Looks at the twenty-year history of the Grateful Dead, discusses the evolution of their music, and includes profiles of each band member

An investigative account of the medical, sexual, and scientific questions surrounding the spread of AIDS across the country.

Here comes Froggy's marching band, led by the one and only Frogilina. Froggy and his pals are sure they can win the big prize in the Apple Blossom Parade, even though they haven't been playing together very long. They just need to remember the rules: Don't look left. Don't look right. And DON'T STOP FOR ANYTHING! But when Froggy's around ,things never go quite as planned...

Fifty years after the Grateful Dead was formed, the band still exerts a powerful influence over hundreds of thousands of fans around the world. Today, an entire generation of Deadheads who have never experienced a live Dead show are still drawn to the music and the complex and colorful subculture that has grown up around it. In This Is All a Dream We Dreamed, Blair Jackson and David Gans, two of the most well-respected chroniclers of the Dead, reveal the band's story through the words of its members and their creative collaborators, as well as a number of diverse fans, stitching together a multitude of voices into a seamless oral tapestry. Woven into this musical saga is an examination of the subculture that developed into its own economy, touching fans from all walks of life, from penniless hippies to celebrities, and at least one U.S. vice president. The book traces the band's evolution from its folk/bluegrass beginnings through the Jug Band craze, an early incarnation as Rolling Stones wannabes, feral psychedelic warriors, the Americana jam band that blazed through the '70s, to the shockingly popular but still iconoclastic stadium-filling band of later years. The Dead broke every rule of the music business along the way, taking risks and venturing into new territory as they fused inspired ideas and techniques with intuition and fearlessness to create a sound-and a business model-unlike anything heard and seen before.

In this unvarnished account of toiling under one of popular music's most notorious bosses, Damon Wood details his six years spent playing guitar for James Brown's Soul Generals.In a memoir certain to fascinate Mr. Dynamite's millions of fans, as well as musicians and industry insiders, Wood recalls how a chance encounter with James Brown led him to embrace soul and funk music under the tutelage of its greatest progenitor. Numerous interviews with bandmates provide multiple perspectives on James Brown's complex character, his leadership of his band, the nature of soul and funk, and insights and sometimes harsh lessons learned along the way.This is a sideman's story of the gritty reality of working close to the spotlight but rarely in it. Damon Wood describes life on the road - often on James Brown's infamous tour bus - with one guitar, a change of clothes, and two dozen comrades-in-arms as they brought the funk to clubs, theaters, and the biggest music festivals on earth. Working for James Brown could be fear-inducing, inspiring, exhilarating, and exasperating - all in the space of a single performance.

The movies, the documentaries, the museum exhibits. They often tell the same story about the "unsinkable" Titanic, her wealthy passengers, the families torn apart, and the unthinkable end. But never before has "that glorious band," the group of eight musicians who played on as the Titanic slipped deeper and deeper into the Atlantic Ocean, been explored in such depth--until now. Join renowned biographer Steve Turner as he shares an extraordinary portrait of eight men who were thrown together on a maiden voyage, never having played together as a band, and whose names will be forever linked because of an extraordinary act of courage in the face of death. In The Band that Played On, Turner asks and answers key questions, including: How did the faith of the band members allow them to react with grace under pressure? Why does the story of the Titanic continue to fascinate? How does the legacy of that glorious band live on today? Praise for The Band that Played On: "The Band that Played On is, surprisingly, the first book since the great ship went down to examine the lives of the eight musicians who were employed by the Titanic. What these men did--standing calmly on deck playing throughout the disaster--achieved global recognition. But their individual stories, until now, have been largely unknown. What Turner has uncovered is a narrow but unique slice of history--one more chapter of compelling Titanic lore." --Marjorie Kehe, Book Editor, Christian Science Monitor