Who Is Morris? Morris takes a journey through several generations of a remarkable and resilient family, following them over more than 60 years, chronicling how they dealt with growing up in the face of loss, adversity, and tragedy, as well as with triumph. The result of editing together numerous personal journals, Morris documents their individual experiences of life, love, and relationships as they struggled to gain acceptance, fight discrimination, and overcome the attitudes and prejudices of their times with regard to race, gender, ethnicity, sexual preference, and politics. Beginning in the summer of 1965, this starts as a school assignment made to a then-teenaged Jessie Peterson as he made a point of constantly complaining to everyone about how boring and backward life is in his sleepy small town on the Florida Panhandle. Jessie dreams of when he would be able to get away and see the world, but circumstance and the reality of his family’s needs conspire against those dreams and set up obstacles, as he endures to build his own life and tries to find happiness. He then encourages his daughter as the next generation to begin chronicling her own life and the issues that she faces, which she then passes on to her children as they come of age to do the same, even as we continue to follow Jessie, his siblings, their families, and their extended families from their teens to adulthood, to being parents, and eventually as grandparents. When at one point an adult Jessie is asked whom he has been writing his journal to, he replies, “If not to myself, I would be writing to Morris.” Hence the title. A nonspeaking character, Morris is part of everyone’s lives and stories, contributing to the overall context and continuity without writing or uttering a single word. But he is as much a member of this family as anyone else. He’s always there silently, as part of the thread that helps weave the fabric of all their lives and adventures together. But just who is Morris?

If you have ever been left feeling dazed and confused by the sheer volume and variety of guitar methods to choose from, or simply put off by the amount of text to wade through before you can start playing, then The Picture Guide to Playing Guitar is exactly what you need. Using pictures and diagrams to show you the essentials, here is the most simple and direct way to start playing the guitar - immediately! Perfect for the absolute beginner, no prior musical knowledge or experience is required as you progress effortlessly from tuning and finger positions to basic chords and strumming. In fact, The Picture Guide To Playing Guitar will have you playing classic songs by the likes of Chuck Berry, The Beatles and T. Rex within minutes! There really is no easier way, without delay, to become a musician – today!

Whether you're a lifelong collector or have only just gotten hip to the vinyl revival, navigating the vast landscape of rock albums can be a daunting prospect. Enter Mike Segretto and his mammoth 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Minute, a history of the rock LP era told through a very personal selection of nearly 700 albums. Beginning with the birth of rock and roll in the 1950s, Segretto moves through the explosive innovations of the 1960s, the classic rock and punk albums of the 1970s, the new wave classics of the 1980s, and the alternative revolution of the 1990s, always with an eye to both the iconic and the ephemeral, the failed experiments and the brilliant trailblazers. It's all here: everything from the classics (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Purple Rain, Nevermind, and countless other usual suspects) to such oddities as albums by Johnny "Guitar" Watson, P. P. Arnold, The Dentists, and Holly Golightly. Throughout, Segretto reveals the perpetual evolution of a modern art form, tracing the rock album's journey from a vehicle for singles and filler sold to kids, through its maturation into a legitimate, self-contained medium of expression by 1967, and onward to its dominance in the '70s, '80s, and '90s. Whether you read it from cover to cover, seek out specific albums, or just dip in at random and let the needle fall where it may, 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Minute is a fun, informative, and unapologetically opinionated read.

Unless you lived through the 1970s, it seems impossible to understand it at all. Drug delirium, groovy fashion, religious cults, mega corporations, glitzy glam, hard rock, global unrest—from our 2018 perspective, the seventies are often remembered as a bizarre blur of bohemianism and disco. With Pick Up the Pieces, John Corbett transports us back in time to this thrillingly tumultuous era through a playful exploration of its music. Song by song, album by album, he draws our imaginations back into one of the wildest decades in history. Rock. Disco. Pop. Soul. Jazz. Folk. Funk. The music scene of the 1970s was as varied as it was exhilarating, but the decade’s diversity of sound has never been captured in one book before now. Pick Up the Pieces gives a panoramic view of the era’s music and culture through seventy-eight essays that allow readers to dip in and out of the decade at random or immerse themselves completely in Corbett’s chronological journey. An inviting mix of skilled music criticism and cultural observation, Pick Up the Pieces is also a coming-of-age story, tracking the author’s absorption in music as he grows from age seven to seventeen. Along with entertaining personal observations and stories, Corbett includes little-known insights into musicians from Pink Floyd, Joni Mitchell, James Brown, and Fleetwood Mac to the Residents, Devo, Gal Costa, and Julius Hemphill. A master DJ on the page, Corbett takes us through the curated playlist that is Pick Up the Pieces with captivating melody of language and powerful enthusiasm for the era. This funny, energetic book will have readers longing nostalgically for a decade long past.

Camden Joy’s hero can’t wrap up the quickie biography of rock star Liz Phair he’s been commissioned to write. Instead, the shaky author finds himself recounting the troubled events of his own life. His ex-girlfriend (who just might be the illegitimate daughter of dead Rolling Stone Brian Jones), Liz Phair (whom he’s never met), and a mystery girl seen looting a shop in an old newspaper photo all start to blur together in his mind. If only he could get closer to his subject before the assignment spins out of control, maybe he’d have a shot at the distinction he feels he deserves . . . First published in 1998, The Last Rock Star Book has become an underground cult classic.

A DNA ANCESTRY TEST OPENS UP A PANDORA’S BOX OF SECRETS. When a fragile Elsa Watson takes a DNA ancestry test out of idle curiosity she little imagines the devastating consequences she is about to unleash.

A trailblazing exploration of the poetic power of popular songs, from Tin Pan Alley to the Beatles to Beyoncé and beyond. Encompassing a century of recorded music, this pathbreaking book reveals the poetic artistry of popular songs. Pop songs are music first. They also comprise the most widely disseminated poetic expression of our time. Adam Bradley traces the song lyric across musical genres from early twentieth-century Delta blues to mid-century rock 'n’ roll to today’s hits. George and Ira Gershwin’s “Fascinating Rhythm.” The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Rihanna’s “Diamonds.” These songs are united in their exacting attention to the craft of language and sound. Bradley shows that pop music is a poetry that must be heard more than read, uncovering the rhythms, rhymes, and metaphors expressed in the singing voice. At once a work of musical interpretation, cultural analysis, literary criticism, and personal storytelling, this book illustrates how words and music come together to produce compelling poetry, often where we least expect it.