Music reviews and criticism Books
Read Books Southern Baroque Art PaintingArchitecture and Music in Italy and Spain of the 17th 18th Centuries
£23.74
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Too Late To Stop Now
Book SynopsisMore than 40 stories from the glory days of rock''n''roll, featuring Lou Reed, Elton John, Sting and The Clash.Allan Jones brings stories many previously unpublished from the golden days of music reporting. Long nights of booze, drugs and unguarded conversations which include anecdotes, experiences and extravagant behaviour.- A band''s aftershow party in San Francisco being gatecrashed by cocaine-hungry Hells Angels- Chrissie Hynde on how rock''n''roll killed The Pretenders- What happened when Nick Lowe and 20 of his mates flew off to Texas to join the Confederate Air Force- John Cale on his dark alliance with Lou ReedAllan Jones remembers a world that once was one of dark excess and excitement, outrageous deeds and extraordinary talent, featuring legends at both the beginnings and ends of their careers.Trade ReviewMusic fans looking for more vintage fare will enjoy Too Late To Stop Now. * The Independent *The old-school drinking and industrial drug abuse remain, as does the author's decisive indiscretion... many of the chapters unfold at greater length, leaving room for more nuanced reflection on the consequences of all the excessive ribaldry... But mostly, there is comedy... It's ridiculous fun. * Uncut *This unputdownable book ... is rammed with finely recounted anecdotes. This is a first-class Rolls Royce Phantom of a book. -- Paul Davies * Hard Rock Hell *That the book’s subtitle is More Rock’N’Roll War Stories speaks volumes. Because if you want blood, Allan Jones has got it. * The Telegraph *Jones turns it up to 11 with his latest collection. These are captivating and absolutely delightful tales of rock’s wonder and power. * Library Journal *There's unexpected music in Jones's sentences. (Genesis reminded him "less of a rock band than the bell-bottomed equivalent of the school chess team on an outing to an owl sanctuary.") Also unexpected: the disclosure that concludes Too Late to Stop Now. It's 2021, and Jones is invited to tag along on one last gig but realizes that, although "[f]orty-five years ago... I would have jumped on the bus without a second thought," he would prefer to go home to his memories. How lucky for rock diehards that he shares those memories here. * Shelf Awareness *[Jones] knows when to joyfully exploit a glib moment and when to relent to the darkness, like when he goes into extensive detail with Chrissie Hynde about the tragic collapse of the original Pretenders. And there are times when he dead centers the bullseye while taking the measure of his subject. [... If you are looking for a book that gives] a real sense of what real rock and roll was like on either side of the Punk detonation, then look no further. -- Joe Silva * Tracking Angle *Seldom has a rock ’n’ roll memoir been so falling-down funny. Jones doesn’t sit there politely with his notebook and write down the same rote publicist-approved quotes. He waits until they’re completely sloshed, without inhibitions, and then the truth comes out. -- Jim Motavalli * The New York Journal of Books *[The book’s best pieces] combine Jones’ intimate interactions with his interview subjects over time with the sodden interviews recounting them to create insightful portraits of individuals and informed histories of their bands. -- Charles Caramello * Washington Independent Review of Books *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Are We Rolling? Elton John Roy Harper Chris Farlowe Screaming Lord Sutch Little Feat Loudon Wainwright III Peter Gabriel Ian Anderson Lou Reed Wreckless Eric The Damned Peter Cook Guy Clark Joe Cocker Joe Ely Rockpile Juke Box Jury Sting | The Police Bryan Ferry Jerry Dammers Joe 'King' Carrasco Jon Anderson The Fabulous Thunderbirds Nick Lowe And The Confederate Air Force The Blasters The Rolling Stones Captain Sensible John Cale Nick Lowe Dr Feelgood Elmore Leonard Elvis Costello Bob Geldof R.E.M. Lambchop John Carpenter Oliver Stone Chrissie Hynde Robert Plant John Cale Wilko Johnson The Clash The 101’ers The Aftershow
£15.29
£15.73
Pelican Publishing Company Bluegrass Newgrass OldTime and Americana Music
Book Synopsis
£21.21
Pelican Publishing Company Last Night When We Were Young
Book Synopsis
£16.96
Xlibris The Bleeding of Mozart
£16.99
Hal Leonard Corporation The Hammond Organ Book An Introduction to the
Book SynopsisTHE HAMMOND ORGAN: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE INSTUMENT AND THE PLAYERS WHO MADE IT FAMOUS
£39.06
Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co ,U.S. Music Works A Music Appreciation Workbook
Book SynopsisTable of Contents Music Interview Music Interest Survey Relating Music to Other Subjects Music Theory Music Theory Staff Paper Form in Music Music Science Instruments Voice Types Ancient Instrument Report Medieval Music Terms Medieval Composer Report Medieval Music Discussion Questions Medieval and Renaissance Dance Music Renaissance Music Terms Renaissance Composer Report Renaissance Music Discussion Questions Baroque Music Terms Baroque Composer Report Baroque Music Discussion Questions Classical Period Music Terms Classical Period Composer Report Classical Period Discussion Questions Romantic Period Music Terms Romantic Period Composers Discussion Questions Romantic Period Discussion Questions Romantic Period Music Drawing Twentieth Century Terms Twentieth Century Music Questions Jazz Styles and Artists Music Theatre Composer Report Screen Music Composer Assignment Social Reform and Messages in Music Listening Report Forms Concert Report Forms Movie Music Reviews Music History Period Worksheet
£58.50
DK The Classical Music Book
Book Synopsis
£23.75
DK El libro de la música clásica The Classical Music
Book Synopsis
£25.19
DK The Complete Classical Music Guide
Book Synopsis
£25.19
Arcadia Publishing The Decade
Book Synopsis
£19.99
Arcadia Publishing Gennett Records and Starr Piano Images of America
Book Synopsis
£19.99
Arcadia Publishing Carolina Bluegrass A High Lonesome History
Book Synopsis
£18.69
History Press A History of Pittsburgh Jazz Swinging in the
Book Synopsis
£18.69
History Press The Birth of Seattle Rap
£19.73
MP-NCA Uni of North Carolina Battle Hymns The Power and Popularity of Music
Book Synopsis
£26.36
Headline Publishing Group Perfect Sound Whatever
Book Synopsis*The Sunday Times Bestseller*The brand new memoir from James Acaster: cult comedian, bestselling author of Classic Scrapes, undercover cop, receiver of cabbages.PERFECT SOUND WHATEVER is a love letter to the healing power of music, and how one man''s obsessive quest saw him defeat the bullshit of one year with the beauty of another. Because that one man is James Acaster, it also includes tales of befouling himself in a Los Angeles steakhouse, stealing a cookie from Clint Eastwood, and giving drunk, unsolicited pep talks to urinating strangers. January, 2017James Acaster wakes up heartbroken and alone in New York, his relationship over, a day of disastrous meetings leading him to wonder if comedy is really what he wants to be doing any more. A constant comfort in James''s life has been music, but he''s not listened to anything new for a very long time. Idly browsing ''best of the year'' lists, it dawns on him that 2016 mTrade ReviewImmensely comforting - a witty and wise account of the rejuvenating effect of opening yourself up the the creativity of others. * Record Collector *Loved James Acaster's memoir / epic listicle that posits his theory that 2016 was the best year for music. His dry wit I expected, but was impressed by the real life stories of so many musicians the world over. Paints a striking picture of what it means to be a modern musician. * Edgar Wright *honest, unaffected, poignant - and, yes, entertaining * Chortle *James is a phenomenally talented comedian and his music taste is second only to mine. * Romesh Ranganathan *If, as the pundits say, comedy is like jazz then I'm against it. I didn't drill power chords and feedback techniques just to go fannying about looking for the melody. James Acaster, though, is a bit of an outlier. He's a music wonk with a sense of the ridiculous and his controversial theory that 2016 was the greatest year for music ever is off by a mere five decades. Interesting take, though. * David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap *
£11.69
Taylor & Francis Ltd Applying Karnatic Rhythmical Techniques to
