"Jessi Blade, sympathetic to her husband's bisexual needs, loves him enough to share him, but she never counted on Angel Garcia to test the threshold of her marriage. He makes her life hell ... and heaven. He's her damnation and her salvation. She wants to hate him. She wants to despise him. But, his charm and raw sex appeal are impossible to resist. Without warning, she finds herself falling in love with her husband's gay lover"--Back cover.

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.

Featured in the 2020 Association of University Presses Book, Jacket, and Journal Show In 1993, Prince infamously changed his name to a unique, unpronounceable symbol. Yet this was only one of a long string of self-reinventions orchestrated by Prince as he refused to be typecast by the music industry’s limiting definitions of masculinity and femininity, of straightness and queerness, of authenticity and artifice, or of black music and white music. Revealing how he continually subverted cultural expectations, I Wonder U examines the entirety of Prince’s diverse career as a singer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer, record label mogul, movie star, and director. It shows how, by blending elements of R&B, rock, and new wave into an extremely videogenic package, Prince was able to overcome the color barrier that kept black artists off of MTV. Yet even at his greatest crossover success, he still worked hard to retain his credibility among black music fans. In this way, Adilifu Nama suggests, Prince was able to assert a distinctly black political sensibility while still being perceived as a unique musical genius whose appeal transcended racial boundaries.

Punk Rock Warlord explores the relevance of Joe Strummer within the continuing legacies of both punk rock and progressive politics. It is aimed at scholars and general readers interested in The Clash, punk culture, and the intersections between pop music and politics, on both sides of the Atlantic. Contributors to the collection represent a wide range of disciplines, including history, sociology, musicology, and literature; their work examines all phases of Strummer’s career, from his early days as ’Woody’ the busker to the whirlwind years as front man for The Clash, to the ’wilderness years’ and Strummer’s final days with the Mescaleros. Punk Rock Warlord offers an engaging survey of its subject, while at the same time challenging some of the historical narratives that have been constructed around Strummer the Punk Icon. The essays in Punk Rock Warlord address issues including John Graham Mellor’s self-fashioning as ’Joe Strummer, rock revolutionary’; critical and media constructions of punk; and the singer’s complicated and changing relationship to feminism and anti-racist politics. These diverse essays nevertheless cohere around the claim that Strummer’s look, style, and musical repertoire are so rooted in both English and American cultures that he cannot finally be extricated from either.

His name was Prince, and he was funky. He was also inspiring, infuriating, visionary and otherworldly. Channelling contradictions in search of his own unique truth, he eventually changed his name to an unpronounceable glyph that merged the male and female symbols in an outward expression of his inner dualities. Gifted with the ability to play almost every instrument on his records, and shifting between musical styles as much as he switched-up his looks, he refused to acknowledge boundaries. Instead, he brought opposing forces together in a life-long quest to reconcile a dirty mind with a love for God. In doing so, the mini Minneapolis genius became a world-conquering icon whose towering legacy continues to shape pop culture.

In a music industry where one-hit wonders come and go, Prince, son of a black father and a white mother, is a long-running exception. With his monster guitar work, suggestive songs, and a fashion sense that is all his own, this biracial achiever has spent over thirty years as a pop culture icon. His albums Purple Rain, Sign "O" the Times, and Musicology set new standards for pop music showmanship. His work in filmmaking and multimedia proved him to be one of the more progressive artists in the business, all the while earning him millions of dollars and legions of avid fans. Yet Prince's prodigious talents have sometimes fallen victim to his excesses and obsessions. Explicit lyrics and squabbles with record executives are but two of the more controversial chapters in a long and rich career. Through it all, Prince has forged an extraordinary musical legacy and brought fans of all races together to enjoy his unique combination of rock, funk, and R&B. This new biography offers an in-depth look at a living legend and explores his genius through interviews as well as his timeless music.

At the dawn of the eighties, small crowds of concertgoers gathered to catch a new sensation named Prince. They showed up expecting a recast of Michael Jackson, but with more chest hair. They got something altogether different. Framed around sixty-two songs that represent the chapters of his career, this retrospective traces the life and legacy of a pioneering virtuoso. Youll follow the full arc of Princes meteoric rise and reign, including: The arrival of a wunderkind, playing guitar on the 1975 track Gameshis earliest released performance The soaring heights of Purple Rain in 1984 The anguish captured in Comeback following the death of his son in 1996 His popular resurgence, applying some Musicology in 2004 His last concert performance, featuring the sublime Black Muse off his final album Along the way, youll rediscover the depth of his genius and the breadth of his impact. Youll gain new insight into his heroic spirit, the methods to his madness, and the story in his songs. Celebrate Princes remarkable life the way it should be celebrated: through his music. All proceeds from this book will be donated to the Harlem Childrens Zone, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending poverty in Central Harlem.