Any Night of the Week

By Jonny Dovercourt

The story of how Toronto became a music mecca.

From Yonge Street to Yorkville to Queen West to College, the neighbourhoods that housed Toronto’s music scenes. Featuring Syrinx, Rough Trade, Martha and the Muffins, Fifth Column, Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, Rheostatics, ... Read more

Battle of the Five Spot, The

By David Neil Lee

This 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 ... Read more

Bayou Underground

By Dave Thompson

A veteran music journalist explores rock-n-roll’s bayou roots in “a jolting 18-track joy ride [that] unlocks secrets and back-stories worth savoring” — The Wall Street Journal

The bayou of the American south — stretching from Houston, Texas, to Mobile, Alabama — ... Read more

Black and Blue

By Stanley Péan
Translated by David Homel

Author 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 ... Read more

Counterpoint to a City

By Robin Elliott

The book chronicles the history of the Women’s Musical Club of Toronto, which has been sponsoring chamber music and solo recitals for nearly 100 years. The book features archival documents, interviews, newspaper reports and reviews, and recent scholarship in the field.

  ... Read more

Dervish at the Crossroads

By Wanda Waterman

Dervish at the Crossroads isn't a music guide so much as an autobiographical exploration of the experience of music from 2000 to 2020, with commentary on what makes the experience of music during these two decades radically different from all that came before. As the title of ... Read more

Don’t Call It Hair Metal

By Sean Kelly

A love letter to the hard-rocking, but often snubbed, music of the era of excess: the 1980s

There may be no more joyous iteration in all of music than 1980s hard rock. It was an era where the musical and cultural ideals of rebellion and freedom of the great rock ’n’ roll ... Read more

Elvis Is King

By Richard Crouse

An explosive, groundbreaking album that crowned a new king of rock in just 33 minutes

Before 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 ... Read more

Evenings and Weekends

By Andrew Baulcomb

Hamilton 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 ... Read more

Fresh at Twenty

By Kaitlin Fontana

Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records is first and foremost the story of an independent record label and the people who helped build it. But it’s also the story of a place and time in popular music — Vancouver through the 1990s and 2000s. Mint helped launch ... Read more