Book SynopsisMost classical musicians, whether in orchestral or ensemble situations, will have to face a piece by composers such as Ligeti, Messiaen, Varèse or Xenakis, while improvisers face music influenced by Dave Holland, Steve Coleman, Aka Moon, Weather Report, Irakere or elements from the Balkans, India, Africa or Cuba. Rafael Reina argues that today's music demands a new approach to rhythmical training, a training that will provide musicians with the necessary tools to face, with accuracy, more varied and complex rhythmical concepts, while keeping the emotional content. Reina uses the architecture of the South Indian Karnatic rhythmical system to enhance and radically change the teaching of rhythmical solfege at a higher education level and demonstrates how this learning can influence the creation and interpretation of complex contemporary classical and jazz music. The book is designed for classical and jazz performers as well as creators, be they composers or improvisers, and is a clear Trade Review"This important study provides a comprehensive view of one of the richest rhythmic traditions in the world. Built on sustained experiential learning, Karnatic rhythm provides an almost scientific investigation of rhythmic possibility, something which, through dedication and long study, Rafael Reina is especially able to convey and invoke. His is a study from a Western musician, and the double benefit of this book is that he is then able to demonstrate the efficacy and inspiration that a Karnatic approach to rhythm and rhythmic structure can bring to Western music, showing both how it can enhance performance and learning techniques, and also be a source for the composer of intriguing and reframing compositional devices." Peter Wiegold, Brunel University, UK"It is impossible to discuss the whole content of this extensive work here, but this is unmistakably a book you can continue to read for many years with great pleasure, to either improve yourself or be inspired by new creative ideas." David de Marez Oyens, de Bassist Magazine"Applying Karnatic Rhythmical Techniques to Western Music is an ambitious book. In less than 500 pages, Rafael Reina is able to present dozens of Karnatic techniques, explain how to practice them, and show how they can be applied to learning and creating rhythmically advanced music, giving composers, improvisers, and other musicians a great array of tools. Furthermore, Reina’s work allows readers to access all of this information without needing to become fluent in a different language or having to learn a new instrument…The second part of the book centers on applying Karnatic techniques to performing and composing Western music. The first chapter analyzes works from composers such as Brian Ferneyhough, Vijay Iyer, György Ligeti, John McLaughlin, Iannis Xenakis, and Frank Zappa, organizing them according to the rhythmic procedures featured in the piece. Although many of the excerpts were written by composers with no knowledge of Indian music, the use of Karnatic techniques to describe these works is not forced, as the similarities with the rhythmic devices explored in the first section are obvious. Here, Reina’s thesis shines by showing how the study of Karnatic music is a great aid when dealing with complex compositions, even if their relationship with Indian music is unintended. The second chapter presents three pieces by Reina’s students with commentaries from both the author and the composers. Complete scores are included for all three works and the Karnatic techniques utilized are listed and explained. This chapter showcases how the rhythmic devices featured in the book can be integrated into Western music in a variety of different ways. Each composer has a distinct approach, but none of them seem interested in Karnatic music for its exotic flavor; most listeners probably would not hear any Indian influence. In the commentaries, the students express how Reina’s program has given them a more cohesive method for working with complex rhythms, which has also improved their music’s playability". Echo: A Music-Centered Journal, Volume 15.1 (2019)‘I am convinced that the rhythmical concepts I learned from the Advanced Rhythm programme , crystallised in the book Applying Karnatic rhythmical techniques to western music gave me an advantage while preparing for the International Gaudeamus competition, for which I won the 1st prize in 1996. My private instrumental instruction with Harrie Starreveld was of course a huge inspiration, support and guidance. But instrumental instructors do not follow you into the practice room. What follows you are concepts you pick up on how to practice and approach music. Since I was deep into the ideas from the programme, I found ways to dissect complex rhythms from the perspective of Karnatic rhythmical structures and make studies out of difficult passages using Karnatic improvisational methods.’ Helen Bledsoe, flute player with MusikFabriek (Cologne)‘In my various capacities as former percussionist and also as conductor of both instrumental ensembles and choirs throughout Europe I am constantly struck by the inadequacies of the majority of western musicians in the domain of rhythm. That goes especially for all the professional singers with whom I work regularly today - to a lesser extent for the instrumentalists and to a lesser extent still for the percussionists - but even the very finest of today's European, Japanese and American percussionists still have an awful lot to learn from the phenomenal traditions in the percussive arts of India, Iran and the Middle East. In his ground-breaking book, Applying Karnatic Rhythmical Techniques to Western Music, Rafael Reina has not only provided an in-depth study of Karnatic rhythmics and its history, but he has also taken the crucial extra step in teaching it to Western musicians and composers in a way which will transform the way they think about rhythm. This revelation has the potential to bring all of us Western musicians closer to the source of that innate gift of rhythm that so many Indian and Iranian musicians seem to have.’ James Wood, B.A. Hons (Cantab.), F.R.A.M., F.R.C.O. Composer, conductor, musicologist, former percussionist - Professor of Percussion: Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt 1982-1994‘Rafael Reina is the foremost figure in devising practical pedagogical approaches to the technical integration of Karnatic musical techniques into the performance of western music and composition. His work has not been concerned with surface stylistic features but with fundamental concepts that have universal significance. These aspirations have been cultivated by him over very many years and has greatly benefitted the many students of the Amsterdam Conservatorium through the unique programmes he inaugurated called 'Advanced Rhythm' and ‘Applications of karnatic rhythm to western music’. His book Applying Karnatic Rhythmical Techniques to Western Music (Ashgate 2015) brings together more than twenty years of experience and study in this field. It is an impressively comprehensive work with no obvious comparisons. At present it stands alone.’ Frank Denyer (composer, emeritus professor Dartington College, University of Falmouth, UK)‘I met Rafael Reina years ago, when I was in the midst of a decade long study of Karnatic music, searching for ways to integrate the principles into my own work. When I visited Amsterdam and saw his students at work, it was immediately clear to me that he had found ways to utilize principles and techniques of Karnatic music that simultaneously respected this tradition and expanded the abilities of performers in his program. Later, when Applying Karnatic Rhythmical Techniques to Western Music was published, I gained a fuller understanding of the scope of his ambition, which is massive and ongoing. Based on my experience of 25 years of touring and teaching around the world, it is my opinion that Rafael Reina is in a singular position to advance rhythmic pedagogy in a direction that unites Western and Eastern modes of thought in a truly unique way.’ Miles Okazaki (B.A. Harvard University, M.M. Manhattan School of Music, A.D. Juilliard School, professor of guitar and rhythmic studies, University of Michigan)‘For years I have been using Applying Karnatic Rhythmical Techniques to Western Music in my Composition Courses at Brussels Royal Flemish Conservatory and the Bornem Academy, and currently in the MUSICA MUNDI SCHOOL, Waterloo. The opportunities that Karnatic rhythms (including poly rhythmic, poly pulse and poly tempo) offer are absolutely unique. The rhythmic vocabulary generated with so many new techniques is not available in classical music. With the application of those rhythms new music is seriously enriched with great achievements. The sensations the listener experiences are fascinating and astonishing.’ Dr Jan van Landeghem, PhD in the Arts (VUB KCB Brussels), Composer – Organist - Pianist, Emeritus Professor Composition Royal Conservatory Brussels, Honorary Director Academy for Music, Theater and Dance Bornem. Professor Composition Musica Mundi School Brussels. Member of the Royal Flemish Aademy for Sciences and Arts Brussels ‘More and more young composers from all over the world with a thorough knowledge of the rhythmic traditions of South Indian music have emerged during the past few years. But it is not so much the knowledge which matters here, it is all about the know-how. The know-how of how to implement Karnatic theory of rhythm into practice, the practice of composing new music according to how it has been understood in the West. This is what makes the courses of Karnatic music taught at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and Rafael Reina’s book Applying Karnatic rhythmical techniques to western music absolutely unique.’ Toivo Tulev, Leading Professor Department of Composition and Improvisational Performing Arts, EAMT. Former Composition artistic director of the Tallinn Academy of Music and Theatre'Rafael Reina’s book is a masterpiece. The most thorough and complete work I have ever explored in the field of advanced rhythmic concepts explained, using western music notation and language. The combination of Reina’s comprehensive knowledge of the Karnatic Rhythmical techniques, with his understanding of what needs to be explained for a musician brought up in the western music tradition (and how to explain it), places his work in a league of its own among "rhythm aficionados" all over the world.' Jonas Johansen (Denmark) – Independent drummer, composer, bandleader and educator. (Former: Danish Radio Big Band 1990 – 99 / NHØP Trio 1993 – 2004 / Associate Professor Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen 1999 – 2016)Table of ContentsInstructions to Access Online Material, Rafael Reina; Introduction, Rafael Reina; Part 1 Description of Karnatic Concepts and Techniques; Chapter 102 A: Foundations, Rafael Reina; Chapter 1 The Tala System, Rafael Reina; Chapter 2 Gatis, Rafael Reina; Chapter 3 Jathis, Rafael Reina; Chapter 4 Gati Bhedam, Rafael Reina; Chapter 5 Rhythmical Sangatis, Rafael Reina; Chapter 6 Jathi Bhedam, Rafael Reina; Chapter 7 Introduction to Anuloma-Pratiloma, Rafael Reina; Chapter 103 B: Exclusively Creative Techniques, Rafael Reina; Chapter 8 Mukthays, Rafael Reina; Chapter 9 Yati Phrases, Rafael Reina; Chapter 10 Yati Mukthays, Rafael Reina; Chapter 11 Tirmanas, Rafael Reina; Chapter 12 Compound Mukthays, Rafael Reina; Chapter 13 Yatis Prastara, Rafael Reina; Chapter 14 Double and Triple Mukthays, Rafael Reina; Chapter 15 Mukthay Combinations, Rafael Reina; Chapter 16 Poruttam A, Rafael Reina; Chapter 17 Moharas, Rafael Reina; Chapter 104 C: Motta Kannakku, Rafael Reina; Chapter 18 Nadai Bhedam, Rafael Reina; Chapter 19 Mixed Jathi Nadai Bhedam, Rafael Reina; Chapter 20 Combinations Anuloma-Pratiloma, Rafael Reina; Chapter 21 Derived Creative Techniques, Rafael Reina; Chapter 105 D: Recent Developments, Rafael Reina; Chapter 22 Tala Prastara, Rafael Reina; Chapter 23 Further Development of the Mukhy System, Rafael Reina; Chapter 24 Latest Developments of Gatis, Rafael Reina; Part 2 Pedagogical and Creative Applications to Western Music, Rafael Reina; Chapter 25 Application of Karnatic Techniques to Existing Western Pieces, Rafael Reina; Chapter 26 Analysis of Students’ Pieces, Rafael Reina; Chapter 106 Conclusion, Rafael Reina Sources of Information, Rafael Reina;
