The Definitive Guitar Handbook (2017 Updated) by Rusty Cutchin

$24.99 NZD

Category: Music

This best-selling one-stop resource is packed with practical advice on how to tackle the basics, such as simple chords and finger-picking, right through to more complex power chords, slurs, bends and slides. It also includes tips on stagecraft and performing live, and step-by-step guitar maintenance. Th e galleries of guitars and guitarists, and the chord dictionary have been comprehensively updated for this edition. ...Show more

Iron Maiden by Chris Welch

$17.99 NZD

Category: Music

Celebrate the pioneering band that redefined heavy metal: Iron Maiden. "We've always been bombastic and done what we've wanted to do." --Steve Harris Go straight to the heart and soul of the Mighty Maiden, the group that was at the forefront of the New Wave of British heavy metal in the '80s . . . and is still going strong. Here is their full story in glorious detail, complete with photographs of posters, flyers, and backstage passes, and rare images of the band's most high-profile gigs and iconic moments. In addition to an album-by-album account of all their studio recordings, it includes biographies of the most notable members and a decade-by-decade history of the band. Written by a leading music journalist who has interviewed the band many times, Iron Maiden is a fantastic tribute to the iconic band and a fan must-have. ...Show more

Drum Course For Beginners

$14.99 NZD

Category: Music

The Birth of Loud - Leo Fender, les Paul, and the Guitar-Pioneering Rivalry That Shaped Rock 'n' Roll by Ian S. Port

$29.99 NZD

Category: Music

"A hot-rod joy ride through mid-20th-century American history" (The New York Times Book Review), this one-of-a-kind narrative masterfully recreates the rivalry between the two men who innovated the electric guitar's amplified sound--Leo Fender and Les Paul--and their intense competition to convince rock stars like the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton to play the instruments they built.   In the years after World War II, music was evolving from big-band jazz into rock 'n' roll--and these louder styles demanded revolutionary instruments. When Leo Fender's tiny firm marketed the first solid-body electric guitar, the Esquire, musicians immediately saw its appeal. Not to be out-maneuvered, Gibson, the largest guitar manufacturer, raced to build a competitive product. The company designed an "axe" that would make Fender's Esquire look cheap and convinced Les Paul--whose endorsement Leo Fender had sought--to put his name on it. Thus was born the guitar world's most heated rivalry: Gibson versus Fender, Les versus Leo.   While Fender was a quiet, half-blind, self-taught radio repairman, Paul was a brilliant but headstrong pop star and guitarist who spent years toying with new musical technologies. Their contest turned into an arms race as the most inventive musicians of the 1950s and 1960s--including bluesman Muddy Waters, rocker Buddy Holly, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Eric Clapton--adopted one maker's guitar or another. By 1969 it was clear that these new electric instruments had launched music into a radical new age, empowering artists with a vibrancy and volume never before attainable.   In "an excellent dual portrait" (The Wall Street Journal), Ian S. Port tells the full story in The Birth of Loud, offering "spot-on human characterizations, and erotic paeans to the bodies of guitars" (The Atlantic). "The story of these instruments is the story of America in the postwar era: loud, cocky, brash, aggressively new" (The Washington Post). ...Show more

The History of Rock and Roll, Volume 2: 1964-1977: The Beatles, The Stones, and The Rise of Classic Rock by Ed Ward

$49.99 NZD

Category: Music

From rock and roll historian Ed Ward comes a comprehensive, authoritative, and enthralling cultural history of one of rock's most exciting eras. It's February 1964 and The Beatles just landed in New York City, where the NYPD, swarms of fans, and a crowd of two hundred journalists await their first Amer ican press conference. It begins with the question on everyone's mind: "Are you going to get a haircut in America?" and ends with a reporter tugging Paul McCartney's hair in an attempt to remove his nonexistent wig. This is where The History of Rock & Roll, Volume 2 kicks off. Chronicling the years 1964 through the mid-1970s, this latest volume covers one of the most exciting eras of rock history, which saw a massive outpouring of popular and cutting-edge music. Ward weaves together an unputdownable narrative told through colorful anecdotes and shares the behind-the-scenes stories of the megastars, the trailblazers, DJs, record executives, concert promoters, and producers who were at the forefront of this incredible period in music history. From Bob Dylan to Bill Graham, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Byrds, Aretha Franklin, The Rolling Stones, and more, everyone's favorite musicians of the era make an appearance in this sweeping history that reveals how the different players, sounds, and trends came together to create the music we all know and love today. ...Show more

