A collection of comics about life through a punk-rock lens. Often humorous, sometimes poignant, and almost always embarrassing, these autobiographical stories are an essential addition to your LIZ-brary. Enjoy!

New Revised 4th Edition Now How To Be Your Own Booking Agent is available in its completely Revised 4th Edition. It offers current immigration regulations for touring artists, new scripts for contacting potential presenters, strategies for contact relation management, crowdfunding and a completely revised chapter on The New Recording Industry . Since 1998, the award-winning, How To Be Your Own Booking Agent has been among the top selling music and performing arts business books. It is regularly selected each semester by professors teaching music business and the performing arts and continually recommended by musicians and performing artists, worldwide. This unique step-by-step guide and resource book is artfully organized so that it's easy and fun to read with savvy advice, realistic methods and action plans geared for your success. Exciting new insights from experienced professionals in the entertainment business pepper each page. The 24 chapters are enhanced with completely updated resource sections following each chapter packed with recommended books, directories, websites, social media marketing resources and new conferences helping musicians and performing artists achieve their career goals.This Revised 4th Edition remains THE Musician's & Performing Artist's Guide To Successful Touring. How To Be Your Own Booking Agent THE Musician's & Performing Artist's Guide To Successful Touring tackles such topics as: The Art of Negotiating; How to Eliminate Cold Calls-Make Friendly Calls; Setting Long-Term Goals; New, more Effective Telephone Techniques; Creating An Effective Promotional Package; Contracts; The Art of Touring; Managing the Road; Conferences; Trade Shows and Industry Events; Funding Sources; Crossing Borders-U.S./Canada Touring; Marketing Your Act; Accessing the Media: Print, Radio, Television and Internet Marketing; The New Record Industry; Working with Managers and Agents; When to Quit Your Day Job; Hiring Help and Ethics and Attitudes. "As someone who has had the experience of climbing from the bottom to the top of the music industry, I find Goldsteins' book to be THE road map for taking a career from oblivion to stardom, on one's own terms while maintaining artistic integrity! By combining universal business practices with music industry savvy, HOW TO BE YOUR OWN BOOKING AGENT is your guide to success." - RAVI, Singer/Songwriter, Former Guitarist for Triple GRAMMY Nominee, HANSON The information in How To Be Your Own Booking Agent is visually accessible with worksheets and a variety of forms included throughout the book that may be copied for the artist's use and convenience. I've answered most of the burning questions, provided immediately usable methods and tackled many of the foreseeable problems. This is THE step-by-step guide to begin, create and maintain a successful touring career.

Beyond the skill involved in playing an instrument, getting musicians to play together well is an art form in itself. The secrets of how a guitarist, bassist, vocalist, drummer, keyboard player, and more can come together to create a unified sound usually reveal themselves only after years of stage and studio experience. This book explores every aspect of playing with other musicians, including the equipment, hardware, and software used in today's increasingly complex technological world, and the principles of sound every musician needs to know to work at the level of a professional band. So if you're ready to take your band beyond countless rehearsals and fast-forward to a professional sound, How to Make Your Band Sound Great is the guide you need to get you there. Complete with a 60-minute instructional DVD, How to Make Your Band Sound Great supplies instant access to producer and engineer Bobby Owsinski's years of real-life professional experience with bands of all types as a player, recording engineer, and record producer. The book-and-DVD package provides all you need to know to get your band on the way to sounding great using the techniques of veteran professional performing acts in the studio and on the stage.

Winner of the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Debut. "Beautifully simple and sweet, Liz prince portrays couples in a delightfully self-conscious way."-- Farel Dalrymple "An adorable little collection of snippets and snapshots of moments from their relationship ... the silly, gross and snuggly moments that Liz and Kevin share. A wondrous present to someone you hold dear."-- Neil Figuracion, Broken Frontier What started out as an exercise in keeping a personal comics journal, quickly evolved into Liz Prince's first solo graphic novel. Described as a mix between Jeffrey Brown and James Kochalka, Liz's comics are comprised of short vignettes that capture all the cute, gross, and endearing aspects of relationships. It's the perfect book for all those fans of autobiographical comics who want to see a happy ending.

