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Poetic Song Verse: Blues-Based Popular Music and Poetry invokes and critiques the relationship between blues-based popular music and poetry in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The volume is anchored in music from the 1960s, when a concentration of artists transformed modes of popular music from entertainment to art-that-entertains. Musician Mike Mattison and literary historian Ernest Suarez synthesize a wide range of writing about blues and rock—biographies, histories, articles in popular magazines, personal reminiscences, and a selective smattering of academic studies—to examine the development of a relatively new literary genre dubbed by the authors as “poetic song verse.” They argue that poetic song verse was nurtured in the fifties and early sixties by the blues and in Beat coffee houses, and matured in the mid-to-late sixties in the art of Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Gil Scott-Heron, Van Morrison, and others who used voice, instrumentation, arrangement, and production to foreground semantically textured, often allusive, and evocative lyrics that resembled and engaged poetry. Among the questions asked in Poetic Song Verse are: What, exactly, is this new genre? What were its origins? And how has it developed? How do we study and assess it? To answer these questions, Mattison and Suarez engage in an extended discussion of the roots of the relationship between blues-based music and poetry and address how it developed into a distinct literary genre. Unlocking the combination of richly textured lyrics wedded to recorded music reveals a dynamism at the core of poetic song verse that can often go unrealized in what often has been considered merely popular entertainment. This volume balances historical details and analysis of particular songs with accessibility to create a lively, intelligent, and cohesive narrative that provides scholars, teachers, students, music influencers, and devoted fans with an overarching perspective on the poetic power and blues roots of this new literary genre.

Dirty Windshields is the long-awaited memoir from CBC host and award-winning author Grant Lawrence, baring all the salacious and hilarious details from his touring days as the lead singer of Vancouver-based rock and roll band The Smugglers.Formed when most of the members were still in high school, The Smugglers came of age during the height of the grunge explosion in the early 1990s, when Grant, working as a concert promoter, put on shows for Nirvana, Green Day and Bad Religion, among many others.In Dirty Windshields, Grant chronicles the band's booze-fueled, sweaty, broke and wayward attempts at rock and roll glory as they trekked across Canada, the United States, and eventually, Europe and the Pacific Rim. In their sixteen years of touring, the Smugglers experienced all the highs and lows the road can offer, from playing a gig at New York's legendary CBGB club to starting a riot in a Denver nightclub to having their performance tuxes stolen in Australia.Through the fights, sexual misadventures, new friendships, dance contests and mayhem, the band grew up together on the road. Told with Grant's signature self-deprecating wit, the anecdotes develop into a compelling story of the growth of an independent, do-it-yourself touring band, a community, and a musical movement. So crack open a semi-cold can of Black Label beer, stick a Smugglers tape into the cassette deck and let the good times roll.

A biography and cultural examination of the Rolling Stones'frontman Mick Jagger's spectacular life and the cultural revolution he led. As the Rolling Stones'legendary front man Mick Jagger remains an enigma. He hasn't given an in-depth interview for a decade and a half and never commented on his friend and partner, Keith Richard's often critical biography. Drawing on firsthand recollections from rockers, filmmakers, writers, radicals, and other artists who have been transformed by Mick Jagger's work, acclaimed music journalist Marc Spitz has created a unique examination of the Jagger legacy, debunking long held myths and restoring his status as a complicated artist. Combining biography with cultural history, Jagger unfolds like a captivating documentary, a series of episodes tracing the icon's rise from his childhood in middle-class postwar London to his status as a jet-setting knight.A culturally astute, often funny, and painstakingly researched read, Jagger offers a far richer portrait than biographies published previously. The book reveals much about his relationships (with Marianne Faithfull and ex-wives Bianca Jagger and Jerry Hall); his complex, creative partnership with Keith Richards; his friends like John Lennon and David Bowie; and enemies like Hells Angels leader Sonny Barger. Spitz goes even deeper, exploring Jagger's many roles: an authentic soul man; powerful social commentator; sexual liberator; would-be movie star; and yes, sometimes, a shrewd businessman with an enthusiasm for much younger women. The myth of Mick is examined and rebooted for the twenty-first century.

Legendary among fans since its 1979 release, originally titled I Was Keith Richards'Drug Dealer, this is the absolutely over-the-top, outrageous account of the Stones at their debauched peak Tony Sanchez worked for Keith Richards for eight years buying drugs, running errands, and orchestrating cheap thrills. In this notorious chronicle of that time, he records unforgettable accounts of the Stones'perilous misadventures racing cars along the Cote d'Azur, murder at Altamont, nights with the Beatles at the Stones-owned nightclub Vesuvio, frantic flights to Switzerland for blood changes, and the steady stream of women, including Anita Pallenberg, Marianne Faithfull, and Bianca Jagger. Here are the Stones at their debauched peak cavorting around the world, smashing Bentleys, working black magic, getting raided, snorting coke, and mainlining heroin. Sanchez spares not even himself in these accounts, told with hard-hitting prose and featuring candid photographs.