Based on the Turner Classic Movies series, TCM Underground is the movie-lover's guide to 50 of the most campy, kitschy, shocking, and weirdly wonderful cult films you need to see. In the pages of this book, you'll explore this unique order of films—primarily from the 1960s, '70s, and '80s—with insightful reviews, behind-the-scenes stories, subgenre sidebars, and full-color and black-and-white photography throughout. Go along for the ride with new takes on crime films, including The Honeymoon Killers and The Harder They Come. Witness one-of-a-kind horror in Bill Gunn's landmark vampire film Ganja and Hess and Nobuhiko Obayashi’s infamous and indescribable Hausu. Absorb the boundary-pushing documentary-style trilogy The Decline of Western Civilization, which throws you into indelible moments in the punk and metal music scenes. And marvel at pure '80s oddities like Mac and Me and The Garbage Pail Kids. From Possession to Polyester and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls to Xanadu, no two films are alike in this compendium. Just sit back and prepare to be surprised, amused, and entertained by this celebration of the stars, filmmakers, and stories behind fifty of the most beguiling and unforgettable movies ever to hit the screen.

* Our summary is short, simple and pragmatic. It allows you to have the essential ideas of a big book in less than 30 minutes. *By reading this summary, you will discover how to become an expert marketer in the art of storytelling. You will be able to get consumers to buy into the spirit of your business. *You will discover that, since its origins, human beings have been telling stories to each other. Storytelling is an integral part of who they are and how they understand things. You will also learn that : everyone can learn to tell stories; everyone develops their own story, in order to make it more audible; the important thing is what consumers want to believe. *This book is about marketing today. Far from the era of advertising, storytelling is, for a brand or a company, the key to success. To successfully influence a consumer, stories must be told. The targeted people must live the story, believe it and adopt it in order to transmit it in turn. Stories are everywhere. They are a real power tool for marketers, value creators, and they have the power to change the world. Seth Godin presents nine tips, illustrated with examples, to succeed in this particular art. He advocates that the story be true, that it convey promise, that it be reliable, subtle and captivating. It should also appeal to the senses more than to reason while being coherent. It should target consumers who share a common interest in the product. *Buy now the summary of this book for the modest price of a cup of coffee!

“McLeod’s deft and generous book tells of a constellation of avant-garde squatters, divas, and dissidents who reinvented the world.” —Jonathan Lethem, New York Times-bestselling author of Motherless Brooklyn The 1960s to early ’70s was a pivotal time for American culture, and New York City was ground zero for seismic shifts in music, theater, art, and filmmaking. The Downtown Pop Underground takes a kaleidoscopic tour of Manhattan during this era and shows how deeply interconnected all the alternative worlds and personalities were that flourished in the basement theaters, dive bars, concert halls, and dingy tenements within one square mile of each other. Author Kembrew McLeod links the artists, writers, and performers who created change, and while some of them didn’t become everyday names, others, like Patti Smith, Andy Warhol, and Debbie Harry, did become icons. Ambitious in scope and scale, the book is fueled by the actual voices of many of the key characters who broke down the entrenched divisions between high and low, gay and straight, and art and commerce—and changed the cultural landscape of not just the city but the world. “The story of underground artists of the 1960s and ’70s, an amalgam of bustling radical creativity and fearless groundbreaking work in art, music, and theater.” —Tim Robbins “Breathes new fire into a familiar history and is a must-read for anyone who wants to know how American bohemia really happened.” —Ann Powers, critic, NPR Music “Honors those who were at the forefront of a movement that transformed our understandings of sexuality and artistic freedom.” —Lily Tomlin

Though The Velvet Underground were critically and commercially unsuccessful in their time, in ensuing decades they have become a constant touchstone in art rock, punk, post-punk, indie, avant pop and alternative rock. In the 1970s and 80s Lou Reed, John Cale and Nico produced a number of works that traveled a path between art and pop. In 1993 the original band members of Reed, Cale, Morrison and Tucker briefly reunited for live appearances, and afterwards Reed, Cale and briefly Tucker, continued to produce music that travelled the idiosyncratic path begun in New York in the mid-1960s. The influence of the band and band members, mediated and promoted through famous fans such as David Bowie and Brian Eno, seems only to have expanded since the late 1960s. In 1996 the Velvet Underground were in inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, demonstrating how far the band had traveled in 30 years from an avant-garde cult to the mainstream recognition of their key contributions to popular music. In these collected essays, Pattie and Albiez present the first academic book-length collection on The Velvet Underground. The book covers a range of topics including the band's relationship to US literature, to youth and cultural movements of the 1960s and beyond and to European culture - and examines these contexts from the 1960s through to the present day.