What Is It All but Luminous - Notes from an Underground Man by Art Garfunkel

$35.00 NZD

Category: Music

In What Is It All but Luminous, Art Garfunkel writes about growing up in the 1940s and '50s (son of a traveling salesman, listening as his father played Enrico Caruso records), a middle-class Jewish boy living in a redbrick semiattached house on Jewel Avenue in Kew Gardens, Queens. He writes of meeting Paul Simon, the kid who made Art laugh (they met at their graduation play, Alice in Wonderland; Paul was the White Rabbit; Art, the Cheshire Cat). Of their being twelve at the birth of rock 'n' roll ("It was rhythm and blues. It was black. I was captured and so was Paul."), of a demo of their song "Hey Schoolgirl" for seven dollars and the actual record (with Paul's father on bass) going to #40 on the charts. He writes about their becoming Simon & Garfunkel, ruling the pop charts from the age of sixteen, about not being a natural performer but more a thinker, an underground man. He writes of the hit songs, touring, about being an actor working with director Mike Nichols ("the greatest of them all"), about choosing music over a Ph.D. in mathematics. And he writes about his long-unfolding split with Paul, and how and why it evolved, and after, learning to perform on his own...and about being a husband, a father, and much more. ...Show more

Stoned: Photographs and Treasures from Life with the Rolling Stones by Jo Wood

$49.99 NZD

Category: Music

"These images are great and have been tucked away for years" - Ronnie Wood Take a look inside rock 'n' roll history with over 500 never-before-seen photographs, notes, artworks, diary entries and mementoes from life behind the scenes of the Rolling Stones. Married to legendary Stones guitarist Ronnie Wo od for 30 years, Jo Wood lived the rock star life. Her incredible collection of treasures from that time is a once-in-a-lifetime look inside the biggest band in the world. Accompanied by personal memories and behind the scenes anecdotes from Jo, Stoned is a love letter to the rock 'n' roll life and a truly unique window into the eye of the Rolling Stones hurricane. ...Show more

Bowie's Books: The Hundred Literary Heroes Who Changed His Life by John O'Connell

$37.99 NZD

Category: Music | Reading Level: 3 Biography

David Bowie once said that his idea of perfect happiness was reading. Three years before he died, he made a list of the one hundred books that had transformed his life - a list that formed something akin to an autobiography. From Lolita to Madame Bovary, the Beano to The Iliad, these were the books that had fuelled his creativity and shaped who he was. In Bowie's Books, John O'Connell explores this list in the form of one hundred short essays, each offering a perspective on the man, performer and creator that is Bowie, his work as an artist and the era that he lived in. Bowie's Books is much more than a list of books you should read in your lifetime: it is a unique insight into one of the greatest minds of our times, and an indispensable part of the legacy that Bowie left behind. ...Show more

Just Kids Illustrated (HB) by Patti Smith

$64.99 NZD

Category: Music

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation. Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. Bound in innocence and enthusiasm, they traversed the city from Coney Island to Forty-Second Street, and eventually to the celebrated round table of Max's Kansas City, where the Andy Warhol contingent held court. In 1969, the pair set up camp at the Hotel Chelsea and soon entered a community of the famous and infamous, the influential artists of the day and the colorful fringe. It was a time of heightened awareness, when the worlds of poetry, rock and roll, art, and sexual politics were colliding and exploding. In this milieu, two kids made a pact to take care of each other. Scrappy, romantic, committed to create, and fueled by their mutual dreams and drives, they would prod and provide for one another during the hungry years.Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists' ascent, a prelude to fame. ...Show more

Searches for Tradition: Past and Present in New Zealand Music by Michael Brown

$40.00 NZD

Category: Music

In Douglas Lilburn's famous address to the 1946 Cambridge Summer School of Music, the composer described his `search for tradition' in the music of New Zealand and spelled out his hopes that a distinctive art music might yet emerge here. Sixty years on, this collection of scholarly essays brings togethe r various perspectives on what `tradition' means in the context of the music of Aotearoa New Zealand. Searches for Tradition presents case studies drawn from a broad spectrum of genres, cultures and historical periods, from investigations of New Zealand's colonial music to fresh consideration of Lilburn's legacy, from corners of the jazz scene to the contemporary revitalization of taonga puoro. The focus on `tradition' leads in some instances to critical issues of nationalism and biculturalism, while others uncover little-discussed aspects of local music history, performance practice or composition. It will be stimulating reading for all enthusiasts of New Zealand music's past, present and future. Contributors: Michael Brown, Melissa Cross, Fiona McAlpine, Norman Meehan, Elizabeth Nichol, Michael Norris, Samantha Owens, Anthony Ritchie, Valance Smith, Awhina Tamarapa, Ariana Tikao, Nick Tipping, Peter Walls, Aleisha Ward, Jenny Wollerman. ...Show more

Sing The Story of Choral Music in Aotearoa by Guy Jansen

$59.99 NZD

Category: Music

New Zealanders love to sing together. Thousands of us sing in hundreds of choirsthroughout the country, making it our most popular and participated in performing art. Most of us have sung in school choirs, or participated in national competitions such as the Big Sing, and increasingly people are joining choirs as adults, recognising the benefits to wellbeing and the sheer pleasure of making music together.But the story of choirs in New Zealand is not just one of enthusiastic participation, it is also about striving for excellence, and achieving it. And it's not just about our greatsoloists finding international acclaim; national choirs such the Voices New ZealandChamber Choir and the New Zealand Youth Choir have won international awards, and many others tour overseas. ...Show more

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

$55.00 NZD

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 o f Morning 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