£45.59
Hodder & Stoughton The Great Romantic
Book SynopsisTHE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERAND WINNER OF THE 2019 WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEARDuncan Hamilton is already a multiple award-winning sports writer, but it is hard to imagine he will write a better book than this superb, elegiac portrait of the sociable, feted, but ultimately unknowable, man who virtually invented modern sports writing...This is writing every bit the equal of Cardus himself. - Daily Mail''Hamilton is a worthy biographer... as much sublime writing comes from his keyboard as from Cardus''s pen.'' The Times''With its verve, insight and generosity of sympathy, this is by some way the best full-length life of a cricket writer, perhaps even of any sports writer.'' Guardian Neville Cardus described how one majestic stroke-maker ''made music'' and ''spread beauty'' with his bat. Between two world wars, he became the laureate of cricket by doing the same with words.In Trade ReviewDuncan Hamilton is already a multiple award-winning sports writer, but it is hard to imagine he will write a better book than this superb, elegiac portrait of the sociable, feted, but ultimately unknowable, man who virtually invented modern sports writing...This is writing every bit the equal of Cardus himself. * Daily Mail *Duncan Hamilton has written some of the best books about sport in recent years. Twice he has won the William Hill for the sports book of the year... He [Cardus] interpreted cricket through a filter of his own, an imagination of uncommon sensitivity, and all who came after are in his debt. All lovers of cricket will enjoy this book. You could say that Hamilton has done it again. -- Michael Henderson * The Cricketer *Hamilton is a worthy biographer. Ten years after his fine biography of Harold Larwood, the maligned England fast bowler, this is just as good, and as much sublime writing comes from his keyboard as from Cardus's pen. -- Patrick Kidd * The Times *The Great Romantic has a strong personal flavour, especially in its tour de force of a prologue...the interest seldom falters. With its verve, insight and generosity of sympathy, this is by some way the best full-length life of a cricket writer, perhaps even of any sports writer. -- David Kynaston * The Guardian *This is not just stand-out sports writing but a stand-out study: one writer acknowledging another. * Sydney Morning Herald *Praise for Going to the Match * : *Hamilton is steeped in the history and traditions of football and communicates his knowledge lightly and with wit and intelligence. Above all, though, this is a fan's-eye view that brilliantly expresses the passion that millions like him, in pursuit of happiness and belonging, feel for the beautiful game. Simply magnificent. * Mail on Sunday *In Duncan Hamilton, one of the most accomplished of current sports writers, Cardus has found a worthy biographer who has ferreted out hidden details of his life, including those that Cardus himself skated over in his two volumes of autobiography. The Great Romantic is beautifully written, and Cardus would surely have approved of it. -- Stephen Bates * Literary Review *
£11.69
Edinburgh University Press Modernism Music and the Politics of Aesthetics
Book SynopsisUsing an approach to music informed by T. W. Adorno, this book examines the real-world, political significance of seemingly abstracted things like musical and literary forms.Trade Review"Taking up longstanding debates on the politics of modernist aesthetics, Gemma Moss frames her lines of inquiry brilliantly through Adorno.? Her understanding of music is crucial to her breakthrough understandings.? This is a book that will make a significant difference in our reading and listening to modernism at work in the world." -Vincent Sherry, Washington University in St Louis
£23.39
Orion Publishing Co This Womans Work
Book SynopsisThis Woman''s Work: Essays on Music is edited by Kim Gordon and Sinéad Gleeson and features contributors Anne Enright, Fatima Bhutto, Jenn Pelly, Rachel Kushner, Juliana Huxtable, Leslie Jamison, Liz Pelly, Maggie Nelson, Margo Jefferson, Megan Jasper, Ottessa Moshfegh, Simone White, Yiyun Li and Zakia Sewell.Published to challenge the historic narrative of music and music writing being written by men, for men, This Woman''s Work seeks to confront the male dominance and sexism that have been hard-coded in the canons of music, literature, and film and has forced women to fight pigeon-holing or being side-lined by carving out their own space. Women have to speak up, to shout louder to tell their story - like the auteurs and ground-breakers featured in this collection, including: Anne Enright on Laurie Anderson; Megan Jasper on her ground-breaking work with Sub Pop; Margo Jefferson on Bud Powell and Ella Fitzgerald; and Fatima Bhutto on music and dicTrade ReviewThis Woman's Work is a captivating read that brings memories and music into the same space to show how closely they are connected. It will make you want to dig out the songs your mother played to help you fall asleep as a child or the CD that never left your stereo in your teens * The Wire *[This Woman's Work] strikes a chord: "We can't help but surrender to what moves us in the sound even if it seems contradictory or irrational; in fact, our experience of music is full of contradictions," Heather Leigh writes in the introduction. The result is a collection worth tuning in to * Publishers Weekly *By inhabiting the sound worlds these women create, we get to engage with a vast range of ideas, to consider profound concepts of liberty and oppression, of joy and terror. Always there are the notes between, of the unexpected, the nuanced, the bold. . . This Woman's Work is an important collage of tenses, disciplines, perspectives, borders and experiences. * The Quietus *This Woman's Work is a collection of music writing, but in the loosest possible sense. Here, music is the soil in which all manner of stories take seed and bloom * Guardian *Sixteen bright, insightful essays that present an array of trailblazers, geniuses, obsessives * Irish Times *
£9.49
McFarland & Co Inc The Sound of Cinema
Book Synopsis While some film scores crash through theater speakers to claim their place in memory, others are more unassuming. Either way, a film''s score is integral to successful world building. This book lifts the curtain on the elusive yet thrilling art form, examining the birth of the Hollywood film score, its turbulent evolution throughout the decades and the multidimensional challenges to musicians that lie ahead. The history of the film score is illuminated by extraordinary talents (like John Williams, Hans Zimmer and countless others). Beginning with vaudeville and silent cinema, chapters explore the wonders of early pioneers like Max Steiner and Bernard Herrmann, and continue through the careers of other soundtrack titans. Leading Hollywood film composers offer in this book fascinating perspectives on the art of film music composition, its ongoing relevance and its astonishing ability to enhance a filmmaker''s vision.Trade ReviewAccessible...vivid...ambitious in its scope...Sean Wilson is a trusted guide with an obvious passion for (and knowledge of) the subject...the detail here is pretty extraordinary, with fascinating asides and valuable insights"—BBC Music MagazineTable of Contents Acknowledgments Foreword: What Constitutes a Great Film Score? by Amon Warmann Preface One. Tremolo: The Onset of Film Music Two. Forte: The Romantic Era Takes Shape Three. Glissando: Jazz, Rock and Roll and the Slide Towards Experimentalism Four. Allegro: Star Wars and the Resurgence of the Symphonic Score Five. Atonal: The Role of Film Music in the Era of Franchising Six. Dissonance: Gender Disparity, Temp Scores and Rejected Scores Coda: The Future of Hollywood Film Scoring Chapter Notes Bibliography Index
£39.93
McFarland & Co Inc The 12 Days of Christmas
Book Synopsis In the whole body of Christmas carols sung in English, among the most famous and beloved is a song universally called The Twelve Days of Christmas. Although its association with the holiday remains unquestioned, the tune was originally a raucous drinking song with wildly different connotations. This book documents the unfamiliar and distant history of one of the world''s most well-known holiday songs, inextricably linked to the earliest celebrations of a festival suppressed by the Church itself. The rowdy and mischievous tone of traditional Christmas has vanished, as have the songs that accompanied the festival of drinking, gambling, fighting, feasting and sex. Modern participants of Christmas may be either embarrassed or pleased to discover the scandalous roots of a beloved holiday classic.Table of Contents Table of Contents Acknowledgments vi Preface 1 Chapter 1 7 Chapter 2 15 Chapter 3 28 Chapter 4 37 Chapter 5 45 Chapter 6 51 Chapter 7 61 Chapter 8 67 Chapter 9 71 Chapter 10 91 Chapter 11 101 Chapter 12 109 Chapter 13 125 Chapter 14 136 Chapter 15 143 Chapter 16 150 Chapter 17 154 Chapter 18 170 Chapter 19 176 Chapter Notes 187 Works Cited 217 Index 221
