A Dream About Lightning Bugs by Ben Folds

$9.99 AUD

$19.99 (50% off)

Category: Music | Reading Level: 3 Biography

From genre-defying icon Ben Folds comes a memoir reflecting on art, life and music that is as nuanced, witty and relatable as his cult classic songs.   Ben Folds is an internationally celebrated singer-songwriter and former frontman of the alternative rock band, Ben Folds Five, beloved for songs such a s 'Brick', 'You Don't Know Me', 'Rockin' the Suburbs' and 'The Luckiest'.   In A Dream About Lightning Bugs Folds looks back at his life so far in a charming, funny and wise chronicle of his artistic coming of age, infused with the wry observations of a natural storyteller. He opens up about finding his voice as a musician, becoming a rock anti-hero, and hauling a baby grand piano on and off stage for every performance.   From growing up in working class North Carolina childhood amid the race and class tensions that shaped his early songwriting to painful life lessons he learned the hard way, he also ruminates on music in the digital age, the absurdity of life on the road, and the challenges of sustaining a multi-decade, multi-faceted career in the music business.     A Dream About Lightning Bugs embodies what Folds has been singing about for years: Smile like you've got nothing to prove, because it hurts to grow up, and life flies by in seconds. Advanced Praise:  'I'm gonna learn to read for this' Josh Groban  'I read this in one glorious, giant gulp. As a fan of [Ben's] work and a musician, this is truly a gift ... moments for me to geek out, moments to laugh and cry and many fragments of pure, hard won wisdom and honesty' Jamie Cullum   'A Dream About Lightning Bugs reads like its author: intelligent, curious, unapologetically punk, and funny as hell. This intimate look at his life from his own unique perspective is a rare and unforgettable gift that does what Ben Folds always has done for me as an artist and a friend: encourages me to be more myself, with a lot of swear words' Sara Bareilles ...Show more

Morning Glory on the Vine: Early Songs and Drawings by Joni Mitchell

$49.99 AUD

Category: Music | Reading Level: Biography

A gorgeous compendium of Joni Mitchell's handwritten lyrics and drawings, originally handcrafted as a gift for a select group of friends in 1971 and now available to the public for the first time   In 1971, as her album Blue topped charts around the world, Joni Mitchell crafted one hundred copies of Mor ning Glory on the Vine as a holiday gift for her closest friends. For this stunningly beautiful book, Joni hand-wrote an exquisite selection of her own lyrics and poems and illustrated them with more than thirty of her original pictures. Handcrafted, signed, and numbered in Los Angeles, the existing copies of this labor of love have rarely been seen in the past half-century.    Now, during Joni's seventy-fifth birthday year, Morning Glory on the Vine: Early Songs and Drawings will be widely available for the first time. In this faithfully reproduced edition, Joni's best-loved lyrics and poems spill across the pages in her own elegant script. The lively, full-color drawings depict a superb array of landscapes, still lifes, portraits of friends, self-portraits, innovative abstractions, and more. All the artwork from the original book is included, along with several additional pictures that Joni drew of her friends from the same period. Finally, the refreshed volume features an original introduction written by Joni. Morning Glory on the Vine is a gorgeous and intimate keepsake and an invitation to explore anew the dazzling, visionary world of Joni Mitchell. ...Show more

The Legendary Rat Pack

$9.99 AUD

$24.95 (59% off)

Category: Music

Shine Like It Does: The Life of Michael Hutchence by Toby Creswell

$19.99 AUD

$32.99 (39% off)

Category: Music

The real story of a complex man whose star is still shining two decades after his death. Michael Hutchence was a superstar, an internationally respected musician and a great bloke. There will never be another one to replace him. Born into an eccentric and difficult marriage, Hutch grew up in different c ountries before settling into suburban Sydney. He made friends with Andrew Farriss who provided a surrogate family. Andrew's musicality and Michael's charisma was from the start till the end the basis of INXS.For five years INXS were single-minded in their pursuit of being the biggest band in the world. When that was achieved Michael felt the need to move away from a strictly pop life and he pushed himself into more challenging areas. That brought him into conflict with the band his band of brothers.There was also the complication of being a sex god. Michael always led a very hedonistic life a lot of drugs and sex. While promiscuous Michael had a great fear of separation and also a great fear of causing hurt the ends of his relationships were inevitable and messy. ...Show more

Duke Ellington - An American Composer and Icon by Mercedes Ellington

$59.99 AUD

$110.00 (45% off)