As if recovering from a raucous dream of the 1960s, Gerry Beckley, Dewey Bunnell, and Dan Peek arrived on 1970s American radio with a sound that echoed disenchanted hearts of young people everywhere. The three American boys had named their band after a country they’d watched and dreamt of from their London childhood Air Force base homes. What was this country? This new band? Classic and timeless, America embodied the dreams of a nation desperate to emerge from the desert and finally give their horse a name. Celebrating the band’s fiftieth anniversary, Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell share stories of growing up, growing together, and growing older. Journalist Jude Warne weaves original interviews with Beckley, Bunnell, and many others into a dynamic cultural history of America, the band, and America, the nation. Reliving hits like “Ventura Highway,” “Tin Man,” and of course, “A Horse with No Name” from their 19 studio albums and incomparable live recordings, this book offers readers a new appreciation of what makes some music unforgettable and timeless. As America’s music stays in rhythm with the heartbeats of its millions of fans, new fans feel the draw of a familiar emotion. They’ve felt it before in their hearts and thanks to America, they can now hear it, share it, and sing along.

From the young Black teenager who built a bass guitar in woodshop to the musician building a solo career with Motown Records—Prince’s bassist BrownMark on growing up in Minneapolis, joining Prince and The Revolution, and his life in the purple kingdom In the summer of 1981, Mark Brown was a teenager working at a 7-11 store when he wasn’t rehearsing with his high school band, Phantasy. Come fall, Brown, now called BrownMark, was onstage with Prince at the Los Angeles Coliseum, opening for the Rolling Stones in front of 90,000 people. My Life in the Purple Kingdom is BrownMark’s memoir of coming of age in the musical orbit of one of the most visionary artists of his generation. Raw, wry, real, this book takes us from his musical awakening as a boy in Minneapolis to the cold call from Prince at nineteen, from touring the world with The Revolution and performing in Purple Rain to inking his own contract with Motown. BrownMark’s story is that of a hometown kid, living for sunny days when his transistor would pick up KUXL, a solar-powered, shut-down-at-sundown station that was the only one that played R&B music in Minneapolis in 1968. But once he took up the bass guitar—and never looked back—he entered a whole new realm, and, literally at the right hand of Twin Cities musical royalty, he joined the funk revolution that integrated the Minneapolis music scene and catapulted him onto the international stage. BrownMark describes how his funky stylings earned him a reputation (leading to Prince’s call) and how he and Prince first played together at that night’s sudden audition—and never really stopped. He takes us behind the scenes as few can, into the confusing emotional and professional life among the denizens of Paisley Park, and offers a rare, intimate look into music at the heady heights that his childhood self could never have imagined. An inspiring memoir of making it against stacked odds, experiencing extreme highs and lows of success and pain, and breaking racial barriers, My Life in the Purple Kingdom is also the story of a young man learning his craft and honing his skill like any musician, but in a world like no other and in a way that only BrownMark could tell it.

The all-access biography and unprecedented look at the life, career, and legacy of a pint-sized kid from Long Island who became a music legend. “A funny, revealing, and poignant look at [Billy] Joel’s long career.”—Boston Globe Exhibiting unparalleled intimate knowledge, Schruers chronicles Joel’s rise to the top of the charts, from his working-class origins in Levittown and early days spent in boxing rings and sweaty clubs to his monumental success in the seventies and eighties. He also explores Joel’s creative transformation in the nineties, his dream performance with Paul McCartney at Shea Stadium in 2008, and beyond. Along the way, Schruers reveals the stories behind all the key events and relationships—including Joel’s high-profile marriages and legal battles—that defined his path to stardom and inspired his signature songs, such as “Piano Man,” “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” “New York State of Mind,” and “She’s Always a Woman.” Throughout, he captures the spirit of a restless artist determined to break through by sharing, in his deeply personal lyrics, the dreams and heartbreaks of suburban American life. Comprehensive, vibrantly written, and filled with Joel’s memories and reflections—as well as those of the family, friends, and band members who have formed his inner circle, including Christie Brinkley, Alexa Ray Joel, Jon Small, and Steve Cohen—this is the definitive account of a beloved rock star’s epic American journey.