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Hal Leonard Europe Limited Really Easy Piano: Classic Rock

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Book SynopsisOrnette Coleman’s career encompassed the glory years of jazz and the American avant-garde. Born in segregated Fort Worth, Texas, during the Great Depression, the African American composer and musician was zeitgeist incarnate. Steeped in the Texas blues tradition, Ornette and jazz grew up together, as the brassy blare of big band swing gave way to bebop, a faster music for a faster, post-war world. At the dawn of the Space Age and New York’s 1960s counterculture, his music gave voice to the moment. Lauded by some, maligned by many, he forged a breakaway art sometimes called ‘the new thing’ or ‘free jazz’. Featuring previously unpublished photographs of Ornette and his contemporaries, this is the compelling story of one of America’s most adventurous musicians and the sound of a changing world.Trade ReviewFittingly unconventional . . . Ornette Coleman: The Territory and the Adventure is an atlas in prose, a guide to the territories of varied sorts – social, racial, aesthetic, economic and even geographic – that Coleman came out of, traveled through, lived near, occupied, left behind or transformed . . . Golia covers a lot of territory in tight, direct language that illuminates Ornette Coleman’s life and work . . . Most impressively, perhaps, she devotes a sizable section to Coleman’s cryptic and elliptical philosophy of music, which he called Harmolodics, without straining to defend it with academic triple-talk or dismissing it.', David Hajdu, New York Times Book Review 'Ms. Golia aptly outlines the aesthetic dilemma, when “jazz had become aware of itself and its strengths” . . . [and] writes with demystifying clarity about the manifestations of compassion and rigor behind Coleman’s search for “unison” and the musical system he called “harmolodics.” . . . She notably grounds Coleman’s identity in his hometown, reconstructing an“idiosyncratic collage of radio broadcasts from Harlem, Western Swing fiddlers, Tejano two-steps, high-school marching bands, and the rhythm and blues that issued from storefront churches” . . . [Ornette Coleman: The Territory and the Adventure] opens ears yet further to the transformative power of Coleman’s music.', Larry Blumenfeld, Wall Street Journal 'Maria Golia's well-researched volume paints a portrait of a man who looked different, ate differently (being a vegetarian in Texas was no joke), and, of course, played differently . . . we learn a great deal about Coleman's musical beginnings, his subsequent motivations, and the broader landscape of which he was a part.', Record Collector 'The freedom that Golia describes is the freedom and openness to form friendships with artists from other areas of the arts. It is the freedom of someone who would go off to Morocco to seek out the musicians of JouJouka. These musicians had a profound effect on the way that Coleman developed multiple unisons and the harmolodic melding of the blues to create the Prime Time band . . . The research that Golia has done is impressive and her book will be essential.', Jazz Views 'Following Ornette's departure from the planet, his presence in the world only seems to increase and his music’s influence will no doubt continue far into the future. The poetic conception of music, sound, and life in the broadest sense that Ornette embodied is addressed here through the terrific writing of Ms. Golia. This volume is an excellent addition to the ongoing study of one of the greatest improvising musicians of all time.', Pat Metheny, musician, composer, educator 'It’s always good to learn more about one of America’s greatest musicians, and Golia’s work has much that is new, especially (at last) a proper overview of Ornette’s experience in his hometown of Fort Worth, both in his youth and the 1980s. Ornette Coleman: The Territory and the Adventure is the best book on Ornette Coleman yet.', Ethan Iverson, musician and music critic 'The history of jazz is often told as a geographical adventure in which a great art enlightens and assimilates a chain of territories in the course of world conquest. Maria Golia revitalizes that narrative in exploring the life and genius of Ornette Coleman. This is the most incisive portrait we have of him – a joyous addition to the literature of music.', Gary Giddins, music critic, author and biographer 'A giant step in the right direction and the first significant book on Ornette Coleman since John Litweiler's Ornette Coleman: The Harmolodic Life was published in 1992…. Golia is very good at contextualising and explaining… and succeeds in exploring in a non-systemically musicological way the mysteries of harmolodics by shedding light on the more arcane side of Ornette's vast artistic curiosity. Ornette Coleman: The Territory and the Adventure also is excellent in enhancing our biographical knowledge of Ornette's early life in a very considered way.', Stephen Graham, Marlbank.net 'There are lots of fascinating anecdotes, stories and previously unpublished photographs in Golia’s book . . . She has compiled a detailed, interesting story of his career.', Martin Chilton, udiscovermusic.com 'One of the finest books on the power of place and influence in a musician's life.', Andrew Male, Mojo 'Golia offers a wide-ranging biography of the great saxophonist, writing less about the man himself than about the people, places, and musical tendencies that converged to make him the "patron saint of all things dissonant and defiant." The approach suits Coleman, who was soft-spoken despite his stubborn nonconformity, and unaffected by the larger-than-life egotism of contemporaries such as Charles Mingus or Miles Davis.', Julian Lucas, Harper's Magazine 'Maria Golia eloquently describes the Ornette phenomenon in a book laden with musical and social insights.', Chris Searle, The Morning Star 'The book is much more than a conventional biography — you learn a lot about his childhood and artistic development, particularly the early years when he was wrestling with the blues and conventional R&B forms, and you learn about the whole Texas milieu he emerged from. But there’s also a great deal of discussion of his music and life philosophy, including extensive quotes from people in his bands, so if you’re at all a fan of his work and want to gain some real perspective on it, it’s pretty much a