£29.41
Simon & Schuster Angelic Music The Story of Ben Franklins Glass
Book Synopsis
£13.60
University of Texas Press Night Moves
Book SynopsisWritten in taut, mesmerizing, often hilarious scenes, Night Moves captures the fierce friendships and small moments that form us all. Drawing on her personal journals from the aughts, Jessica Hopper chronicles her time as a DJ, living in decrepit punk houses, biking to bad loft parties with her friends, exploring Chicago deep into the night. And, along the way, she creates an homage to vibrant corners of the city that have been muted by sleek development. A book birthed in the amber glow of Chicago streetlamps, Night Moves is about a transformative moment of cultural history—and how a raw, rebellious writer found her voice.Trade ReviewThough the entries jump around and there's no sense of time passing. . . As the book goes on the humor is tougher, the point of view sharper, the writer's purchase on her city like a fist closing. * Rolling Stone *[Night Moves is] about a special blend of being present and feeling simultaneously nostalgic, looking at a block in any city that you love so much, and thinking of everything that's already changed and will change. * NPR *These universal stories could be about your city's rock clubs and bookstores. But it's Hopper's scene, and she shares it with sweetness and immediacy, like a long letter from that pal who always helps you schlep your bike home. * Pitchfork *A love letter to the city, [Night Moves is] also a glimpse into Hopper's friendships and her time navigating the scene that she was documenting in her public work. * New York Times *In this lively and funny collection, [Hopper] bears vivid witness to an industrial punk landscape that is both crumbling and evolving beneath her bare feet. * Kirkus *Rather than bogging readers down with the mundanity of the everyday, Hopper cuts right to the good stuff again and again, like a Lungfish record. Unlike Higgs and company, though, there’s no repetition here, just a collection of lovely moments depicting a time in a place with a tight group of friends. * Razorcake *Hopper is ever-quotable, gut-checkingly deep, and laugh-out-loud funny. * Booklist *[Night Moves is] the perfect book for recapturing that lightning-like feeling of being young and wild and free, of feeling music in every part of your body. * Nylon *A slim memoir born out of a Chicago music critic’s personal journals from the 2000s—complete with bad nights, good punks, bad lofts, good sets, bad weather, good music, and a keen observer’s eye. * Lit Hub *Hopper digs into the minutiae of her neighborhood in order to find reasons to love it more. The prose itself feels free, like being young in a city—the length and moodiness of the days, the sudden highs and lows, the importance of seemingly unimportant things. * Bookforum *[Night Moves] offers a specific and singular glimpse of the city, and a window into a point in time that now seems long past. * Vol. 1 Brooklyn *This lovely and succinct memoir by music critic Jessica Hopper reads as if the coolest girl you know has let you take a peek at her personal diary. * Vulture *Night Moves isn’t your typical memoir and maybe that’s because Hopper isn’t your typical writer. Her precise attention to detail, infatuation with the Midwest, and her uncompromising, all-encompassing love of music make this book a joy to read. Though the book is short, your favorite entries will stick with you long after you finish. * Paste Magazine *In chapters as meandering as her bike rides and walks through the city, the book’s nonlinear structure enhances the sense of discovery that Hopper herself feels as she finds her way and her voice. * Chicago Tribune *A funny, elegantly written book of essays about [Hopper's] life and the punk scene in Chicago in the 2000s. * The Stranger *An enliving, heartening read, wriggling with its own vitality as irresistibly as On the Road. * 3:AM Magazine *Night Moves revels in subtle but wholly Chicago moments. . . Hopper understands her fleeting interactions with both friends and strangers as representative of the rhythm of the city—and she often describes them with an agile sense of humor. * Chicago Reader *The writing feels immediate, as if it were jotted down right after Hopper got home from one of her urban adventures. * The Capital Times *Hopper paints a vivid impression of what the city was like in the mid-aughts for a creative writer coming into her own. * Chicago Magazine *Companionship is the primary language through which Hopper maps Chicago and her experiences within it. . . Her patchwork of insights brings truth at a distance — the city itself is nothing without the way we talk about it. * Passion of the Weiss *[Night Moves] reads like a wry, deeply felt love letter to friends, bikes, and Chicago night air. * The Current *[Night Moves] does something we need books to do in 2018—it gives readers a neutral space to kick around thoughts of their own glory days by omitting dates and fame, root causes of anxiety. * Houston Chronicle *The poetry and absurdity of existence are constant companions in the pages of Night Moves. * Longreads *A charming ode to friendship, aging and what it means to truly love the place you call home. -- Juan Vidal * NPR *A whirl of gigs, clubs, day jobs, zines, record shops, lame parties, showing up at a Hold Steady video shoot, toting your broken bike through the streets, watching the industrial zone turn into yuppie jizz discos. * Rolling Stone, Best Music Books of 2018 *In [Hopper's] words, seemingly normal everyday things take on a colorful and lively turn. * Brooklyn Based *Hopper might be focused on Chicago in Night Moves, but anyone who's ever loved local music will find themselves in this book. * Pacific Northwest Inlander *Hopper's diaristic memoir is…a celebration of life, rebellion, music, and friendship, and it'll make nostalgics of anyone who reads it. * Nylon, Best Books to Give *A really joyful portrait of cycling around the city, going to punk shows, seeing gentrification happening and being aware that you're part of it, mourning what's disappearing, but also valuing the new. * Five Books *Hopper's writing is impressionistic and anecdotal (with the sort of eye for detail which makes every scene jump off the page and appear as a set piece built right in front of you). * Passion of the Weiss *Night Moves is a dozen thorny roses for the city that keeps blowing its windy-ness beneath her darkly comic wings. * PopMatters *The equivalent of a cinema vérité film, with scenes slipping in and out of focus and a chronology deliberately jumbled…[Night Moves] is a series of gritty, unpolished, candid vignettes that allow readers to glimpse a city experienced by a young woman who is both part of the underground music scene and an observer of it, with a wary eye and wry humor. * Library Journal *Hopper collects the detritus and reassembles a city strung along a train bridge and overheard musics…Turning her ear to sonic echoes, Hopper remakes that Chicago here—that city already far gone. * Rain Taxi *[Night Moves] may be best evoked in an image of Hopper and a friend walking their bikes home late at night, trying to think up an old band's back catalogue: 'Aging longers waxing nerdy in the night light.' * Adroit Journal *Table of Contents Introduction friends, bikes, the long night bands, shows, water with ice Chicago Acknowledgments
£12.34
University of Texas Press Youre with Stupid
Book Synopsis2023 ARSC Awards for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research, Association for Recorded Sound Collections An insider’s look at how Chicago’s underground music industry transformed indie rock in the 1990s. In the 1990s, Chicago was at the center of indie rock, propelling bands like the Smashing Pumpkins and Liz Phair to the national stage. The musical ecosystem from which these bands emerged, though, was expansive and diverse. Grunge players comingled with the electronic, jazz, psychedelic, and ambient music communities, and an inventive, collaborative group of local labels—kranky, Drag City, and Thrill Jockey, among others—embraced the new, evolving sound of indie “rock.” Bruce Adams, co-founder of kranky records, was there to bear witness. In You’re with Stupid, Adams offers an insider’s look at the role Chicago’s underground music industry played in the transformation of indTrade ReviewIndependent music from Chicago was absolutely essential to my developing sensibilities. My teenage mind was blown away by labels like Touch & Go, Drag City, and Thrill Jockey, but as I dug deeper, I zeroed in on the magical, shadowy kranky. It was pre-Internet, and I didn't get all the scene connections or timelines, I just happily listened in my shitty apartment and felt my world shift. You're with Stupid does something equally remarkable: It tells the history of that time and place without making any of that early, optimistic magic disappear. -- Brandon Stosuy, co-founder, The Creative IndependentYou're with Stupid serves as a primer on the independent record label boom of the late 1980s, the documenting of a city's diverse scene, and the quiet explosion of a new kind of music via kranky. Most importantly, it offers the backstories of some of your favorite bands and albums of the last thirty years. -- Mac McCaughan, coauthor of Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, the