I am an author, film composer, guitarist, multimedia artist, and perfumer. As a music journalist, Iāve written extensively for many major U.S. and international guitar publications before launching the website, The Guitar. My music has been featured on National Public Radio and worldwide at major U.S. and international art and design museum festivals. Part of being a writer is about expressing oneās curiosity through constant delving and engaging in the ongoing process of discovery. What compels me is the attempt to understand the inspiration that drives an artist to create a distinctively beautiful melody, fragrance, or artworkāone that grabs your attention with a mesmerizing, transfixing, and soulful quality.
I wrote
My First Guitar: Tales of True Love and Lost Chords from 70 Legendary Musicians
Iāve lived in California and feel that this is the most eloquent book that describes the Golden State from the perspective of a transplanted New Yorker. Though written in the 1960s, many of her observations are still cogent and on the mark, yet, at the same time, they are also revealing about the author. In her essay, āGoodbye to All That,ā she wrote, āFor a lot of the time I was in New York, I used a perfume called Fleurs de Rocaille, and then LāAir du Temps, and not the trace of either can short-circuit my connections for the rest of the day.ā
Joan Didion's savage masterpiece, which, since first publication in 1968, has been acknowledged as an unparalleled report on the state of America during the upheaval of the Sixties Revolution.
We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were
In her non-fiction work, Joan Didion not only describes the subject at hand - her younger self loving and leaving New York, the murderous housewife, the little girl trailing the rock group, the millionaire bunkered in his mansionā¦
Gary Lucas is best known for his guitar wizardry in Captain Beefheart and for his dazzling guitar riffs that create the spine for Jeff Buckleyās hits, āGraceā and āMojo Pin,ā but I know him personally as an intelligent, highly-observant raconteur who has a mordant way of conveying the absurdity that exists within the music business. He deftly captures the lifeblood and pulse that comes with writing, collaborating creating music, which, itself, is always the joy. Touched by Grace offers a glimpse into his unforgettable collaboration with the charismatic singer Jeff Buckley in his band Gods & Monsters, from their first performance together in 1991 on through the stunning news of the singerās tragic drowning in Memphis in 1997.
We're going to do this tribute in St Ann's Church in Brooklyn - a wonderful space. Oh, by the way, we've been contacted by Tim Buckley's son, Jeff. Touched By Grace is an up-close-and-personal account by the legendary guitarist and songwriter Gary Lucas of the time he spent with his friend and collaborator, Jeff Buckley, during Jeff's early days in New York City. It describes their magical performance together at the Greetings From Tim Buckley concert at the Church of St Ann in 1991 - the event that first introduced Jeff to the world at large; the creation of theirā¦
A famous painterās cookbook? If you didnāt think artists eat, think again, and start by Googling images of Monetās kitchen at his house in Giverny. (I said eat, not cook.) Written by the wife of Madame Monetās great-grandson, this book offers you beautiful photographs of this artwork along with diary accounts of his family life and an opportunity to understand one of the great Impressionist artists through the dishes that his wife and family prepared, including his favorite, richly green-hued pistachio cake.
Freyās book is a vivid account of the fin-de-siecle French painter who was born into aristocracy but did not fit in, due to hereditary dwarfism. Lautrec devoted himself to studying painting in Paris, where he fell in with the cabaret theatre and dancehall crowd, along with its contingent, shadier side of sundry misfits, whom he embraced wholly. In the milieu that permitted a laundress (La Goulue) to become a can-can star, Lautrec put himself on the map with his spectacular cabaret posters. I chose this book because though I do not draw portraits, I can relate to my enjoyment of capturing artistic photographs of musicians.
Debauched aristocrat, cabaret painter or accidental dwarf: Julia Frey's definitive biography uses meticulous research to strip away the myth of Toulouse-Lautrec and reveal for the first time the tortured man beneath. 'The book deals seriously and sensitively with Lautrec's progress as an artist, his academic training and the audacious use he put it to. Equally, readers in search of the ooh-la-la side of Paris during the Belle Epoque won't feel short-changed. Almost everyone from Manet to the young Picasso crosses the stage. It is of course a tragic story, but a triumphant one also' George Melly, Mail on Sunday
Truth told, folks still ask if Saul Crabtree sold his soul for the perfect voice. If he sold it to angels or devils. A Bristol newspaper once asked: āAre his love songs closer to heaven than dying?ā Others wonder how he wrote a song so sad, everyone who heard itā¦
Mazzeoās book provides fascinating insight into a perfume that has enjoyed insane sales longevity when most tend to fade from the market. The book offers a portrait of the orphaned young womanās convent upbringing to her days as a chanteuse and milliner to her rise in society as a fashion designer. Some say Chanel No. 5 resulted from a happy fluke of dumping too much aliphatic aldehydes into the juice, yet it became instantly iconic as the first clean, modern perfume, one that did not fall into the established vamp/ingenue fragrance categories of the day. It reached iconic status during WWII as a tax-free product sold in military commissaries around the world. Not all smells sweet: Coco proved to be a Nazi sympathizer in a failed attempt to regain control of her business.
With its rich golden hue, art deco-inspired bottle, and timeless, musky scent, Chanel Number 5 is the world's bestselling perfume. Reverently known among industry insiders as "le monstre" - the monster - it is arguably the most coveted consumer luxury product of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Yet how did this pioneering celebrity fragrance, introduced in the early 1920s, eventually take on a life of its own, becoming a cultural monument celebrated by millions of devoted consumers? "The Secret of Chanel Number 5" is Tilar J. Mazzeo's far-ranging and fascinating search beyond the stuff of legend to uncover the fullā¦
My First Guitar: Tales of True Love and Lost Chords features interviews with over 70 of the worldās most well-known guitarists from different musical genres (rock, classical, flamenco, jazz, blues, country) about how they obtained their start as a professional musician. In each interview, the artist tells their own indelible story in their own words about their early recollections of obtaining their instruments and performing, along with early foibles and hard-won triumphs. Woven in between is the authorās own story of how she came to collect the interviews.
What happens when a feminist who studies romance turns the lens on her own romantic adventures?
Loveland is about how the author came to understand this journey to the far country of loveādating, marriage, a forbidden love affair, an unusual love affair as an older womanāas part of a largerā¦
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on any other single day of the war.
The narrative of No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident while focusing its attention onā¦