must-read. Highly recommended.', Stereogum.com 'Ornette Coleman was the shock of the new . . . Golia writes scenically about Coleman’s birthplace, Fort Worth, Texas, where Jim Crow and music were everywhere . . . With a pointillist’s talent for detail, [she] shows how Coleman’s origins in Texas blues gave way to abstraction on landmark records . . . ultimately leading him to create the musical paradigm he called “harmolodics.” . . . The “free” in [Coleman’s] “free jazz” is an ambivalent word. It doesn’t refer to the absence of oppression or musical rules, but instead the struggle to imagine a place beyond them both. In that sense, Coleman’s definition of freedom was radically inclusive, both politically and musically.', Josephine Livingstone, The New Republic 'Golia takes a broader approach, situating the great saxophonist and composer in his cultural, social and geographical contexts. Each of the four sections pivots on a particular time and place, establishing the territory then striking out on an adventure in a manner akin to a Coleman solo . . . By deftly tracing these connections and transformations, Golia has created a valuable and highly engaging survey of Coleman’s harmolodic life.', The Wire '[A] compelling and rewarding new book.', Jerry Jazz Musician 'A marvelous and unique biography of an equally unique artist. Maria covers his entire life in vivid detail with emphasis on the man, his associations and his artistic methods. It is the perfect companion to John Litweiler’s Ornette Coleman: A Harmolodic Life written in 1994.', Mosaic Records’ Daily Jazz Gazette 'Maria Golia’s forensic, scholarly, original Ornette Coleman: The Territory and the Adventure is a very welcome book . . . Golia – perfectly placed to write this book as one-time manager of the Caravan Of Dreams – expertly outlines Ornette’s place in a distinctly Texan musical heritage . . . a fascinating, formidable study of Ornette, with all the seriousness and rigour his life and music deserve.', Sounds of Surprise 'Golia takes us on a guided tour, not just of Coleman’s mind and music but of the country and state that birthed him and made him into a permanent outlaw and outlier. She clearly designates the framework of the biography of this titanic figure, demonstrating that the individuals who may be said to define an era have generally distilled its characteristic forces and possibilities into a consistent body of work that has in turn transformed the times in which they lived and worked. In other words, Ornette is a mirror of the very America which often found it so hard to incorporate him into its artistic, musical and cultural fabric.', Donald Brackett, Critics at Large 'Author Maria Golia’s depiction of the mise en scene of Ornette Coleman’s life, and her insights into his persona, provide ample material to understand the saxophonist’s initial disruption and his long-term influence.', The Arts Fuse 'A professional account of a heady dude, without cosmic junk and jargon.', Colin Fleming, Jazz Times 'A spectacular new biography . . . Golia has penned a labor of love and a thoroughly researched, righteous homage. Best of all, in my view, Golia gets Coleman’s ravenous intellectual curiosity. Her prose is sometimes dense with context, sometimes poetic and exalted, sometimes punchy ("Jim Crow could not dictate what kind of music a person listened to.") She gets that Ornette was never only a jazz musician. He was a thinker, a futurist, a cultural revolutionary . . . Refreshingly, Golia describes references that informed Ornette’s voracious curiosity, like Derrida, Buckminster Fuller, Maya Angelou, the later Krishnamurti, and Guy Debord.', Los Angeles Review of Books 'Golia contends that Coleman's particular vision of music, what he called Harmolodics, affected not only the shape of jazz but also that of other musical genres as well as poetry, visual art, film-making, and even architecture. It's a compelling argument, and Golia's book offers much interesting information concerning Coleman's upbringing and early music apprenticeship in his hometown of Fort Worth, TX, not generally considered a jazz capital but in these pages comes across as much more than a backwater.', Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 'Lauded by some, maligned by many, Ornette Coleman forged a breakaway art sometimes called "the new thing" or "free jazz." At the dawn of the Space Age and New York's 1960s counterculture, his music gave voice to the moment. Featuring previously unpublished photographs of Ornette and his contemporaries, this is the compelling story of one of America's most adventurous musicians and the sound of a changing world.', Rough Trade, Books of the Year 2020 'In this book Maria Golia has succeeded in celebrating Coleman’s life of musical ‘adventure’ and arguing his status as a modern master.', Centrepiece 'a book with superbly reproduced photographs . . . Ornette Coleman did his own thing with graceful ease. This comes across strongly in the story of his life as told by Maria Golia and she is good at contextualising the different phases of his musical career.', The Prisma 'Coleman’s status as a larger-than-life icon has tended to eclipse the soft-spoken, often enigmatic artist himself. Opposing this tendency is Maria Golia’s wide-ranging new biography . . . One of the book’s virtues lies in its foregrounding of Coleman’s own voice and the voices of his con-temporaries, with ample quotations throughout, many drawn from the author’s own interviews . . . Golia’s book is scholarly and well researched, but it is not written exclusively or even primarily for academics and should be welcomed by fans and general reader-ship.', Jazz and Culture 'Fascinating . . . There is a great deal of new information in her book about Coleman, particularly about his later nonmusical artistic activities, his general philosophy, and the way that that he influenced other artists including from very different fields. Even those who consider themselves experts on the altoist will find much to learn from this well-written and scholarly book . . . The Territory And The Adventure has many bright moments, fresh stories, and fascinating information about the life and times of Ornette Coleman.', LA Jazz Scene 'An invaluable contribution not only to Coleman scholarship but also to the history of African-American music, culture, and commerce of mid-twentieth-century Fort Worth.', Alan Schaefer, Journal of Texas Music History