Indie Label That Got Big and Stayed SmallThis well-informed love letter to Chicago, a hub of DIY music and sonic explorations, allows the reader to witness the birth of a label and largely covert scene that continues to mutate and resonate. Bruce Adams, though, avoids pure homage, bringing the same acute critical eye, and yes, barbed tongue, that helped build this musical revolution. A funny, bullshit-free chronicle of life in underground music. -- Kevin Martin, The Bug, King Midas Sound, ZonalA story of passion and perseverance with a soundtrack that echoes from the pages...Dedicated fans of ’90s alt rock will find inspiration and lessons. * Publishers Weekly *[Adams'] prose efficiently wrings out important and nutsy-boltsy specifics that will trigger strong memories in those who were there, enrapture readers who bought the records in lieu of being there, and perhaps encourage the spawn of Those Who Came Before to bring back, aurally if not in person, artists like Labradford and Bowery Electric and Jessamine. * Backyard Industry *There was once a point when indie music tended to mean something with clear connections to rock music. Nowadays, that line is much more blurred, making for some stunning artistic feats — and the music scene in Chicago in the 1990s and 2000s played a big part in that. Bruce Adams’s new book offers an inside look at the evolution of that scene and its lasting impact. * InsideHook *You’re with Stupid proves [Adams] as adept at communicating what it was like to be immersed in a time and place of intense creativity as behind the scenes making it happen. * The Wire *You’re with Stupid is most successful when it contextualizes kranky inside the larger Chicago music scene—and indie as a whole. Chicago was and is such a vibrant city musically that the larger discussions of where the bands and labels fit into regional and national networks of groups, scenes, and zines were welcome and illuminating...this book got me interested in music that was new to me—I dug around online for Labradford and Stars Of The Lid—and gave me a greater sense of Chicago’s scene in the ’90s. * Razorcake *Adams’ book is a story about both a Chicago and a world that doesn’t exist anymore…[You're with Stupid is] a first-hand account of a fascinating time in music history to motivate us into some truly focused, immersive, offline activity. * Bandcamp Daily *[Adams] does a great service in sketching out the different rosters and aesthetic approaches [indie record labels in Chicago] took...You’re with Stupid is both a cultural history of the Chicago music world at that time, as told through the record labels and distributors that Adams worked for, and a how-to road map to founding a DIY operation. * Bookforum *[You’re with Stupid] succeeds as both a memoir and a cultural history of a brief wrinkle in time when a few Chicago neighborhoods seemed to comprise the center of a then-flourishing underground rock universe. * Aquarium Drunkard *You’re with Stupid is a thoroughly entertaining read...Reading the book feels like sitting next to [Adams] on a bar stool, hearing memories of a bygone but beloved musical era straight from the horse’s mouth. * Aquarium Drunkard *You're With Stupid is every self-described Gen X music nerd's dream come true. * The Stranger *kranky co-founder Bruce Adams provides behind-the-scenes insight on the Windy City’s music labels (with Touch & Go and Wax Trax! leading the charge) and how they contributed to the meteoric rise of Gen X stars such as Liz Phair, Nirvana, and Smashing Pumpkins...this book nurtures our sense of nostalgia for a tremendous decade of music, especially in kranky’s pursuit to 'release music that transcended the moment,' and reminds us of simpler, pre-Internet times where radio airplay, touring, and fanzines heavily influenced the success of music’s breakout stars. * SPIN, "Best Music Books of 2022" *The best kranky releases sound refreshingly different, not just from other indie rock of the ‘90s but from nearly everything on the radio, or off it, in 2022. They’re well worth a listen. And You’re with Stupid is worth a read, especially if you belong to the generation that stayed up late to catch '120 Minutes' on MTV and attended Yo La Tengo shows in multiple millennia. * Washington Independent Review of Books *[Adams] proves to be an incisive and wry observer of the Windy City's paradigm-shifting musical ecosystem and his role in shaping rock's vanguard...You're with Stupid abounds with interesting insights about musical and cultural niches that deserve more attention and, more importantly, it reveals the inner workings of one of history's greatest record companies. * The Stranger *An amazing and insightful read into one of the more low-key scenes of [the 1990s]. * The Recoup *Table of Contents Introduction 1. Hey Chicago 2. Honk if You Hate People, Too 3. That That Is . . . Is (Not): 1991–1992 4. Accelerating on a Smoother Road: 1992–1993 5. Analog Technology Makes Space Travel Possible: 1994 6. Slow Thrills: 1995 7. The Taut and the Tame: 1996 8. London Was Ridiculous: 1997 9. An Audience Hungry to Hear What Would Happen Next: 1998 10. Both Ends Fixed: 1999 11. After This They Chose Silence: 2000–2002 Epilogue: Specifically Dissatisfied Since 1993 Acknowledgments Author’s Notes Index
£19.94
University of Texas Press Why Mariah Carey Matters
Book SynopsisThe first book to critically examine the legacy of pop superstar Mariah Carey. When it comes to Mariah Carey, star power is never in doubt. She has sold hundreds of millions of albums and cut more chart-topping hits than any other solo artistever. And she has that extraordinary five-octave vocal range. But there is more to her legacy than eye-popping numbers. Why Mariah Carey Matters examines the creative evolution and complicated biography of a true diva, making the case that, despite her celebrity, Carey's musicianship and influence are insufficiently appreciated. A pioneering songwriter and producer, Carey pairs her vocal gifts with intimate lyrics and richly layered sonic details. In the mid-1990s, she perfected a blend of pop, hip-hop, and R&B with songs such as Fantasy and Honey and drew from her turbulent life to create the introspective masterpiece Butterfly. Andrew Chan looks beyond Carey's glamorous persona to explore her experience Trade ReviewIn expansive prose . . . , Chan proves that despite a smooth-edged commercial exterior, Carey’s style “foregrounds the ways singing can activate something irrational and untamed within us.” It’s a satisfying tribute to a dynamic and influential singer. * Publishers Weekly *Required reading for Lambs worldwide: In Why Mariah Matters, Andrew Chan looks beyond Mariah Carey’s undeniable glamour and incredible five-octave vocal range to examine the diva to explore her life as a mixed-race woman in music, her adventurous forays into gospel and house music, and her appeal to multiple generations of queer audiences. * NYLON *Why Mariah Carey Matters makes the case for Mariah Carey’s place in the pantheon of great musical artists and it’s hard to disagree with its central argument, that for all her accolades, mainstream success and her over-the-top camp persona, we have overlooked the nuance and artistry underneath. * The Queer Review *[Andrew Chan strikes] an elegant balance of tone and writing as a critic, a reporter, and a memoirist all at once . . . when Carey’s effect on audiences poses a phenomenological hurdle, he spins illuminating personal narratives only to then pivot towards rigorous close-readings of her lyrics, voice, and performances worthy of Barthes’s Mythologies. * The Millions *Chan's beautiful descriptions of Carey's songs, lyrics, and performances aid in the difficult task of bringing sound to life solely through words...An excellent look at a great artist. Readers will likely find themselves YouTubing the Carey performances described in this book. * Library Journal *Chan gives nuance in Carey’s work, persona, and legacy...Across 168 pages, Chan humanizes Carey’s world renowned impact in music, also connecting the artist’s poignant lyrics and five-octave singing delivery to his experiences as a queer Chinese-American. * NYLON *What stands out the most about this book is the intimacy of the author’s writing. . .Chan’s focus stays fixed on Carey’s extraordinary voice, her metamorphosis from ambitious ingenue into a showbiz heavyweight and the impact her music has on legions of loyal lambs, the latter of which is most poignantly displayed in the final passages of the book. * Xtra Magazine *Table of Contents 1. A Call to Worship 2. What a Voice Means 3. Other Sounds, Other Realms 4. Out of the Chrysalis 5. Between Laughter and Lament 6. Back at Number 1 7. A Timeless Diva Through Time Acknowledgments Notes
£17.09
University of Texas Press Youre with Stupid
Book Synopsis2023 ARSC Awards for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research, Association for Recorded Sound Collections An insider’s look at how Chicago’s underground music industry transformed indie rock in the 1990s. In the 1990s, Chicago was at the center of indie rock, propelling bands like the Smashing Pumpkins and Liz Phair to the national stage. The musical ecosystem from which these bands emerged, though, was expansive and diverse. Grunge players comingled with the electronic, jazz, psychedelic, and ambient music communities, and an inventive, collaborative group of local labels—kranky, Drag City, and Thrill Jockey, among others—embraced the new, evolving sound of indie “rock.” Bruce Adams, co-founder of kranky records, was there to bear witness. In You’re with Stupid, Adams offers an insider’s look at the role Chicago’s underground music industry played in the transformation of ind
£17.09
Duke University Press Is It Still Good to Ya
