Books in the 33 1/3 series

A caustic wit and the knack for great pop, this is Costello's classic mixture of soul and new wave. Features Accidents Will Happen, Oliver's Army and What's So Funny 'bout Peace Love and Understanding.

Focusing on one album rather than an artist's entire output, the books dispense with the standard biographical background that fans know already, and cut to the heart of the music on each album.

What binds this series together, and what brings it to life, is that all of the authors - musicians, scholars, and writers - are deeply in love with the album they have chosen.

"Dusty in Memphis", Dusty Springfield's beautiful and bizarre magnum opus, remains as fine a hybrid of pop and rhythm and blues as has ever been made. In this book, Zanes explores his own love affair with the record.

This title is one of a series of books which focus on epic albums of our time. Here, Andrew Hultkrans looks at Love's album "Forever Changes".

This title is one of many in a series of books which focus on epic albums of our time. Here, Joe Pernice looks at The Smith's album "Meat is Murder".

33 1/3 is a new series of short books about critically acclaimed and much-loved albums of the last 40 years. Focusing on one album rather than an artist's entire output, the books dispense with the standard biographical background that fans know already, and cut to the heart of the music on each album.

When the Motor City 5 stormed the stage, the band combined the kinetic flash of James Brown with the raw musical dynamics of the Who gone berserk. Frequently ridiculed, they've been hailed as a primal influence on everything from punk to metal to Rage Against the Machine to the Detroit populist resurgence of the White Stripes, Kid Rock and Eminem.

Bruce Springsteen goes back on the road in 1984. Weinberg hits his drums with a two-fisted physicality that cut through the swelling chords. Springsteen sings with the throat-scraping desperation of a man with his back against the wall. When he reaches the crucial lines, the guitars and bass dropped out and Weinberg switches to just the hi-hat.

Talks about Josh Davis's (DJ Shadow) early years in California, the friends and mentors who helped him along the way, his relationship with Mo'Wax and James Lavelle, and the genesis and creation of his masterpiece, "Endtroducing" (released in 1996). This book includes several long conversations with him.

"Court and Spark" is Joni Mitchell's attempt at making a hit record, full of glossy production, catchy choruses, and even guest stars from every stratum of rock culture. The record was a smash, reaching number two on the charts in March of 1974, spawning three hit singles.

Since its release, "Sell Out", though still not the best selling release in "The Who's" catalog, has been embraced by a growing number of fans. As much as it is an expression of the band's expanding sonic palette, this work also functions as a critique of the rock and roll lifestyle.

"Songs in the Key of Life" is different from the four albums that preceded it; it's a maddeningly ambitious encapsulation of all the progress Stevie Wonder had made in that short space of time. This work covers Stevie Wonder's excessive work habits and recording methodology, his reliance on synthesizers, and other aspects.

Though "Nevermind" was Nirvana's most commercially successful album, and the record that broke them - and the grunge phenomenon - internationally, "In Utero" has increasingly become regarded as the band's best album, both by the critics and the band members themselves. This work tells the story behind the creation of "In Utero".

A collection of short stories - each one a cover version of a song on "Rid of Me".

"Aja" was the album that made Steely Dan a commercial force on the order of contemporaries like Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles and Chicago. A double-platinum, Grammy-winning bestseller, it lingered on the Billboard charts for more than a year and spawned three hit singles. This book paints a detailed picture of the making of a masterpiece.

Trent Reznor rode into music mythology on "Pretty Hate Machine", powered by Futurist industrial pistons and covered in ice-spiked synth hooks shined by new wave robots. Then there was his voice. This book interviews dozens of NIN fans to provide information on the heart of Reznor's very personal appeal.

Features twenty different writers' views on albums by Neutral Milk Hotel, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, David Bowie, the Pixies, the Beastie Boys, Nirvana, REM the Band and many more. This book also serves as a gift for the music lover in your life.

Explores how a tiny acoustic record has puttered and purred its way into the millennium. This book contains interviews of producer Joe Boyd, string arranger Robert Kirby, and the marketing team behind the VW commercial.

The Minutemen have enjoyed something of a revival, due to a chapter in Michael Azerrad's book "Our Band Could Be Your Life", and a documentary film, "We Jam Econo", showcasing the band's legacy. This book sheds light on the band's remarkable music and on an album. It includes interviews with Mike Watt, the band's bass player, and with others.