In the land that time forgot, 1960s and 1970s America (Amerika to some), there once were some bold, forthright, thoroughly unashamed social commentators who said things that “couldn't be said” and showed things that “couldn't be shown.” They were outrageous — hunted, pursued, hounded, arrested, busted, and looked down on by just about everyone in the mass media who deigned to notice them at all. They were cartoonists — underground cartoonists. And they were some of the cleverest, most interesting social commentators of their time, as well as some of the very best artists, whose work has influenced the visual arts right up until today. A History of Underground Comics is their story — told in their own art, in their own words, with connecting commentary and analysis by one of the very few media people who took them seriously from the start and detailed their worries, concerns and attitudes in broadcast media and, in this book, in print. Author, Mark James Estren knew the artists, lived with and among them, analyzed their work, talked extensively with them, received numerous letters and original drawings from them — and it's all in A History of Underground Comics. What Robert Crumb really thinks of himself and his neuroses…how Gilbert Shelton feels about Wonder Wart-Hog and the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers…how Bill Griffith handled the early development of Zippy the Pinhead…where Art Spiegelman's ideas for his Pulitzer-prize-winning Maus had their origins…and much, much more. Who influenced these hold-nothing-sacred cartoonists? Those earlier artists are here, too. Harvey Kurtzman — famed Mad editor and an extensive contributor to A History of Underground Comics. Will Eisner of The Spirit — in his own words and drawngs. From the bizarre productions of long-ago, nearly forgotten comic-strip artists, such as Gustave Verbeek (who created 12-panel strips in six panels: you read them one way, then turned them upside down and read them that way), to modern but conventional masters of cartooning, they're all here — all talking to the author and the reader — and all drawing, drawing, drawing. The underground cartoonists drew everything, from over-the-top sex (a whole chapter here) to political commentary far beyond anything in Doonesbury (that is here, too) to analyses of women's issues and a host of societal concerns. From the gorgeously detailed to the primitive and childlike, these artists redefined comics and cartooning, not only for their generation but also for later cartoonists. In A History of Underground Comics, you read and see it all just as it happened, through the words and drawings of the people who made it happen. And what “it” did they make happen? They raised consciousness, sure, but they also reflected a raised consciousness — and got slapped down more than once as a result. The notorious obscenity trial of Zap #4 is told here in words, testimony and illustrations, including the exact drawings judged obscene by the court. Community standards may have been offended then — quite intentionally. Readers can judge whether they would be offended now. And with all their serious concerns, their pointed social comment, the undergrounds were fun, in a way that hidebound conventional comics had not been for decades. Demons and bikers, funny “aminals” and Walt Disney parodies, characters whose anatomy could never be and ones who are utterly recognizable, all come together in strange, peculiar, bizarre, and sometimes unexpectedly affecting and even beautiful art that has never since been duplicated — despite its tremendous influence on later cartoonists. It's all here in A History of Underground Comics, told by an expert observer who weaves together the art and words of the cartoonists themselves into a portrait of a time that seems to belong to the past but that is really as up-to-date as today's headl

**** COMPELLING - The Sunday Telegraph CONTROVERSIAL ... Sounes' book pushes the standard Reed narrative - The New York Times Lou Reed, who died in 2013, was best known to the general public as the grumpy New Yorker in black who sang 'Walk on the Wild Side'. To his dedicated admirers, however, he was one of the most innovative and intelligent American songwriters of modern times, a natural outsider who lived a tumultuous and tortured life. In this in-depth, meticulously researched and very entertaining biography, respected biographer Howard Sounes examines the life and work of this fascinating man, from birth to death, including his time as the leader of The Velvet Underground - one of the most important bands in rock'n'roll. Written with a deep knowledge and understanding of the music, Sounes also sheds entirely new light on the artist's creative process, his mental health problems, his bisexuality, his three marriages, and his addictions to drugs and alcohol. In the course of his research, Sounes has interviewed over 140 people from every part of Lou Reed's life - some of whom have not spoken publicly about him before - including music industry figures, band members, fellow celebrities, family members, former wives and lovers. This book brings Lou Reed and his world alive.