Book SynopsisEncompassing a career spanning six decades, Is It Still Good to Ya? sums up the career of legendary rock critic and longtime Village Voice stalwart Robert Christgau, whose album and concert reviews, essays, and reflections on his career tackle the whole of pop music, from Louis Armstrong to M.I.A..Trade Review "You either love Christgau or you don’t, but his cantankerous, affectionate, cut-to-the chase reviews and essays over the past 50 years have defined music journalism, and this collection offers an opportunity to re-read the best of the self-proclaimed Dean of American Rock Critics." -- Henry Carrigan * No Depression *"At a moment when music criticism seems less empowered for being more fragmented, Christgau still offers an informed, authoritative perspective, self-aware regarding cultural aging and mortality, not stodgy but wry. A vital chronicler of rock's story, several decades on." * Kirkus Reviews *"The self-proclaimed dean of rock criticism is now in his 70s, and his ongoing influence is felt wherever thoughtful music writing is valued. This collection of work spanning 1967–2017 highlights his omnivorous taste, showing Christgau to be just as comfortable reflecting on Woody Guthrie, Sam Cooke, and the Spice Girls as he is on Radiohead, Mary J. Blige, or Youssou N’Dour." -- Steve Futterman * Publishers Weekly *"These pieces from a preeminent critic will reward a wide swath of music fans who will perhaps be provoked to discuss the mosaic that is popular music in the 20th and early 21st centuries." -- James Collins * Library Journal *"Gleeful flurries of verbal shadow-boxing make this a book which can be enjoyed for the writing alone. . . . His curiosity and sass remain undiminished at the age of seventy-six and his own musical preferences acknowledge no frontiers." -- Lou Glandfield * TLS *"Though Christgau is best known for his pithy, graded Consumer Guide blurbs, this monumental tome collects his longer essays on both essential figures in popular music and his own pet favorites, at least a few of which he’ll convince you deserve to be considered essential themselves. Buy two copies—one to throw angrily across the room, one as a reference." -- Keith Harris * City Pages (Minneapolis) *"A treasure trove of the most incisive, witty pop music reviews and commentary ever committed to print." -- Ken Tucker * Fresh Air *"This is complicated work, but for a dean it’s plenty fun, and joy to dip into or explore in depth, both for full appreciations and single lines. Offering some tips for 'growing better ears' on the book’s first page, he suggests you 'spend a week listening to James Brown’s Star Time.' The ensuing pages will keep you listening and thinking for many, many more weeks besides." -- Mark Athitakis * Critical Mass blog *"If the New Journalism movement of the early '60s sought to remove the never-wholly-real concept of objectivity from news reporting, so too did Christgau and his Village voice colleagues remove it from music writing. In fact, that's why this collection is such a worthy read even for those who haven't read much Christgau over the years. You may or may not be compelled to seek out the music he writes about, or you may wholeheartedly disagree with his assessment of that music, but you will enjoy the way he writes about it. Music is personal for him—it's personal for all of us, really—and he writes like it is, only with way more erudition than a common Facebook post." -- Mark Reynolds * Popmatters *"Christgau is . . . one of America’s sharper public intellectuals of the past half century, and certainly one of its most influential—not to mention one of the better stylists in that cohort. Fun is a big part of why." -- David Cantwell * The New Yorker *"One of Christgau’s greatest strengths is that he relentlessly keeps up with the times. At least seven or eight presidents ago, Christgau was already the indispensable guide to the Ramones, Talking Heads, and Parliament Funkadelic. Now he’s even more necessary, the only critic who can sift through new pop from Africa and Egypt and nudge us in the right direction. To paraphrase Dylan, Christgau was older then, and he’s younger than that now." -- Allen Barra * National Book Review *“The reason I was attracted to Christgau in the first place was that his writing was better than that of any other music critic…. ‘A f***ing tour de force,’ Christgau concluded of a 1974 Earth, Wind and Fire album, and the same punchy summary could be applied to [this] absorbing collection.” -- Dai Griffiths * Popular Music *Table of ContentsIntroduction. Robert Christgau's Greatest Hits: Volume UUU 1 Prologue. Good to Ya, Not for Ya: Rock Criticism vs. the Guilty Pleasure 9 I. History in the Making Ten-Step Program for Growing Better Ears 19 Dionysus in Theory and Practice 19 B.E.: A Dozen Moments in the Prehistory of Rock and Roll 27 Let's Get Busy in Hawaiian: A Hundred Years of Ragged Beats and Cheap Tunes 34 Rock Lyrics Are Poetry (Maybe) 42 "We Have to Deal With It": Punk England Report 48 Rock 'n' Roller Coaster: The Music Biz on a Joyride 65 Not My Fault, Not My Problem: Classic Rock 76 A Weekend in Paradise: Woodstock '94 81 Staying Alive: Postclassic Disco 96 Harry Smith Makes History: Anthology of American Folk Music 103 Getting Their Hands Dirty: Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life 107 A Month on the Town 111 U.S. and Them: Are American Pop (and Semi-Pop) Still Exceptional? And by the Way, Does That Make Them Better? 120 What I Listen for in Music 130 II. A Great Tradition Pops as Pop: Louis Armstrong 135 Not So Misterioso: Thelonious Monk 140 First Lady of Song: Billie Holiday 149 Folksinger, Wordslinger, Start Me a Song: Woody Guthrie 154 Caring the Hard Way: Frank Sinatra: 1915-1998 159 Like Ringing a Bell: Chuck Berry: 1926-2017 161 Unnaturals: The Coasters with No Strings Attached 165 Black Elvis: Same Cooke 172 Tough Love: Etta James 176 The Excitement! The Terror!: Miles Davis's '70s 181 Sister, Oh Sister: Kate and Anna McGarrigle 185 Two Pieces About the Ramones: 1901. Ramone2. Road to Ruin Nevermore: Nirvana 196 A Long Short Story: The Go-Betweens 200 Generation Gaps: The Spice Girls 204 Ooh, That Sound: The Backstreet Boys 206 Tear the Sky Off the Mother: 'N Sync 207 The World Is His Boudoir: Prince 208 Two Pieces About Aretha Franklin: 2091. Queen of Pop2. Familiar and Fabulous Two Pieces About Bob Dylan: 2141. Dylan Back: World Goes On2. Secrets of the Sphinx Ain't Dead Yet: Holy Modal Rounders 220 How to Survive on an Apple Pie Diet: John Prine 221 The Unflashiest: Willie Nelson 225 III. Millennium Music from a Desert Storm 231 Ghost Dance 238 The Moldy Peaches Slip You a Roofie 241 Attack of the Chickenshits: Steve Earle 245 Facing Mecca: Youssou N'Dour 249 Three Pieces About M.I.A1. Burning Bright2. Quotations from Charmin M.I.A.3. Right, the Record IV. From Which All Blessings Flow Full Immersion with Suspect Tendencies: Paul Simon's Graceland 259 Fela and His Lessers 267 Vendant l'Afrique 270 Dakar in Gear 275 A God After Midnight: Youssou N'Dour 278 Franco d Mi Amor 279 Forty Years of History, Thirty Seconds of Joy 285 Tribulations of St. Joseph: Ladysmith Black Mambazo 289 Music from a Desert War 292 V. Postmodern Times Growing by Degrees: Kanye West 301 The Slim Shady Essay: Eminem 303 Career Opportunity: The Perceptionists 314 Good Morning Little School Girl: R. Kelly 316 Master and Sacrament: Buddy Guy 319 The Commoner Queen: Mary J. Blige 321 A Hot Little Weirdo: Shakira 323 What's Not to Like?: Norah Jones 326 No-Hope Radio: Radiohead 330 Rather Exhilarating: Sonic Youth 334 Adult Contemporary: Grant McLennan: 1958-2006 337 Titan. Polymath. Naturalist: Ray Charles: 1930-2004 338 He Got Us: James Brown: 1933-2006 339 Old Master: Bob Dylan 342 Estudando Tom Zé 343 Gypsy Is His Autopilot: Gogol Bordello 349 Triumph of the Id: Lil Wayne 353 Brag Like That: Jay-Z 357 Paisley's Progress: Brad Paisley 362 Smart and Smarter: Vampire Weekend 367 The Many Reasons to Love Wussy 372 Hearing Her Pain: Fiona Apple 377 Firestarter: Miranda Lambert 381 Monster Anthems: Lady Gaga 384 Dancing on Her Own: Robyn 388 Three More Pieces About M.I.A.: 393 1. Spread out, Reach High: M.I.A.'s Kala 2. Illygirl Steppin Up 3. Spelled Backwards It's "Aim" The Unassumingest: Lori McKenna 400 VI. Got to Be Driftin' Along Who Knows It Feels It: Bob Marley 407 Shape Shifter: David Bowie: 1947-2016 411 The Most Gifted Artist of the Rock Era: Prince: 1958-2016 414 Forever Old: Leonard Cohen: 1933-2016 416 Sticking It in Their Ear: Bob Dylan 419 Don't Worry About Nothing: Ornette Coleman 420 Sensualistic, Polytheistic: New York Dolls 421 Index 425
£80.75
Duke University Press Book Reports
