For twenty-seven months in the early 1990s, the four young men who made up the Marvelous Beauhunks were living the dream, taking the Toronto music scene by storm, and making waves with their instant rock-pop hit Fantasy Merry-Go-Round. Drummer and founding member Stephen Wright takes the reader along for the trip as the self professed best-looking band in the world goes from rehearsing in the basement of a house in the members hometown of Oshawa, to the number 16 position on Toronto alternative rock station CFNYs music chart. Insightful and witty, sometimes poignant, always frank, Do Not Resuscitate: the Marvelous Beauhunks is a truly interesting read, whether youve ever heard of the band or not. Never afraid to share his feelings, Wright fills the book with anecdotes and behind-the scenes glimpses as he and his four mates hone their craft and learn about the music industry on the fly.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, no Canadian band rocked harder, louder or to more hardcore fans than Teenage Head. This high-energy quartet – consisting of four guys who'd known each other since high school – were a balls-to-the-walls sonic assault. And they almost became world-famous. Almost. This is their story, told for the first time.

Needs Improvement, the latest collection from acclaimed poet Fiorentino, consists of three sections: Needs Improvement, a suite of experiments that address various misreadings of pedagogical and evaluative material; Moda, a section of civic, alyric villanelles that take city and borough mottos for their refrains; and Things As Facts, a section of highly manipulated and manipulative free verse.

Maverick music manager Campbell Ouiniette makes a final destructive bid for glory at the Calgary Folk Festival. Travel in the entertaining company of a man made of equal parts bullshit and inspiration, in what is ultimately a twisted panegyric to the power of strange music to change people from the inside out. At turns funny and strangely sobering, this “found memoir” is a picaresque tale of inspired, heroic deceit, incompetence, and — just possibly — triumph. Follow the flailing escapades of maverick music manager Campbell Ouiniette at the Calgary Folk Festival, as he leaves a trail of empty liquor bottles, cigarette butts, bruised egos, and obliterated relationships behind him. His top headlining act has abandoned him for the Big Time. In a fit of self-delusion or pure genius (or perhaps a bit of both), Ouiniette devises an intricate scam, a last hurrah in an attempt to redeem himself in the eyes of his girlfriend, the music industry, and the rest of the world. He reveals his path of destruction in his own transparently self-justifying, explosive, profane words, with digressions into the Edmonton hardcore punk rock scene, the Yugoslavian Civil War, and other epicentres of chaos.

In the stories of Something You Were, Might Have Been, or Have Come to Represent, young singer-songwriters strive for fame and identity in the indie music scene. A young woman's creative process is plagued with pop cultural dissonance during a European soul-search; a firstyear university student has an existential crisis and eats the flowers that have started to appear on her doorstep; a call centre employee whose name newly yields a Google search hit is frustrated with his unimpressed co-workers; and one Montreal resident reaches the apogee of success and hits rock-bottom, all in the same year. With dry humour and twists of plot, Jay Winston Ritchie crafts a world replete with lasting images that resonate as both troubling and real. Each story poses an inquiry into how we shape our identity-which parts of ourselves we cull and which remain outside our locus of control.

Cyrus The Talking Chimpanzee escapes from Bob The Scientist and his assistant Janet and sets forth on a journey across America: traveling carnivals, circus sideshows and tent revivals. Along the way Cyrus is picked up by The Colonel and his motor home stuffed with dusty jars full of shrunken heads and pickled Siamese twins. While watching television Cyrus finds religion and decides to become a televangelist. Two crooked television producers, Jackie Bob and Bobby Jack, put Cyrus on the air and soon the money comes rolling in. Cyrus must try to break free from his televangelist handlers after he becomes convinced that Jesus Christ has returned- as a spider monkey.

Mining bilong dispela stori: Exploring the power imbalance between English and Tok Pisin, Twin Tongues transforms the English Language into a character who encounters her own foreignness in Papua New Guinea. This text struggles with the ethics of appropriation, language use and second language teaching, questioning the subjective position of the author, the teacher, the speaker of English. The poetry scrapes away the veneer of objectivity assumed by historical descriptions of Tok Pisin. Twin Tongues tests the flexibility of language, and asks, "What does language sound like to unfamiliar ears? And what is English anyway?" "A deeply engrossing collection."--Broken Pencil