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£17.37

Reaktion Books Pin-Ups 1972: Third Generation Rock ’n’ Roll

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Book SynopsisElvis, Eddie, Chuck, Gene, Buddy and Little Richard were the original rockers. Dylan, The Beatles, The Stones and The Who formed rock’s second coming. As the 1960s turned into the 1970s, the crucial question was who would lead rock ’n’ roll’s third generation? Pin-Ups 1972 tracks the London music scene during this pivotal year, all Soho sleaze, neon, grease and leather. It begins with the dissolution of the underground and the chart success of Marc Bolan. T. Rextasy formed the backdrop to Lou Reed and Iggy Pop’s British exile and their collaborations with David Bowie. This was the year Bowie became a star and redefined the teenage wasteland. In his wake followed Roxy Music and the New York Dolls, future tense rock ’n’ roll revivalists. Bowie, Bolan, Iggy, Lou, Roxy and the Dolls – pin-ups for a new generation.

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£18.00

Reaktion Books Positive Vibrations: Politics, Politricks and the

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Book SynopsisPositive Vibrations tells of how reggae was shaped by, and in turn helped to shape, the politics of Jamaica and beyond, from the rudies of Kingston to the sexual politics and narcotic allegiances of the dancehall. Insightful and full of incident, it explores how the music of a tiny Caribbean island has worked its way into the heart of global pop. From Marcus Garvey's dreams of Zion, through ska and rocksteady, roots, riddims and dub, the story closes with the Reggae Revival, a new generation of Rastas as comfortable riding rhythms in a dancehall style as they are singing sweet melodies from times gone by. Impeccably informed, vibrant and heartfelt, Positive Vibrations is a passionate and exhaustive account of the politics in reggae, and the reggae in politics.