Book SynopsisIn this generous collection of book reviews and literary essays, Robert Christgau shows readers a different side to his esteemed career with reviews of books ranging from musical autobiographies, criticism, and histories to novels, literary memoirs, and cultural theory.Trade Review"[A] substantial collection of nearly 100 eclectic, thought-provoking, and idea-laden book reviews. . . . [Christgau's] range of topics is impressive, and his references are prolific. These sprightly, highly opinionated 'adventures of an autodidact' reveal Christgau to be a highly literate, astute, and discerning book critic." * Kirkus Reviews *"Christgau mostly writes on books by or about notable musicians, though he hits other cultural touchstones too, such as George Orwell’s 1984. It’s in these nonmusic pieces that Christgau is most successful, shifting focus from his encyclopedic music-industry knowledge to the nuances of language. His essay on books about the 2008 financial crisis is a highlight." * Publishers Weekly *"There are few critics working today with the life-long commitment, focus, and curiosity of Robert Christgau. Book Reports doesn't scan the over half-century of the man's work, and that's what makes it all the more impressive. He's still searching, still pulling volumes from the shelves, looking at new or old ideas, cracking open the spines of preconceived notions all in the service of taking just one more look before walking away with the promise of yet another return." -- Christopher John Stephens * Popmatters *"For Christgau fans and anyone seeking thought-provoking musings on books and music." -- Melissa Engleman * Library Journal *"One reads Christgau for Christgau as much as for the subject of his work." -- Jeff Tamarkin * Mojo *"Though Christgau partisans have the most to gain from this collection, it’s also good for anyone looking for an accessible way into his extensive oeuvre." -- Chad Comello * Booklist *"Christgau is . . . one of America’s sharper public intellectuals of the past half century, and certainly one of its most influential—not to mention one of the better stylists in that cohort. Fun is a big part of why." -- David Cantwell * The New Yorker *"Though not everyone will agree with Christgau’s views (this reader certainly did not), all readers will likely appreciate his style and approach and the depth of his knowledge about a broad range of popular music. Those curious about popular music may find Christgau's style aggressive at times, but that is exactly the point; Christgau pushes the reader to think. Seasoned readers will discover that Christgau questions authors in a way that encourages one to evaluate a book at a deeper level. In short, this is a great read for fans, critics, and scholars alike." -- T. R. Harrison * Choice *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 I. Collectibles The Informer: John Leonard's When the Kissing Had to Stop 11 Advertisements for Everybody Else: Jonathan Lethem's The Ecstasy of Influence 14 Democratic Vistas: Dave Hickey's Air Guitar 17 II. From Blackface Minstrelsy to Track-and-Hook In Search of Jim Crow: Why Postmodern Minstrelsy Studies Matter 23 The Old Ethiopians at Home: Ken Emerson's Doo-Dah! 40 Before the Blues: David Wondrich's Stomp and Swerve 43 Rhythms of the Universe: Ned Sublette's Cuba and Its Music 46 Black Melting Pot: David B. Coplan's In Township Tonight! 49 Bwana-Acolyte in the Favor Bank: Banning Eyre's In Griot Time 56 In the Crucible of the Party: Charles and Angelilki Keil's Bright Balkan Morning 59 Defining the Folk: Benjamin Filene's Romancing the Folk 64 Folking Around: David Hajdu's Positively 4th Street 67 Punk Lives: Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain's Please Kill Me 70 Biography of a Corporation: Nelson George's Where Did Our Love Go? 72 Hip-Hop Faces the World: Steven Hager's Hip Hop; David Toop's The Rap Attack; and Nelson George, Sally Banes, Susan Flinker, and Patty Romanowski's Fresh 75 Making Out Like Gangsters: Preston Lauterbach's The Chitlin' Circuit, Dan Charnas's The Big Payback, Ice-T's Ice, and Tommy James's Me, the Mob, and Music 80 Money Isn't Everything: Fred Goodman's The Mansion on the Hill 86 Mapping the Earworm's Genome: John Seabrook's The Song Machine 89 III. Critical Practice Beyond the Symphonic Quest: Susan McClary's Feminine Endings 97 All the Tune Family: Peter van der Merwe's Origins of the Popular Style 100 Bel Cantos: Henry Pleasant's The Great American Popular Singers 102 The Country and the City: Charlie Gillett's The Sound of the City 109 Reflections of an Aging Rock Critic: Jon Landau's It's Too Late to Stop Now 115 Pioneer Days: Kevin Avery's Everything Is an Afterthought and Nona Willis Aronowitz's (ed.) Out of the Vinyl Deeps 117 Impolite Discourse: Jim Derogatis's Let It Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer's A Whore Jus Like the Rest, and Nick Tosches's The Nick Torches Reader 123 Journalism and/or Criticism and/or Musicology and/or Sociology (and/or Writing): Simon Firth 129 Serious Music: Robert Walser's Running With the Devil 137 Fifteen Minutes of . . . : William York's Who's Who in Rock Music 139 The Fanzine Worldview, Alphabetized: Ira A. Robbins's (ed.) Trouser Press Guide to New Wave Records 140 Awesome: Simon Reynolds's Blissed Out 143 Ingenuousness Lost: James Miller's Flowers in the Dustbin 147 Rock Criticism Lives: Jessica Hopper's The Fist Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic 151 Emo Meets Trayvon Martin: Hanif Abdurraquib's They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us 156 IV. Lives in Music Inside and Out Great Book of Fire: Nick Tosches's Hellfire and Robert Palmer's Jerry Lee Lewis Rocks! 163 That Bad Man, Tough Old Huddie Ledbetter: Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell's The Life and Legend of Leadbelly 169 The Impenetrable Heroism of Sam Cooke: Peter Guralnick's Dream Boogie 171 Bobby and Dave: Bob Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One and Dave Van Ronk's The Mayor of MacDougal Street 178 Tell All: Ed Sanders's Fug You and Samuel R. Delany's The Motion of Light in Water 180 King of the Thrillseekers: Richard Hell's I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp 185 Lives Saved, Lives Lost: Carrie Brownstein's Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl and Patti Smith's M Train 189 The Cynic and the Bloke: Rod Stewart's Rod: The Autobiography and Donald Fagen's Eminent Hipsters 194 His Own Shaman: RJ Smith's The One 199 Spotlight on the Queen: David Ritz's Respect 201 The Realist Thing You've Ever Seen: Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run 205 V. Fictions Writing for the People: George Orwell's 1984 213 A Classic Illustrated: R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis 217 The Hippie Grows Older: Richard Brautigan's Sombrero Fallout 222 Comic Gurdjieffianism You Can Masturbate To: Marco Vassis' Mind Blower 224 Porn Yesterday: Walter Kendrick's The Secret Museum 225 What Pretentious White Men Are Good For: Robert Coover's Gerald's Party 230 Impoverished How, Exactly? Roddy Doyle's The Woman Who Walked into Doors 236 Sustainable Romance: Norman Rush's Mortals 237 Derrnig-Do Scrapping By: Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue 240 Futures by the Dozen: Bruce Sterling's Holy Fire 245 YA Poet of the Massa Woods: Sandra Newman's The Country of Ice Cream Star 248 A Darker Shade of Noir: The Indefatigable Walter Mosley 252 VI. Bohemia Meets Hegemony Épatant le Bourgeoisie: Jerrold Seigel's Bohemian Paris and T. J. Clark's The Painting of Modern Life 263 The Village People: Christine Stansell's American Moderns 278 A Slender Hope for Salvation: Charles Reich's The Greening of America 280 The Lumpenhippie Guru: Ed Sanders's The Family 285 Strait Are the Gates: Morris Dickstein's Gates of Eden 289 The Little Counterculture That Could: Carol Brightman's Sweet Chaos 293 The Pop-Boho Connection, Narrativized: Bernard F. Gendron's Between Montmarte and the Mudd Club 297 Cursed and Sainted Seekers of the Sexual Century: John Heidenry's What Wild Ecstasy 301 Bohemias Lost and Found: Ross Wetzsteon's Republic of Dreams, Richard Kostelanetz's SoHo, and Richard Lloyd's Neo-Bohemia 304 Autobiography of a Pain in the Neck: Meredith Maran's What It's Like to Live Now 309 VII. Culture Meets Capital Twentieth Century Limited: Marshall Berman's All That Is Solid Melts into Air 315 Dialectical Cricket: C. L. R. James's Beyond a Boundary 320 Radical Pluralist: Andrew Ross's No Respect 323 Inside the Prosex Wars: Nadine Strossen's Defending Pornography, Joanna Frueh's Eroctic Faculties, and Lara Kipnis's Bound and Gagged 327 Growing Up Kept Down: William Finnegan's Cold New World 331 Jesus Plus the Capitalist Order: Jeff Sharlet's The Family 334 Dark Night of the Quants: Ten Books About the Financial Crisis 338 They Bet Your Life: Four Books About Hedge Funds 345 Living in a Material World: Raymond Williams's Long Revolution 350 With a God on His Side: Terry Eagleton's Culture and the Death of God, Culture, and Materialism 369 My Friend Marshall: Marshall Berman's Modernism in the Streets 374 Index 381
£112.20
Duke University Press Is It Still Good to Ya
Book SynopsisEncompassing a career spanning six decades, Is It Still Good to Ya? sums up the career of legendary rock critic and longtime Village Voice stalwart Robert Christgau, whose album and concert reviews, essays, and reflections on his career tackle the whole of pop music, from Louis Armstrong to M.I.A..Trade Review "You either love Christgau or you don’t, but his cantankerous, affectionate, cut-to-the chase reviews and essays over the past 50 years have defined music journalism, and this collection offers an opportunity to re-read the best of the self-proclaimed Dean of American Rock Critics." -- Henry Carrigan * No Depression *"At a moment when music criticism seems less empowered for being more fragmented, Christgau still offers an informed, authoritative perspective, self-aware regarding cultural aging and mortality, not stodgy but wry. A vital chronicler of rock's story, several decades on." * Kirkus Reviews *"The self-proclaimed dean of rock criticism is now in his 70s, and his ongoing influence is felt wherever thoughtful music writing is valued. This collection of work spanning 1967–2017 highlights his omnivorous taste, showing Christgau to be just as comfortable reflecting on Woody Guthrie, Sam Cooke, and the Spice Girls as he is on Radiohead, Mary J. Blige, or Youssou N’Dour." -- Steve Futterman * Publishers Weekly *"These pieces from a preeminent critic will reward a wide swath of music fans who will perhaps be provoked to discuss the mosaic that is popular music in the 20th and early 21st centuries." -- James Collins * Library Journal *"Gleeful flurries of verbal shadow-boxing make this a book which can be enjoyed for the writing alone. . . . His curiosity and sass remain undiminished at the age of seventy-six and his own musical preferences acknowledge no frontiers." -- Lou Glandfield * TLS *"Though Christgau is best known for his pithy, graded Consumer Guide blurbs, this monumental tome collects his longer