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Books like Music to your Ears
With International Music Day on October 1st ringing in the month, we’re celebrating with this hefty list of auto/biographies, novels, poetry collections, and even a few book/CD combos we’ve assembled for your reading – and listening – pleasure.
All Books in this Collection
Showing 1–16 of 38 results
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A Love Supreme
$17.95Omar Snow is a struggling musicologist trying to finish a book of jazz biographies about Thelonius Monk, Charles Mingus and John Coltrane. When he reaches the Coltrane section strange things start happening around him and to him. Coltrane’s music, or some other new urgency in Omar’s life, triggers a series of ecstatic visions that lead him down a path he never dreamed existed. A Love Supreme is a peculiarly charged disquisition on the relation between music, solitude, and romanticism. It not only remarks poignantly on where our culture has most recently been, but likewise hints at a new sensibility that may yet become the hallmark of the new century.
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A Secret Music
$21.95Word Guild Award for Best Young Adult fiction 2016
Grace Irwin Award 2016
Literary Classics silver medal for Y/A fiction 2016
Shortlisted for the Frank Hegyi Award-Ottawa Independent Writers Literary Classics silver medal for High school fiction 2017Set in 1936 Montreal, A Secret Music is the story of Lawrence Nolan, a sensitive fifteen-year-old piano prodigy who grows up in the shadow of his mother’s mental illness. Forced to keep this shameful secret, he attempts to raise himself and his ten year old brother. He counteracts the deep ache and creeping mistrust caused by his mother’s emotional absence by escaping into the intense realm of Chopin and Schubert, the only language he understands. When his brother becomes ill, he is left with enormous responsibilities. At a piano competition in Montreal, Lawrence makes a climactic decision that puts his future on hold in order to salvage his family life.
In A Secret Music, Susan Doherty Hannaford re-creates the Depression-Era world of Montreal and demonstrates how music can redeem a life.
Set in 1936 Montreal, A Secret Music is the story of Lawrence Nolan, a sensitive fifteen-year-old piano prodigy growing up in the shadow of his mother’s mental illness. Forced to keep this shameful secret, he attempts to raise himself and his younger brother. He counteracts the creeping mistrust caused by his mother’s emotional absence by escaping into classical music, the only language he understands. When his brother becomes ill, he is left with enormous responsibilities. At a piano competition in Montreal, Lawrence makes a climactic decision that puts his future on hold in order to salvage his family life.
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Battle of the Five Spot, The
$20.00This is a new-format reprint of a successful jazz book documenting the debate over ground-breaking jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman. Coleman revolutionized jazz when he first started playing at The Five Spot in New York City in 1959. Lee investigates this time, considering both the changes within the art and within the society of the time.
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Bon: The Last Highway
$22.95The death of Bon Scott is the Da Vinci Code of rockIn death, AC/DC’s trailblazing frontman has become a rock icon, and the legend of the man known around the world simply as “Bon” grows with each passing year. But how much of it is myth?At the heart of Bon: The Last Highway is a special — and unlikely — friendship between an Australian rock star and an alcoholic Texan troublemaker. Jesse Fink, author of the critically acclaimed international bestseller The Youngs: The Brothers Who Built AC/DC, reveals its importance for the first time.Leaving no stone unturned in a three-year journey that begins in Austin and ends in London, Fink takes the reader back to a legendary era for music that saw the relentless AC/DC machine achieve its commercial breakthrough but also threaten to come apart. With unprecedented access to Bon’s lovers, newly unearthed documents, and a trove of never-before-seen photos, Fink divulges startling new information about Bon’s last hours to solve the mystery of how he died.Music fans around the world have been waiting for the original, forensic, unflinching, and masterful biography Bon Scott so richly deserves — and now, finally, it’s here.
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Boring Girls
$18.95A visceral story of friendship, music, and bloody revenge
Rachel feels like she doesn’t fit in — until she finds heavy metal and meets Fern, a kindred spirit. The two form their own band, but the metal scene turns out to be no different than the misogynist world they want to change. Violent encounters escalate, and the friends decide there’s only one way forward . . .
A bloodstained journey into the dark heart of the music industry, Boring Girls traces Rachel’s deadly coming of age, Fern at her side. As the madness deepens, their band’s success heightens, and their taste for revenge grows ravenous.
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Burning Daylight
$17.95Musical theatre meets poetry in Burning Daylight, a poetry collection and song cycle drawing together the Yukon Gold Rush of the early 20th century and the Arctic iron ore mining mega-projects of the modern day. Through a feminist lens, it examines dislocation, isolation, family and frailty, reflected in our relationship with the ever-changing northern landscape.
