From mercurial to mentally unstable, interviews highlight legendary composer’s Vesuvian stream-of-consciousness conversation. James Joyce’s mastery of the written word might have an equal in Charles Mingus’s skill with... Read More

Thanks to its small size and distinctive sound, the ‘ukulele has been lampooned in everything from literature and film to comic strips. But Jim Tranquada and John King hope to change the instrument’s image by exploring its legacy in... Read More

Much like rock in earlier decades, punk, heavy metal, hip-hop, and other contemporary music genres channel public rage resulting from uncontrollable social and economic disruptions. Eric Weisbard has organized the Experience Music... Read More

To a large segment of Americans, the Seegers have been as culturally important as the Gershwins—and there were more of them. In fact, two of that artistically fecund tribe were still producing music as of last October. The most famous... Read More

Few musicians and artists have had as much impact on America’s popular culture as Bob Dylan. Hundreds of books have been written about him, with his lyrics picked apart and analyzed by professors and Dylanologists, but since 1986 this... Read More

The generations that came of age in the 1960s and 1970s had a wide variety of publications, both fan-based and professional, in which to follow the activities of their favorite musicians. Rolling Stone, Crawdaddy, Creem, and Transoceanic... Read More

Robert Kaye writes that he spent twenty years developing the musical improvisational method described in this book. What a shame that he did not spend another six months working with an editor to make the book readable. At the root of... Read More

Too many fine musicians fail to achieve their dreams of becoming professionals. The problem is not their skill level. Their shortcomings include inadequate self-promotion, a lack of supportive audiences sufficient to sustain an income... Read More