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1 in stock

£22.50

Reaktion Books A Band with Built-In Hate: The Who from Pop Art

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Book Synopsis‘Ours is music with built-in hatred.’ – Pete Townshend A Band with Built-In Hate pictures The Who from their inception as the Detours in the mid-sixties to the late seventies, post-Quadrophenia. It is a story of ambition and anger, glamour and grime, viewed through the prism of pop art and the radical levelling of high and low culture that it brought about – a drama that was aggressively performed by the band. Peter Stanfield lays down a path through the British pop revolution, its attitude and style, as it was uniquely embodied by The Who: first, under the mentorship of arch-mod Peter Meaden, as they learnt their trade in the pubs and halls of suburban London; and then with Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, two aspiring filmmakers, at the very centre of things in Soho. Guided by contemporary commentators – among them George Melly, Lawrence Alloway and most conspicuously Nik Cohn – Stanfield describes a band driven by belligerence, and of what happened when Townshend, Daltrey, Moon and Entwistle moved from back-room stages to international arenas, from explosive 45s to expansive concept albums. Above all, he tells of how The Who confronted their lost youth as it was echoed in punk.Trade Review‘This superb volume . . . A Band with Built-in Hate feels fresh and without precedent, a scholarly yet thrilling studyof the paradoxes that made The Who the most vital band of the '60s, and the cultural backdrop against which their initial impact was played out.’ — Shindig!; ‘Eloquently framing their success as the only successful 1960s UK pop/rock group that didn't want to be either The Beatles or The Rolling Stones, Stanfield locates The Who (and crucially their peak years, during which they were, he writes "not copyists but innovators") at a boundary-breaking intersection of pop and art-rock.’ — Tony Clayton-Lea, Irish Times; ‘Stanfield’s masterful new book on the Who, A Band with Built-In Hate, charts their perfect trajectory from pop art to punk with the serious tone their cultural rage deserves. And he does it with a verve that properly situates creative powerhouse Townshend in a practically ideal collaborative arc . . . Stanfield has produced a valuable document, the accurate archive of a uniquely revolutionary band driven forward by belligerence.’ — Critics at Large; ‘There’s some very perceptive writing on the influence the Who had on the wider scene . . . essential reading for anyone who’s ever loved the Who, or wants an insight into the Sixties’ music scene that goes beyond greatest hits compilations and easy generalisations.’ — Louder Than War; ‘If Roger Daltry's 2018 autobiography was a prosaic foot soldier's telling of the Who story, here is a view from the high plains . . . . The best parts of the book mirror the best of The Who, fizzing with ideas and connections . . . This book vividly reanimates the nasty, transgressive, scene-shaping thrill of their beginnings.’ — Mail on Sunday; ‘[An] ear for apt detail enriches Stanfield's account. He plumbs archives for ephemeral magazines and forgotten interviews to reveal more than the standard recitals of the works.’ — Popmatters; ‘Another example of popster intellectualism from this year comes from Stanfield who tackles the overlap of pop music and pop art at the height of the 1960s in A Band With Built-In Hate. This account of The Who up to the arrival of punk concentrates on Pete Townsend’s ideas rather than Keith Moon’s treatment of TVs and cars and is the better for it.’ — 'Music Books of the Year', The Herald, Glasgow; ‘Stanfield has masterfully identified the mod, pop art, and art rock stages of the Who’s career for rock fans and general readers alike.’ — Library Journal; ‘A Band With Built-In Hate: The Who From Pop Art To Punk is an easy but by no means breezy read, well researched and notated, and illustrated throughout in black and white. It brings together some significant criticism of The Who, connecting them with all manner of cultural references, and is a valuable addition to my ever-expanding Who library. That The Who continue to be so well-served by knowledgeable authors is a tribute to their importance.’ — Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated; ‘While the death of Keith Moon effectively put to bed the essential meaning of their opposition, the push-back of their music and lives, A Band with Built-In Hate can now address with minute clarity and put-right connections how it all started and for the others that followed in their tidal-wave wake, and for the lows and the highs of the cultural innovators that are collectively engraved as the Who. I give this book 4 out of 4 beetles!’ — beatles-freak.com; ‘This definitely is not the kind of book on The Who you expected. A Band with Built-In Hate is an unusual title, very well done and enlightening.’ — www.popcultureshelf.com; ‘A Band With Built-in Hate reaffirms the Who's importance to the rock and pop revolutions of the sixties and seventies’ — Choice magazine, UK; ‘With impressive eloquence, A Band with Built-in Hate situates '60s Britain's most volatile and incendiary group at the heart of pop's wild vortex, its sonic assaults on the class system and the cultural status quo. Stanfield digs brilliantly into the Who's transgressions, their up-ending of entertainment, their transmuting of pop music into art-rock and proto-punk. He can see for miles.’ — Barney Hoskyns, author of Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits and Major Dudes: A Steely Dan Companion; ‘The best book on the Who. Stanfield understands that they were built entirely around opposition - they didn’t want to be the Beatles or the Stones; they didn’t even want to be the Who most of the time. He smartly states the case for peak Who as transgressive, how their clashing obsessions with primitive rock’n’roll and sociological statements made them so exciting. He also wisely concentrates on their peak years, before pop solidified as rock, when the Who were the closest thing to pop art British music has ever produced.’ — Bob Stanley, founding member of St Etienne and author of Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop; ‘That The Who’s image was constantly shifting according to whatever they thought would best promote their music in the moment is the focus of Peter Stanfield’s new book A Band with Built-In Hate. Stanfield examines how The Who took in disparate influences from outside the rock world—influences flying in from the fine and pop arts, youth culture, and so-on – and shipped them back out to be co-opted by everyone from The Creation to The Sex Pistols. It is the first deep, book-length look at an important aspect of The Who’s persona and art that is an integral portion of every book on the band . . . fills in the gaps of an important area of Who history.’ — Mike Segretto, The Who FAQ: All That's Left to Know About Fifty Years of Maximum R&B

