simply a paragon of Brazilian samba, Dona (Lady) Ivone Lara's 1981 Sorriso Negro (translated to Black Smile) is an album deeply embedded in the political and social tensions of its time. Released less than two years after the Brazilian military dictatorship approved the Lei de Anistia (the Opening that put Brazil on a path toward democratic governance), Sorriso Negro reflects the seminal shifts occurring within Brazilian society as former exiles reinforced notions of civil rights and feminist thought in a nation under the iron hand of a military dictatorship that had been in place since 1964. By looking at one of the most important samba albums ever recorded (and one that also happened to be authored by a black woman), Mila Burns explores the pathbreaking career of Dona Ivone Lara, tracing the ways in which she navigated the tense gender and race relations of the samba universe to ultimately conquer the masculine world of samba composers.33 1/3 Global<Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction Part 1 Women and Samba A Sereia Guiomar De Braços Com a Felicidade Alguém Me Avisou Homemade Samba Meu Fim de Carnaval Não Foi Ruim and Nunca Mais First Steps The Rise of Feminism Part 2 Faces Names Os Cinco Bailes da História do Rio Adeus de um Poeta Me Deixa Ficar Unhas Tendência Part 3 Sorriso Negro One Smile for Two Samba and Dictatorship Silencing a Movement The Black Movement of the 1970s Axé de Ianga Afterword Notes Bibliography Index
£21.36
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Chains Toward the Blues
Book SynopsisPeter Beilharz is Professor of Critical Theory at Sichuan University, China, and has previously held chairs at La Trobe, Harvard, Leeds and Curtin Universities. He has published thirty books including Socialism and Modernity (2009) and Intimacy in Postmodern Times (2020). He founded the journal Thesis Eleven in 1980, and played as support to Chain in 1971.Trade ReviewThat Peter Beilharz’s writing has an inimitable, flowing backbeat will not surprise those familiar with his writing. Nor does it distract from Chain’s own. In fact, you may be well advised to use the book as the score while you ‘plug in those cans and travel across time, towards the blues, close to the sun.’ -- Harry Blatterer, Macquarie University, Australia * Thesis Eleven Journal *Table of ContentsTrack listing Preface 1. Once Around The Block 2. Tracks: Text 3. Before and After: Context 4. Time and Place: Big Context 5. Back Pages Notes Index
£24.51
Grand Central Publishing Disgraceland: Musicians Getting Away with Murder
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£25.20
Twelve 60 Songs That Explain the '90s
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£27.00
Vehicule Press Rock 'n' Radio: When DJs and Rock Music Ruled the
Book SynopsisRock ‘n’ Radio illustrates that Montreal was at the epicentre of the rock radio revolution in Canada, eventually attracting talented DJs from the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Their personal stories and the inevitable collision with the power of alternative FM rock radio in the late 60s take the reader through some of the best rock music recorded and the social changes that percolated in the background.The period 1926 to 1949 can be considered the Golden Age of radio when it was the hearth of the North American family. Much to everyone's surprise, it survived the incursion of television to live another Golden Age—the 1960s and 1970s when rock 'n' roll music seeped its way onto mainstream radio, pushing aside Perry Como and the Dorsey Brothers for Elvis and The Beatles.The new golden era of radio spawned what would eventually be called Top 40 AM radio, whose premise was built on the philosophy: play all the hits, then play them again. Pioneer Top 40 DJs like Alan Freed in the U.S., widely recognized as the man who coined the phrase "rock 'n' roll," spawned a new breed of radio personalities—the fast-talking salesman who delivered the goods. Hundreds of radio stations in North American gave up their entire programming day over to rock music. And with that came a legion of young, hungry Top 40 DJs such as Dave Boxer, Ralph Lockwood and Doug Pringle, looking for jobs at stations across Canada.
£14.20
Vehicule Press Black and Blue: Jazz Stories
Book SynopsisAuthor and radio personality Stanley Péan is a jazz scholar who takes us seamlessly and knowledgeably through the history of the music, stopping at a number of high points along the way. He gets behind the scenes with anecdotes that tell much about the misunderstandings that have surrounded the music. How could French existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre have mixed up Afro-Canadian songwriter Shelton Brooks with the Jewish-American belter Sophie Tucker? What is the real story behind the searing classic “Strange Fruit” made immortal by Billie Holiday, who at first balked at performing it? Who knew that an Ohio housewife named Sadie Vimmerstedt was behind the revenge song “I wanna be around to pick up the pieces when somebody breaks your heart?” And since this is jazz, there is no shortage of sad ends: Bix Beiderbecke, Chet Baker, Lee Morgan, to name a few.
£15.15
Chicago Review Press The Cartoon Music Book
Book SynopsisThe popularity of cartoon music, from Carl Stalling’s work for Warner Bros. to Disney sound tracks and The Simpsons’ song parodies, has never been greater. This lively and fascinating look at cartoon music’s past and present collects contributions from well-known music critics and cartoonists, and interviews with the principal cartoon composers. Here Mark Mothersbaugh talks about his music for Rugrats, Alf Clausen about composing for The Simpsons, Carl Stalling about his work for Walt Disney and Warner Bros., Irwin Chusid about Raymond Scott’s work, Will Friedwald about Casper the Friendly Ghost, Richard Stone about his music for Animaniacs, Joseph Lanza about Ren and Stimpy, and much, much more.Trade Review"The first publication of its kind." -- Accessibly Live Off-Line.
£16.10