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Claws of the Panda
$24.95Claws of the Panda tells the story of Canada’s failure to construct a workable policy towards the People’s Republic of China. In particular the book tells of Ottawa’s failure to recognize and confront the efforts by the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate and influence Canadian politics, academia, and media, and to exert control over Canadians of Chinese heritage. Claws of the Panda gives a detailed description of the CCP’s campaign to embed agents of influence in Canadian business, politics, media and academia. The party’s aims are to be able to turn Canadian public policy to China’s advantage, to acquire useful technology and intellectual property, to influence Canada’s international diplomacy, and, most important, to be able to monitor and intimidate Chinese Canadians and others it considers dissidents. The book traces the evolution of the Canada-China relationship over nearly 150 years. It shows how Canadian leaders have constantly misjudged the reality and potential of the relationship while the CCP and its agents have benefited from Canadian naivete.
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Edgar Gets Going
$19.95As bass player for the ’80s one hit wonder, Rock Viper, Edgar Martin toured the world, had sex with groupies and made thousands of people deaf. But the band broke up years ago and Edgar’s now middle-aged, out of work and desperate for cash. His luck seems about to change however when his old manager calls and offers him a hot new gig. There’s just one thing — he band plays children’s music while dressed as giant forest creatures. Edgar would be the bee. Edgar swallows his pride and takes the gig. After all, it’s just one show. Little does he know he’s just taken the first step on a journey involving bribery, substance abuse, attempted murder and, of course, songs about squirrels.
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Elvis Is King
$12.95An explosive, groundbreaking album that crowned a new king of rock in just 33 minutesBefore Elvis Costello was one of Rolling Stone’s greatest artists of all time, before he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he was Declan P. McManus, an office drone with a dull suburban life and a side gig in a pub rock band. In 1976, under the guidance of legendary label Stiff Records, he transformed himself into the snarling, spectacled artist who defied the musical status quo to blaze the trail for a new kind of rock star with his debut album, My Aim Is True. In Elvis Is King, Richard Crouse examines how the man, the myth, and the music of this arrestingly original album smashed the trends of the era to bridge the gap between punk and rock ’n’ roll.About the Pop Classics SeriesShort books that pack a big punch, Pop Classics offer intelligent, fun, and accessible arguments about why a particular pop phenomenon matters.
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Evenings and Weekends
$20.00Hamilton has always been known for its music scene. From blues singer Long John Baldry to punk rock groups like Teenage Head, musicians, and music have made their home here. But Andrew Baulcomb is charting a new group of performers in Evenings & Weekends. A generation of musicians that came of age with “renters and boomerang basement-dwellers,” those students who left university just as the bottom dropped out of the global economy.
Baulcomb starts the story in 2006 when he was the senior arts editor at The Silhouette, McMaster’s student newspaper, and singer Max Kerman pressed him one of his first CDs. He ends it when Kerman took the stage at Supercrawl with the Arkells in 2014 before a crowd of thousands. But the Arkells are only one part of the vibrant music scene Baulcomb captures in this book. From innovative DJs to venue owners to radio hosts to punk rockers, he interviews them all and weaves the story of an explosion of music in Hamilton with that of a generation adrift. This is a coming-of-age story that puts a human face on the people who made music happen, and on those who listened to it.
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Fallsy Downsies
$21.95Winner of the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction
Lansing Meadows has one last shot to get it right. With the clock ticking, he sets out on the road one last time, to sing his songs to anyone who’ll listen, and to try to right his wrongs, before it’s too late.
Fallsy Downsies is a novel about aging, art, celebrity and modern Canadian culture, told through the lens of Lansing Meadows, the godfather of Canadian folk music; Evan Cornfield, the up and comer who idolizes him; and Dacey Brown, a young photographer who finds herself along for the ride.
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Far and Away
$49.95Following in the tradition of Ghost Rider and Traveling Music, Rush drummer Neil Peart lets us ride with him along the backroads of North America, Europe, and South America, sharing his experiences in personal reflections and full-color photos. Spanning almost four years, these twenty-two stories are open letters that recount adventures both personal and universal — from the challenges and accomplishments in the professional life of an artist to the birth of a child. These popular stories, originally posted on Neil’s website, are now collected and contextualized with a new introduction and conclusion in this beautifully designed collector’s volume.
Fans will discover a more intimate side to Neil’s very private personal life, and will enjoy his observations of natural phenomena. At one point, he anxiously describes the birth of two hummingbirds in his backyard; at the same time, his wife is preparing for the birth of their daughter — a striking synchronicity tenderly related to readers.
A love of drumming, nature, art, and the open road threads through the narrative, as Neil explores new horizons, both physical and spiritual. This is the personal, introspective travelogue of rock’s foremost drummer, enthusiastic biker, and sensitive husband and father. Far and Away is a book to be enjoyed again and again, like letters from a distant friend.