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£12.34

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Sonicbond Publishing Marillion in the 1980s (Decades)

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Book SynopsisDerided as seventies throwbacks upon their arrival and misremembered by the wider population as one-hit wonders, Marillion rode the 1980s as one of the most successful bands in Britain. Delivering the musical and conceptual density of early progressive rock with the caustic energy of punk, the Aylesbury heroes both spearheaded the neo-prog revival and produced its crown jewel in their number one album Misplaced Childhood and its Top 5 singles 'Kayleigh' and 'Lavender.' Musically, their influence reaches from prog legends Dream Theater and Steven Wilson to household names like Radiohead and Muse. The 1980s encapsulated Marillion's birth, commercial apex, and near-implosion. This book combines meticulous history with careful musical analysis to chronicle their most turbulent decade from their first gig, through the dizzying success and destructive decadence of their time with frontman Fish, to his bitter departure and replacement by Steve Hogarth. It turns an experienced critical eye not only on their five albums of the decade - from the seminal Script For A Jester's Tear to Season's End - Hogarth's debut - and a line-up that remains as active as ever. The book also discusses demos, singles, and Fish's solo debut to dissect a band which critics still love to hate, even as today's music industry stands upon their shoulders as pioneers of self-promotion and internet-based crowd funding

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2 in stock

£13.49

Sonicbond Publishing Curved Air in the 1970s (Decades)

Book SynopsisBeat Instrumental summed it up in 1971: 'In a few short months Curved Air have emerged from the unknown depths to become one of the most talked-about bands around. By a combination of record company promotion (ranging from ads to that pretty patterned album) and a word-of-mouth reputation gained from their gigs, the group became a name before they had really done that much. Such a situation can be worrying for a band but Curved Air have the confidence to carry on unaffected.' Propelled into stardom at an exhilarating speed due to clever marketing and virtuosity in their musicianship, particularly violinist Darryl Way, the story of Curved Air in the 1970s is of a band that burned brightly before collapsing well ahead of their time. Fronted by the exotic Sonja Kristina, they supported Jethro Tull, Deep Purple, Johnny Winter, Edgar Winter and B.B. King in huge stadiums, and several famous names passed through their ranks. These included Stewart Copeland who went on to form the Police with Sting. Every line up of Curved Air presented a stellar range of talent across a musically fascinating contribution throughout the decade. This book documents it all - from the groundbreaking albums like Air Conditioning and Phantasmagoria to the line up changes and traumas which caused the band to disband for the first time in 1976.

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£11.69

Sonicbond Publishing Renaissance Every Album, Every Song (On Track )

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Book SynopsisRenaissance, a much beloved but highly underrated English progressive rock band, began life in 1969 as an offshoot of The Yardbirds. Keith Relf and Jim McCarty, who had recently left that iconic blues-rock group, decided to put together a new band that would differ from its predecessor by being more influenced by classical and folk music. After releasing two albums in 1969 and 1971, The band then quickly underwent a 100 percent turnover in personnel, resulting in an entirely new Renaissance The new band was distinguished by the astonishingly beautiful five-octave-range vocals of their lead singer, Annie Haslam, their lengthy, multi-movement, classically inspired compositions, and their unusual instrumentation. Renaissance released six classic studio albums, and one live double album, between 1972 and 1978, even scoring a UK hit with 'Northern Lights'. The late 1970s and early 1980s saw the band commercialise with limited success, before folding. The 21st century, with Haslam continuing as the band's distinctive voice, Renaissance has returned to its orchestral/symphonic rock roots with two studio albums of new material and multiple live releases featuring contemporary treatments of its 1970s classics. This volume, the first ever published on Renaissance, assesses their entire career, covering every song on every album. It is the essential guide to the recorded works of a group that deserves to be ranked among the greatest in the progressive rock genre.

