The essential account of R. Kelly’s actions and their consequences, a reckoning two decades in the making In 2000, Chicago journalist and music critic Jim DeRogatis received an anonymous fax that alleged that R. Kelly had a problem with “young girls.” Weeks later, DeRogatis broke the shocking allegations—that the R&B superstar had groomed, sexually abused, and paid off young girls—wide open. Still, Kelly’s career flourished. No one seemed to care: not the music industry, not the culture at large, not the parents of numerous girls. For more than 18 years, DeRogatis stayed on the story. Soulless: The Case Against R. Kelly is a work of tenacious journalism and cultural criticism. It tells the story of Kelly’s career and DeRogatis’s investigations, bringing the story up to the moment when things finally seem to have changed.

In July 2002, the Flaming Lips released an ambitious album called "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots that merged elements of orchestral pop, electronic dance music, and old-fashioned psychedelic rock with lyrical themes that were simultaneously poignant and philosophical and supremely silly. The album sold a million copies worldwide, introduced the Flaming Lips to a mass audience, and made them one of the best-known cult bands in rock history.
"Staring at Sound is the tale of the Flaming Lips's fascinating, long career (which, in reality, began in 1983) and the many colorful personalities in its orbit, especially Wayne Coyne, its charismatic and visionary founder. Written with the complete cooperation of the band, it follows the Lips through the thriving indie-rock underground of the 1980s and the alternative rock movement of the early '90s, during which they found fans in such rock legends as Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Robert Plant, and Devo, and respected peers in such acts as the White Stripes, Radiohead, and Beck.
In the style of "Wilco: Learning How to Die by Greg Kot," Hellfire by Nick Tosches," and" DeRogatis's own" Let It Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, Staring at Sound is an illuminating, well-researched, fast-moving, and very human portrait of one of the most distinctive rock music acts of our time.

Let It Blurt is the raucous and righteous biography of Lester Bangs (1949-82)--the gonzo journalist, gutter poet, and romantic visionary of rock criticism. No writer on rock 'n' roll ever lived harder or wrote better--more passionately, more compellingly, more penetratingly. He lived the rock 'n' roll lifestyle, guzzling booze and Romilar like water, matching its energy in prose that erupted from the pages of Rolling Stone, Creem, and The Village Voice. Bangs agitated in the seventies for sounds that were harsher, louder, more electric, and more alive, in the course of which he charted and defined the aesthetics of heavy metal and punk. He was treated as a peer by such brash visionaries as Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Richard Hell, Captain Beefheart, The Clash, Debbie Harry, and other luminaries.

Let It Blurt is a scrupulously researched account of Lester Bangs's fascinating (if often tawdry and unappetizing) life story, as well as a window on rock criticism and rock culture in their most turbulent and creative years. It includes a never-before-published piece by Bangs, the hilarious "How to Be a Rock Critic," in which he reveals the secrets of his dubious, freeloading trade.

Sheperd Paine did more than anyone to elevate modeling to the level of an art form - one that includes elements of painting, sculpting, research, and storytelling. Building and painting miniature figures, armor, aircraft, and ships with equal skill, and displaying a broad scope of knowledge and interests ranging from the Napoleonic era to WWII, Paine created incredibly detailed and masterfully rendered vignettes and dioramas. This is the first book to examine all of his remarkable work, cataloging it with more than seven hundred beautiful photos, and charting the life experiences that formed these creations in an interesting, conversational format.

(Book). Turn On Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock is a history and critical examination of rock's most inventive genre. Whether or not psychedelic drugs played a role (and as many musicians say they've used them as not), psychedelic rock has consistently charted brave new worlds that exist only in the space between the headphones. The history books tell us the music's high point was the Haight-Ashbury scene of 1967, but the genre didn't start in San Francisco, and its evolution didn't end with the Summer of Love. A line can be drawn from the hypnotic drones of the Velvet Underground to the disorienting swirl of My Bloody Valentine; from the artful experiments of the Beatles' Revolver to the flowing, otherworldly samples of rappers P.M. Dawn; from the dementia of the 13th Floor Elevators to the grungy lunacy of the Flaming Lips; and from the sounds and sights at Ken Kesey's '60s Acid Tests to those at present-day raves. Turn On Your Mind is an attempt to connect the dots from the very first groups who turned on, tuned in, and dropped out, to such new-millennial practitioners as Wilco, the Elephant 6 bands, Moby, the Super Furry Animals, and the so-called "stoner-rock" and "ork-pop" scenes.