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Far and Near
$32.95Whether navigating the backroads of Louisiana or Thuringia, exploring the snowy Quebec woods, or performing onstage at Rush concerts, Neil Peart has stories to tell. His first volume in this series, Far and Away, combined words and images to form an intimate, insightful narrative that won many readers.
Now Far and Near brings together reflections from another three years of an artist’s life as he celebrates seasons, landscapes, and characters, travels roads and trails, receives honors, climbs mountains, composes and performs music. With passionate insight, wry humor, and an adventurous spirit, once again Peart offers a collection of open letters that take readers on the road, behind the scenes, and into the inner workings of an ever-inquisitive mind.
These popular stories, originally posted on Peart’s website, are now collected and contextualized with a new introduction and conclusion in this beautifully designed collector’s volume.
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Far and Wide
$49.9535 concerts. 17,000 motorcycle miles. Three months. One lifetime.
In May 2015, the veteran Canadian rock trio Rush embarked on their 40th anniversary tour, R40. For the band and their fans, R40 was a celebration and, perhaps, a farewell. But for Neil Peart, each tour is more than just a string of concerts, it’s an opportunity to explore backroads near and far on his BMW motorcycle. So if this was to be the last tour and the last great adventure, he decided it would have to be the best one, onstage and off.
This third volume in Peart’s illustrated travel series shares all-new tales that transport the reader across North America and through memories of 50 years of playing drums. From the scenic grandeur of the American West to a peaceful lake in Quebec’s Laurentian Mountains to the mean streets of Midtown Los Angeles, each story is shared in an intimate narrative voice that has won the hearts of many readers.
Richly illustrated, thoughtful, and ever-engaging, Far and Wide is an elegant scrapbook of people and places, music and laughter, from a fascinating road — and a remarkable life.
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Gods of the Hammer
$13.95‘Teenage Head changed the face of music in this country. I would not be who I am today without their first record … In 1979 they were the only band that mattered.’—Hugh Dillon
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, no Canadian band rocked harder, louder or to more hardcore fans than Hamilton, Ontario’s own Teenage Head. Although usually lumped in the dubiously inevitable ‘punk rock’ category of the day, this high-Â?energy quartet Â?Â?consistingof four guys who’d known each other since high school Â?Â?were really only punk by association. In essence they were a full-Â?on, ballsÂ?-toÂ?-the-Â?wall, three-Â?chord, kick-Â?out-Â?the-Â?jams band that obliterated categories and labels with the sheer force of their sonic assault, and everywhere they played they converted the merely curious to the insanely devoted.
And they almost became world famous. Almost. This is their story, told in full and for the first time, and by those who lived to tell the tale.
Praise for Gods of the Hammer:
‘A riot of a good read on Teenage Head … the writing is fast-paced and lively, told from the laudatory perspective of a frustrated fan trying to explain why such a great band never got its due.’
—The Hamilton Spectator
‘I loved it! Wanted it to last forever! Geoff Pevere has done an ace portrait of all that isgreat and dirty in rock and roll.’—Bruce McDonald
‘Pevere’s is an on-the-ground fan’s account of how the band enamoured a country and how if just that one last, special piece fell into place – if they were managed better, if an American record deal came sooner, if guitarist Gord Lewis hadn’t been laid up for half a year at their very peak by a back-breaking car accident – songs like “Picture My Face” and “Let’s Shake” would be played before face-offs and stocked in jukeboxes from St. John’s to San Francisco. The Head were always just a centimetre away from super-stardom. To a generation of hip music fans, they’re as classic as The Cars, but instead of ubiquity, their story is a distinctly Canadian Almost Famous.’
—Chart Attack
Praise for Geoff Pevere:
‘After almost 30 years of writing about the movies, Geoff Pevere’s anti-establishment views are just as strong as ever, but now he wears them as comfortably as an old leather jacket. He has always been more interested in broadening people’s interests than in trying to narrow them. In an age with almost unlimited access to film, just one stream in an onrushing tide of media, this is daring. For the boy who once had to wait months to see Citizen Kane, however, it’s simply a gesture of generosity.’
— Toronto Screen Shot
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Hold Me Now
$21.95One Friday, Vancouver lawyer Paul Brenner has dinner with his son, Daniel. They talk about work, health, money, and music, and part ways. The following evening, Paul receives the phone call that is every parent’s worst nightmare: Daniel has been killed in Stanley Park.
Hold Me Now is an unflinching portrayal of a father’s grief, as Paul learns how very different the new world–a world without his son–will be for him. The investigation of Daniel’s murder, the trial, and the sentencing of the killer test Paul’s faith in the legal system. As both the media and public protest the overt role homophobia played in Daniel’s death, Paul struggles to cope, and begins to form reckless and dangerous habits. But with the love of two people in his life who sustain him–his mother, Jean, and his daughter, Elizabeth–he begins to comprehend an incomprehensible tragedy, and forgive an unforgiveable crime.