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£999.99

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Sonicbond Publishing UFO Every Album, Every Song (On Track )

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Book SynopsisUFO, the legendary band which have been gracing the world’s stages for the last 50 years, have given us more than their fair share of superb quality hard rock songs including ‘Doctor, Doctor’, ‘Rock Bottom’, ‘Shoot Shoot’, ‘Too Hot To Handle’, and ‘Only You Can Rock Me’. And that was just during the Seventies! Albums such as ‘Force It’, ‘Obsession’, ‘The Wild, The Willing, And The Innocent’, ‘Walk On Water’ and ‘You Are Here’ are acknowledged as classics of the melodic hard rock genre, and their live masterpiece ‘Strangers In The Night’ regularly features at or near the top of rock music polls. UFO’s history can be delineated by the guitarists who have passed through their ranks. From the early ‘Space Rock’ stumblings, their astonishing development with the brilliant, mercurial Michael Schenker, the consolidation and first downfall during Paul Chapman’s tenure, subsequent re-launches and crash-landings, a troubled reformation of the Schenker line-up, and the final mostly settled version with Vinnie Moore, this book explores each of the band’s 23 studio albums, and, of course, ‘Strangers’. Every song is analysed in detail and opinions are numerous in this passionate critique of one of Britain’s best loved and most influential rock institutions

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£13.49

Sonicbond Publishing Steve Hackett On Track: Every Album, Every Song

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Book SynopsisGuitarist Steve Hackett first came to many fan's attention when he joined Genesis in 1971. Following seven excellent albums with the band, he went his own way in 1977. He had already kick started his solo career with the critically acclaimed Voyage of the Acolyte in 1975 but 24 studio albums followed, making him the most prolific member of the classic Genesis line-up. In the 1980s, he also formed GTR with Yes guitarist Steve Howe and they enjoyed commercial success with a hit album and single. Steve's solo work has embraced rock, prog, classical, blues, pop, jazz and world music, all performed with style and panache and his most recent album At the Edge of Light released in 2019 is perhaps his best since the classic Spectral Mornings in 1979. On stage, he has kept the Genesis flame burning brightly, performing the band's classic material from the 1970s alongside his own work. He remains one of the most innovative and influential musicians in rock. This book examines, in detail, each one of Steve's studio albums and traces his long and varied history. Collaborations, live albums and compilations are also discussed, making this the most comprehensive guide to the music of Steve Hackett yet published. Whether the reader is a diehard fan or someone wishing to catch-up on his post Genesis work, Steve Hackett on track is essential reading

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£13.49

Book SynopsisJefferson Airplane were not the sole exemplars of 1960s Californian acid rock; the Grateful Dead could equally claim the mantle of house band to the Summer of Love. Airplane's instrumentation was conventional, comprising mainly vocal harmonies, guitars, bass and drums. The band drew upon the folk traditions of The Weavers, the legendary bluesmen Gary Davis and B.B. King, improvisational masters from Miles Davis to Cream, even literary visionaries such as James Joyce and Isaac Asimov. Yet fusing together these influences in the creative furnace of San Francisco between 1966 and 1970, Jefferson Airplane's classic lineup – one ex-model, two ex-folkies, one ex-jazzer and two ex-D.C. guitarslingers – crafted music that was at once powerful, innovative and beautiful. Birthed in the dizzy hippie heartland of Haight-Ashbury, no other group were so wedded to their environment, winning international acclaim with two anthemic hit singles even as they impishly prodded the morés of middle Amerika. A musical and social force of nature, Airplane mirrored the psychedelic dream, burning higher, fiercer and brighter than any of their contemporaries. Combining a concise history of this magnificent band and their milieu with comprehensive and entertaining reviews of all their recordings, this is the most accessible book on the band yet written

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