Provides perspective on how Belle & Sebastian transformed themselves, over the space of a decade, from an underground, slightly shambolic cult secret into a polished, highly entertaining, mainstream pop group. This work includes interviews with band members, producers, management, and a range of fans.

Late in the Reagan years, three young men at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University formed the Christian rap group dc Talk. The trio put out a series of records that quickly secured their place at the forefront of contemporary Christian music. But, with their fourth studio album Jesus Freak (1995), dc Talk staked a powerful claim on the worldly market of alternative music, becoming an evangelical group with secular selling power.This book sets out to study this mid-90s crossover phenomenon-a moment of cultural convergence between Christian and secular music and an era of particular political importance for American evangelicalism. Written by two queer scholars with evangelical pasts, Jesus Freak explores the importance of a multifarious album with complex ideas about race, sexuality, gender, and politics-an album where dc Talk wonders, "What will people do when they hear that I'm a Jesus freak?" and evangelical fans stake a claim for Christ-like coolness in a secular musical world.

In contrast with many of their punk peers, Wire were enigmatic and cerebral, always keeping a distance from the crowd. Although Pink Flag appeared before the end of 1977, it was already a meta-commentary on the punk scene and was far more revolutionary musically than the rest of the competition. This book tells about a punk band.

To absorb Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash is to be taken on a wild voyage with a cast of downtrodden revolutionaries. Despite this notion, the epic themes of the Pogues' second full length record have been overlooked by both critics and biographers. This book discusses the record's articulation of what it is to be magnificently downtrodden.

There was a time when people sat together to listen to records. This album with four separate CDs celebrates this disappearing moment.

Explores a key hip hop album marking the cross over point where the streets and the charts collided.

Looks at the Rolling Stones band in the late 70s - inspired by a year just spent in the disco/punk cauldron of New York City. Weaving together the history of the band and the city, this title traces the genesis and legacy of the album that Mick Jagger would later call the band's best since "Let It Bleed".

In 1978, San Francisco, a city that has seen more than its share of trauma, plunged from a summer of political tension into an autumn cascade of malevolence that so eluded human comprehension it seemed almost demonic. The battles over property taxes and a ballot initiative calling for a ban on homosexuals teaching in public schools gave way to the madness of the Jonestown massacre and the murders of Mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk at the hands of their former colleague, Dan White.In the year that followed this season of insanity, it made sense that a band called Dead Kennedys played Mabuhay Gardens in North Beach, referring to Governor Jerry Brown as a "zen fascist," calling for landlords to be lynched and yuppie gentrifiers to be sent to Cambodia to work for "a bowl of rice a day," critiquing government welfare and defense policies, and, at a time when each week seemed to bring news of a new serial killer or child abduction, commenting on dead and dying children. But it made sense only (or primarily) to those who were there, to those who experienced the heyday of "the Mab."Most histories of the 1970s and 1980s ignore youth politics and subcultures. Drawing on Bay Area zines as well as new interviews with the band and many key figures from the early San Francisco punk scene, Michael Stewart Foley corrects that failing by treating Dead Kennedys' first record, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, as a critical historical document, one that not only qualified as political expression but, whether experienced on vinyl or from the stage of "the Mab," stimulated emotions and ideals that were, if you can believe it, utopian.

This book marks the tenth anniversary of The Grey Album. The online release and circulation of what Danger Mouse called his 'art project' was an unexpected watershed in the turn-of-the-century brawls over digital creative practice. The album's suppression inspired widespread digital civil disobedience and brought a series of contests and conflicts over creative autonomy in the online world to mainstream awareness. The Grey Album highlighted, by its very form, the profound changes wrought by the new technology and represented the struggle over the tectonic shifts in the production, distribution and consumption of music. But this is not why it matters. The Grey Album matters because it is more than just a clever, if legally ambiguous, amalgam. It is an important and compelling case study about the status of the album as a cultural form in an era when the album appears to be losing its coherence and power. Perhaps most importantly, The Grey Album matters because it changes how we think about the traditions of musical practice of which it is a part. Danger Mouse created a broad, inventive commentary on forms of musical creativity that have defined all kinds of music for centuries: borrowing, appropriation, homage, derivation, allusion and quotation. The struggle over this album wasn't just about who gets to use new technology and how. The battle over The Grey Album struck at the heart of the very legitimacy of a long recognised and valued form of musical expression: the interpretation of the work of one artist by another.