​These days, most mediaphiles can look forward to a clever new Tumblr page only every so often to fulfill their reading appetite, so the debut issue of No Tofu magazine is quite a contrast. We stumbled across the daring publication over the weekend at the Snooze Theatre. Since it was at a Surfer Blood performance, it's apt that ex-manager and pal of the band Kelly O'Rourke is the mag's associate director.

As you can tell from the image of the cover at left, ex-Le Tigre member J.D. Samson's new outfit Men is the featured story. Clearly, we're not dealing with a run-of-the-mill music title.

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​Now on shelves, Hipster Puppies is a window into the lives of alt-canines -- lovingly compiled by friend of County Grind and dogs everywhere, Christopher R. Weingarten.

A South Florida native, Weingarten now resides in Brooklyn. He decided to take a lengthy side trip from music writing/ranting to pontificate about the dogs he saw around the city on a Tumblr page with a name you can probably guess. For more on his inspiration for the book, check out our sibling blog Sound of the City's entry, and information on purchasing the book is here.

Throughout this thrilling and adorable read, Weingarten provides the inner monologue of dogs that most certainly have better taste in music than you do. In the spirit of the pups who made this collection possible, Weingarten has assembled a playlist of eight songs and included commentary that'll prompt some yipping back and forth in the trendiest dog parks around the globe.

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Don't throw it in the bag, just toss it in my jacket.

​Now some folks might claim that it's a crime that T-Pain is as famous as he is. But purchasing a drank for a shawty over 21 and penning a subsequent hit single about it is perfectly legal. Misinformation!

This does not mean that Teddy Paindergrass (real name: Faheem Rasheed Najm) has never skirted the law -- and in entertaining fashion, at that. In his new book, Dirty South: OutKast, Lil Wayne, Soulja Boy, and the Southern Rappers Who Reinvented Hip-Hop, intrepid scribe Ben Westhoff managed to coax the hilarious story of how the musician's pal boosted a "whole studio" of recording equipment from a CompUSA location. These illegally procured items were later used to assemble Pain's 2005 breakout album Rappa Ternt Sanga.

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​The Making of Pink Floyd the Wall
By Gerald Scarfe
(Da Capo Press)

While most would agree that Dark Side of the Moon is the quintessential Pink Floyd album (largely due to the fact that it was the record that propelled the group from darlings of the underground to the heights of chart achievement), it could also be argued that The Wall is the more essential Pink Floyd effort, given that it was the band's first actual opus.

Oversized and outrageous, it plucked themes from Roger Waters' disturbed psyche and positioned them front and center, via the chilling songs, elaborate props, and remarkable stage sets that populated the band's live shows. Indeed, it was the first rock epic on a grand scale, as much about imagery and theater as it was about actual musical presentation. Even now, revived in the wake of Waters' current tour (stopping Saturday and Sunday at BankAtlantic Center), it remains perhaps the most sumptuous and extravagant concept ever imagined. The Who may have probed the same themes in Tommy, but Waters and Pink Floyd took the idea far further and created a spectacle that's yet to be rivaled. More >>

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I know from experience that reggaeton is one of those genres that people either love or hate. I myself have mixed feeling about reggaeton, but I admit than I'm fascinated by its cultural impact and worldwide reach. Like salsa before it, reggaeton quickly became the music of choice for a new young generation of young Latinos.

Over the past decade those hard-hitting syncopating beats have been steadily creeping up on us. From the streets to the radio and the night clubs, reggaeton is everywhere you look. And now -- finally -- there's a new book anthology examining the genre.More >>

Carl Wilson, ace music writer for the Toronto Globe & Mail, tackles taste at its basest level: in the work of Celine Dion. Through careful ponderings, fan interviews, historical research, Canadian intuition and thoughtful, expert prose, Wilson struggles to understand the hows and whys of the Quebecois Queen, one of the most polarizing global cultural figures of the past decade, a woman whose appeal cuts across cultures and classes to approach a kind of fame seldom seen, and yet who is nearly universally despised among the critical elite.More >>

Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter still looms in the margins of jazz history. Until now, her contributions during the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies were known mostly to insiders, aficionados, historians, and journalists eager to sensationalize her association with the death of Charlie Parker, who famously died in her living room in 1955.

Though de Koenigswarter's spirit flickers on in the 20-plus compositions written in her honor, it would be impossible to overstate the extent to which she sheltered, fed, bailed out, provided for, and acted as friend and advocate to the musicians on New York City's jazz scene. In this new book, you'll read about her close association with heavyweights like Monk, Davis, Blakey, Powell, and, of course, Parker. During her lengthy and informative introduction, de Koenigswarter's granddaughter Nadine paints a poignant picture of her late grandmother as a woman with a determined drive to nurture. De Koenigswarter, for example, housed more than 100 cats. More >>