Category: Music

Duke Ellington was the undisputed father of the American songbook. A prolific writer and consummate performer, Ellington was the author of such standards as Solitude, Prelude to a Kiss, and It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got that Swing). With a career that spanned five decades, he is one of the defi ning composers of the Jazz Age. With unprecedented access to the Ellington family archives, this long overdue book illuminates the life and work of an icon of twentieth-century music from his humble beginnings to his long-lasting success. Every stage of Ellington's career is brought to life, from sepia photographs of his early days in Washington, DC, to colorful playbills from the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, his triumphant tours of Europe in the 1930s, and his pioneering explosion of form and genre in the 1940s and beyond. Alongside more than two hundred stunning images, contributions from peers such as Dave Brubeck, Cornel West, Quincy Jones, and Tony Bennett shed light on Ellington's musical legacy, while the voice of his granddaughter Mercedes reveals the character behind the charisma, and the man behind the piano. ...Show more

Bolshoi Confidential: Secrets of the Russian Ballet - from the Rule of the Tsars to the Age of Putin by Simon Morrison

$9.99 AUD

$34.99 (71% off)

Category: Music | Reading Level: near fine

On a freezing night in January 2013, an assailant hurled acid in the face of the artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, Sergei Filin. The crime, organized by a lead soloist, dragged one of Russia's most illustrious institutions into scandal. Under Vladimir Putin, the Bolshoi Theatre has been called on to preserve Russia's lengthy artistic legacy and to mirror its neo-imperial ambitions. As renowned musicologist Simon Morrison shows in his tour-de-force account, the attack, and its torrid aftermath, underscored the importance of the Bolshoi to the art of ballet, to Russia, and to the world. With exclusive access to state archives and private sources, Morrison sweeps us through the history of the ballet, tracing the political ties that bind the institution to the varying Russian regimes, and detailing the birth of some of the best-loved ballets in the repertoire. From its disreputable beginnings in 1776, the Bolshoi became a point of pride for the tsarist empire after the defeat of Napoleon in 1812.After the revolution, Moscow was transformed into a global capital; meetings of the Communist Party were hosted at the Bolshoi, and the Soviet Union was signed into existence on its stage. Recently, a £450 million restoration has returned the Bolshoi to its former glory, even as prized talent has departed. The Theatre has been bombed, rigged with explosives and reinforced with cement. Its dancers have suffered unimaginable physical torment to climb the ranks. But, as Morrison reveals, the Bolshoi has transcended its own fraught history, surviving 250 years of artistic and political upheaval to define not only Russian culture but also ballet itself. ...Show more

Working Class Man by Jimmy Barnes

$24.99 AUD

Category: Music

It's a life too big and a story too extraordinary for just one book. Jimmy Barnes has lived many lives - from Glaswegian migrant kid to iconic front man, from solo superstar to proud father of his own musical clan. In this hugely anticipated sequel to his critically acclaimed bestseller, Working Class B oy, Jimmy picks up the story of his life as he leaves Adelaide in the back of an old truck with a then unknown band called Cold Chisel. A spellbinding and searingly honest reflection on success, fame and addiction, this self-penned memoir reveals how Jimmy Barnes used the fuel of childhood trauma to ignite and propel Australia's greatest rock'n'roll story. But beyond the combustible merry-go-round of fame, drugs and rehab and across the Cold Chisel, solo and soul years, this is a story about how it's never too late to try to put things right. ...Show more

Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith

$22.99 AUD

Category: Music

'Magical' GUARDIAN'A gripping tale of the search for meaning in times of turbulence - expressed with Smith's signature poetic flair' VOGUE'Extraordinary ... A tense, teasing mix of reality and dream' Sunday Times'A melancholy mood and poetic language distinguish Smith's third memoir' BBC'Her willingness to look closely at life's closing chapters makes for a magical book' WASHINGTON POSTFollowing a run of New Year's concerts at San Francisco's legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland, with no design yet heeding signs, including a talking sign that looms above her, prodding and sparring like the Cheshire Cat. In February, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing with it unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. In a stranger's words, “Anything is possible: after all, it's the year of the monkey.” For Patti Smith - inveterately curious, always exploring, tracking thoughts, writing the year evolves as one of reckoning with the changes in life's gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America.Smith melds the Western landscape with her own dreamscape. Taking us from Southern California to the Arizona desert; to a Kentucky farm as the amanuensis of a friend in crisis; to the hospital room of a valued mentor; and by turns to remembered and imagined places - this haunting memoir blends fact and fiction with poetic mastery. The unexpected happens; grief and disillusionment. But as Patti Smith heads toward a new decade in her own life, she offers this balm to the reader: her wisdom, wit, gimlet eye, and above all, a rugged hope of a better world.Riveting, elegant, often humorous, illustrated by Smith's signature Polaroids, Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times. ...Show more