I am a great fan of Earl Palmer and eagerly read the book. I was even lucky enough to get him to sign my copy at a jazz fest appearance.

That said, this is a moving book chronicling his rise as THE New Orleans drummer to being the premier studio drummer in the world .

Music is the background of this book-the foreground is more about Palmer's life, loves and career. Palmer is frank, unapologetic, opinionated and somewhat cocky.

He discusses New Orleans in the 40's and 50's, race relations and the music scene from a first person perspective. Its refreshing and full of surprises.

He moves on to chronicle his career in L.A.- how he comes into the scene- who he displaces and eventually how he gets displaced. Anecdotes abound about various sessions and gigs- though not as many as one might want to hear.

What this book clearly is not is some sort of insight into technique or musical philosophy. This disappointed me at first - then I realized Earl can let the huge body of recorded work do the talking there. ( I have seen some video tape for sale where Earl demonstrates various beats and techniques)

The book is a bit choppy and somewhat unpolished at times- but it makes up for it in frankness.- over time I came to appreciate that.

Earl Palmer is an incredibly important figure in pop music. His drumming virtually defines early rock 'n' roll, especially his recordings for the Specialty label in the 1950's.
It was great to hear him talk about his early years and how he became such a major performer in the studios of New Orleans and Hollywood.
It is also fascinating to hear him talk aout his desire to be a bebop drummer.
As a result of reading this book I went out and bought a whole bunch of records with Palmer.
Anyone interested in the roots of rock or in what makes a good drummer should read this book.

If you like behind the scenes stories of the old days of music, this is a book you'll like. Palmer has a gunfighter mentality that enhances his story, and a career that began back in the 1930's when he was a child dancer. He's experienced alot in his career, including the start of rock and roll. His explanation of the rhythmic changes that set early rock and roll apart from the music that came before it is fascinating. Palmer was playing in Little Richard's band and he noticed that Little Richard wasn't playing blues shuffle rhythms on his piano. Although the band could play a blues shuffle behind Little Richard and sound acceptable, as was the case on "Tutti-Frutti," the sound was better when the drummer and the band adapted to the rhythm that Little Richard was playing, as they did on "Lucille". Palmer doesn't know if Little Richard or Chuck Berry invented the rock and roll rhythm first, but he points out that Berry's band always played blues shuffles behind him, while Little Richard's band had a more modern beat. The records bear this out. I thought it was a fascinating explanation, and a cool insight.

The screen prints in this book are so poorly reproduced as to be completely unreadable and there are many, many typos. I am taking a class using this book as a text, and I spend more time trying to figure out what the typos are in the commands than I do learning how to use the software. I sent an email to the publisher regarding the fact that the screen prints, which are white characters of low resolution on a dark background, are nearly invisible; I received a reply that said they were sorry I was having trouble reading the graphics - nothing else - no apology - no statement that this is a recognized problem they would correct in a subsequent edition.

My advice - find a book you can read that you won't have to waste your time proofreading and leave this one on the shelf!

I too was leery of using this textbook in a Unix workshop that I sometimes teach for a graduate program at IUPUI. After reading the negative comments I contacted Course Technology and tracked down the editor for this title. She admitted that there were some serious typos which made the exercises difficult to complete successfully. She told me that they had hired a Linux expert to re-edit the book and it would hopefully be available in time for my class the summer of 2001. It was ready in time and it worked very well for my class. BE AWARE that the ISBN number wasn't changed and the only indication that you have the revised version is the word UPDATED in a gold star in the upper right side of the text cover. Instructors can get a CD with solution files, Powerpoint slides, Test Manager, and an Electronic Instructors Manual. I would agree that perhaps less GUI content and more of the omitted topics noted in other reviews would make this a 5-star textbook.

For users who need to get a good fundamental base of UNIX on limted resources, this is an excellent book. Because LINUX is free and can run on any intel-based machine, it is an excellent platform for students to discover the basics and learn to appreciate UNIX. This book follows a logical sequence to that end and hits on all fundamental skills, explaining things without assuming nor over-explaining.

This guide will not lead to certification on it's own, but it will provide a solid foundation to build upon. After completing this guide, I consider myself a competent and confident UNIX user.

This book is very easy to read, although it is difficult to find. Tony Palmer recounts the OZ trial--one of the longest obscenity trials in history. The background and the trial itself is described very well. My gripe about the novel is that it IS a biased account of the trial, so one cannot form his or her own opinions about the obscenity of OZ magazine--Schoolkids Issue. For those with no background on this trial, it arose from OZ 28, the Schoolkids Issue. Kids, 14-18, edited, wrote, and illustrated for one issue of OZ. Neville, the publisher, allowed the adolescents to express how they felt. Many people found this offensive (because they thought he was targeting children). Although this novel is biased, it does give one information about the trial--since there is such limited imformation about it. Another novel to check out is _Hippie Hippie Shake_ by Richard Neville.