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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 33–38 of 38 results
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The Masked Rider
$24.95Neil Peart’s travel memoir of thoughts, observations, and experiences as he cycles through West Africa reveals the subtle, yet powerful writing style that has made him one of rock’s greatest lyricists. As he describes his extraordinary journey and his experiences — from the pains of dysentery, to a confrontation with an armed soldier, to navigating dirt roads off the beaten path — he reveals his own emotional landscape, and along the way, the different “masks” that he discovers he wears.
“Cycling is a good way to travel anywhere, but especially in Africa. You are independent and mobile, and yet travel at people speed — fast enough to travel on to another town in the cooler morning hours, but slow enough to meet people: the old farmer at the roadside who raises his hand and says, ‘You are welcome,’ the tireless women who offer a smile to a passing cyclist, the children whose laughter transcends the humblest home.”
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To Me You Seem Giant
$19.95It’s 1994 and Pete Curtis is pretty much done with Thunder Bay, Ontario. He’s graduating high school and playing drums in a band that’s ready to hit the road. Even though his parents, teachers, and new girlfriend seem a little underwhelmed, Pete knows he’s on the verge of indie rock greatness.
Fast-forward ten years, Pete finds himself stuck teaching high school in the hometown he longed to escape, while his best friend and former bandmate is a bona fide rock star.
Greg Rhyno’s debut novel is full of catchy hooks, compelling voices, and duelling time signatures. Told in two alternating decades, To Me You Seem Giant is a raucous and evocative story about trying to live in the present when you can’t escape your past.
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Traveling Music
$28.95Neil Peart decided to drive his BMW Z-8 automobile from L.A. to Big Bend National Park, in Southwest Texas. As he sped along “between the gas-gulping SUVs and asthmatic Japanese compacts clumping in the left lane, and the roaring, straining semis in the right,” he acted as his own DJ, lining up the CDs chronologically and according to his possible moods.
“Not only did the music I listened to accompany my journey, but it also took me on sidetrips, through memory and fractals of associations, threads reaching back through my whole life in ways I had forgotten, or had never suspected…. Sifting through those decades and those memories, I realized that I wasn’t interested in recounting the facts of my life in purely autobiographical terms, but rather … in trying to unweave the fabric of my life and times. As one who was never much interested in looking back, because always too busy moving forward, I found that once I opened those doors to the past, I became fascinated with the times and their effect on me. The songs and the stories I had taken for granted suddenly had a resonance that had clearly echoed down the corridors of my entire life, and I felt a thrill of recognition, and the sense of a kind of adventure. A travel story, but not so much about places, but about music and memories.”
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Van Halen Rising
$24.95The bestselling, vivid and energetic history of Van Halen’s legendary early years featuring 230 original interviews — including with former Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony and power players like Pete Angelus, Marshall Berle, Donn Landee, Ted Templeman, and Neil Zlozower
“Fascinating (even for non-VH fans) … A book almost anthropological in its level of detail.” — Vulture
“It’s the tale of hardworking kids with nothing in common learning to fuse pop and heavy metal into a new sound that completely changed the music world. It also vividly shows that the personality clashes that would later destroy the band were there from Day One.” — Rolling Stone
“A fascinating read.” — Pasadena Star News
“The book is fantastic.” — Ted Templeman, Grammy-winning music producer for Van Halen and David Lee Roth
“If you’ve got it bad, got it bad, got it bad for Van Halen, get Van Halen Rising.” — Martha Quinn, original MTV VJ, Sirius XM host
After years of playing gigs everywhere from suburban backyards to dive bars, Van Halen — led by frontman extraordinaire David Lee Roth and guitar virtuoso Eddie Van Halen — had the songs, the swagger, and the talent to turn the rock world on its ear. The quartet’s classic 1978 debut, Van Halen, sold more than a million copies within months of release and rocketed the band to the stratosphere of rock success. On tour, Van Halen’s high-energy show wowed audiences and prompted headlining acts like Black Sabbath to concede that they’d been blown off the stage. By the year’s end, Van Halen had established themselves as superstars and reinvigorated heavy metal in the process.
Combining exhaustive research and original interviews, Van Halen Rising reveals the untold story of how these rock legends made the unlikely journey from Pasadena, California, to the worldwide stage.
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Wooden Stars
$12.95The Juno award-winning Wooden Stars both epitomized and transcended the sound of mid-90s indie rock. One of Canada’s greatest bands, they helped build a scene whose members would go on to be associated with some of the country’s most revered acts including Julie Doiron, Islands and Arcade Fire. With Wooden Stars: Innocent Gears, Malcolm Fraser tracks the highs and lows of this totally unique and influential band.
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Young Neil
$18.95“A supremely compelling chronicle of Young’s first 20 years.” — Rolling Stone
“This is a book written by a true fan for true fans.” — Publishers Weekly
Includes many previously unseen photos and set lists
Exploring a time in this Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s life that has yet to be documented with such depth of research, Young Neil is an exhaustive document of his “Sugar Mountain” years, from 1945 to 1966. From his birth in Toronto through his school years in Florida, Ontario, and Manitoba, the book examines the development of Young’s unique talent against a backdrop of shifting postwar values, a turbulent family history, and a musical revolution in the making.