essays on both essential figures in popular music and his own pet favorites, at least a few of which he’ll convince you deserve to be considered essential themselves. Buy two copies—one to throw angrily across the room, one as a reference." -- Keith Harris * City Pages (Minneapolis) *"A treasure trove of the most incisive, witty pop music reviews and commentary ever committed to print." -- Ken Tucker * Fresh Air *"This is complicated work, but for a dean it’s plenty fun, and joy to dip into or explore in depth, both for full appreciations and single lines. Offering some tips for 'growing better ears' on the book’s first page, he suggests you 'spend a week listening to James Brown’s Star Time.' The ensuing pages will keep you listening and thinking for many, many more weeks besides." -- Mark Athitakis * Critical Mass blog *"If the New Journalism movement of the early '60s sought to remove the never-wholly-real concept of objectivity from news reporting, so too did Christgau and his Village voice colleagues remove it from music writing. In fact, that's why this collection is such a worthy read even for those who haven't read much Christgau over the years. You may or may not be compelled to seek out the music he writes about, or you may wholeheartedly disagree with his assessment of that music, but you will enjoy the way he writes about it. Music is personal for him—it's personal for all of us, really—and he writes like it is, only with way more erudition than a common Facebook post." -- Mark Reynolds * Popmatters *"Christgau is . . . one of America’s sharper public intellectuals of the past half century, and certainly one of its most influential—not to mention one of the better stylists in that cohort. Fun is a big part of why." -- David Cantwell * The New Yorker *"One of Christgau’s greatest strengths is that he relentlessly keeps up with the times. At least seven or eight presidents ago, Christgau was already the indispensable guide to the Ramones, Talking Heads, and Parliament Funkadelic. Now he’s even more necessary, the only critic who can sift through new pop from Africa and Egypt and nudge us in the right direction. To paraphrase Dylan, Christgau was older then, and he’s younger than that now." -- Allen Barra * National Book Review *“The reason I was attracted to Christgau in the first place was that his writing was better than that of any other music critic…. ‘A f***ing tour de force,’ Christgau concluded of a 1974 Earth, Wind and Fire album, and the same punchy summary could be applied to [this] absorbing collection.” -- Dai Griffiths * Popular Music *Table of ContentsIntroduction. Robert Christgau's Greatest Hits: Volume UUU 1 Prologue. Good to Ya, Not for Ya: Rock Criticism vs. the Guilty Pleasure 9 I. History in the Making Ten-Step Program for Growing Better Ears 19 Dionysus in Theory and Practice 19 B.E.: A Dozen Moments in the Prehistory of Rock and Roll 27 Let's Get Busy in Hawaiian: A Hundred Years of Ragged Beats and Cheap Tunes 34 Rock Lyrics Are Poetry (Maybe) 42 "We Have to Deal With It": Punk England Report 48 Rock 'n' Roller Coaster: The Music Biz on a Joyride 65 Not My Fault, Not My Problem: Classic Rock 76 A Weekend in Paradise: Woodstock '94 81 Staying Alive: Postclassic Disco 96 Harry Smith Makes History: Anthology of American Folk Music 103 Getting Their Hands Dirty: Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life 107 A Month on the Town 111 U.S. and Them: Are American Pop (and Semi-Pop) Still Exceptional? And by the Way, Does That Make Them Better? 120 What I Listen for in Music 130 II. A Great Tradition Pops as Pop: Louis Armstrong 135 Not So Misterioso: Thelonious Monk 140 First Lady of Song: Billie Holiday 149 Folksinger, Wordslinger, Start Me a Song: Woody Guthrie 154 Caring the Hard Way: Frank Sinatra: 1915-1998 159 Like Ringing a Bell: Chuck Berry: 1926-2017 161 Unnaturals: The Coasters with No Strings Attached 165 Black Elvis: Same Cooke 172 Tough Love: Etta James 176 The Excitement! The Terror!: Miles Davis's '70s 181 Sister, Oh Sister: Kate and Anna McGarrigle 185 Two Pieces About the Ramones: 1901. Ramone2. Road to Ruin Nevermore: Nirvana 196 A Long Short Story: The Go-Betweens 200 Generation Gaps: The Spice Girls 204 Ooh, That Sound: The Backstreet Boys 206 Tear the Sky Off the Mother: 'N Sync 207 The World Is His Boudoir: Prince 208 Two Pieces About Aretha Franklin: 2091. Queen of Pop2. Familiar and Fabulous Two Pieces About Bob Dylan: 2141. Dylan Back: World Goes On2. Secrets of the Sphinx Ain't Dead Yet: Holy Modal Rounders 220 How to Survive on an Apple Pie Diet: John Prine 221 The Unflashiest: Willie Nelson 225 III. Millennium Music from a Desert Storm 231 Ghost Dance 238 The Moldy Peaches Slip You a Roofie 241 Attack of the Chickenshits: Steve Earle 245 Facing Mecca: Youssou N'Dour 249 Three Pieces About M.I.A1. Burning Bright2. Quotations from Charmin M.I.A.3. Right, the Record IV. From Which All Blessings Flow Full Immersion with Suspect Tendencies: Paul Simon's Graceland 259 Fela and His Lessers 267 Vendant l'Afrique 270 Dakar in Gear 275 A God After Midnight: Youssou N'Dour 278 Franco d Mi Amor 279 Forty Years of History, Thirty Seconds of Joy 285 Tribulations of St. Joseph: Ladysmith Black Mambazo 289 Music from a Desert War 292 V. Postmodern Times Growing by Degrees: Kanye West 301 The Slim Shady Essay: Eminem 303 Career Opportunity: The Perceptionists 314 Good Morning Little School Girl: R. Kelly 316 Master and Sacrament: Buddy Guy 319 The Commoner Queen: Mary J. Blige 321 A Hot Little Weirdo: Shakira 323 What's Not to Like?: Norah Jones 326 No-Hope Radio: Radiohead 330 Rather Exhilarating: Sonic Youth 334 Adult Contemporary: Grant McLennan: 1958-2006 337 Titan. Polymath. Naturalist: Ray Charles: 1930-2004 338 He Got Us: James Brown: 1933-2006 339 Old Master: Bob Dylan 342 Estudando Tom Zé 343 Gypsy Is His Autopilot: Gogol Bordello 349 Triumph of the Id: Lil Wayne 353 Brag Like That: Jay-Z 357 Paisley's Progress: Brad Paisley 362 Smart and Smarter: Vampire Weekend 367 The Many Reasons to Love Wussy 372 Hearing Her Pain: Fiona Apple 377 Firestarter: Miranda Lambert 381 Monster Anthems: Lady Gaga 384 Dancing on Her Own: Robyn 388 Three More Pieces About M.I.A.: 393 1. Spread out, Reach High: M.I.A.'s Kala 2. Illygirl Steppin Up 3. Spelled Backwards It's "Aim" The Unassumingest: Lori McKenna 400 VI. Got to Be Driftin' Along Who Knows It Feels It: Bob Marley 407 Shape Shifter: David Bowie: 1947-2016 411 The Most Gifted Artist of the Rock Era: Prince: 1958-2016 414 Forever Old: Leonard Cohen: 1933-2016 416 Sticking It in Their Ear: Bob Dylan 419 Don't Worry About Nothing: Ornette Coleman 420 Sensualistic, Polytheistic: New York Dolls 421 Index 425
£20.69
Duke University Press Book Reports
Book SynopsisIn this generous collection of book reviews and literary essays, Robert Christgau shows readers a different side to his esteemed career with reviews of books ranging from musical autobiographies, criticism, and histories to novels, literary memoirs, and cultural theory.Trade Review"[A] substantial collection of nearly 100 eclectic, thought-provoking, and idea-laden book reviews. . . . [Christgau's] range of topics is impressive, and his references are prolific. These sprightly, highly opinionated 'adventures of an autodidact' reveal Christgau to be a highly literate, astute, and discerning book critic." * Kirkus Reviews *"Christgau mostly writes on books by or about notable musicians, though he hits other cultural touchstones too, such as George Orwell’s 1984. It’s in these nonmusic pieces that Christgau is most successful, shifting focus from his encyclopedic music-industry knowledge to the nuances of language. His essay on books about the 2008 financial crisis is a highlight." * Publishers Weekly *"There are few critics working today with the life-long commitment, focus, and curiosity of Robert Christgau. Book Reports doesn't scan the over half-century of the man's work, and that's what makes it all the more impressive. He's still searching, still pulling volumes from the shelves, looking at new or old ideas, cracking open the spines of preconceived notions all in the service of taking just one more look before walking away with the promise of yet another return." -- Christopher John Stephens * Popmatters *"For Christgau fans and anyone seeking thought-provoking musings on books and music." -- Melissa Engleman * Library Journal *"One reads Christgau for Christgau as much as for the subject of his work." -- Jeff Tamarkin * Mojo *"Though Christgau partisans have the most to gain from this collection, it’s also good for anyone looking for an accessible way into his extensive oeuvre." -- Chad Comello * Booklist *"Christgau is . . . one of America’s sharper public intellectuals of the past half century, and certainly one of its most influential—not to mention one of the better stylists in that cohort. Fun is a big part of why." -- David Cantwell * The New Yorker *"Though not everyone will agree with Christgau’s views (this reader certainly did not), all readers will likely appreciate his style and approach and the depth of his knowledge about a broad range of popular music. Those curious about popular music may find Christgau's style aggressive at times, but that is exactly the point; Christgau pushes the reader to think. Seasoned readers will discover that Christgau questions authors in a way that encourages one to evaluate a book at a deeper level. In short, this is a great read for fans, critics, and scholars alike." -- T. R. Harrison * Choice *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 I. Collectibles The Informer: John Leonard's When the Kissing Had to Stop 11 Advertisements for Everybody Else: Jonathan Lethem's The Ecstasy of Influence 14 Democratic Vistas: Dave Hickey's Air Guitar 17 II. From Blackface Minstrelsy to Track-and-Hook In Search of Jim Crow: Why Postmodern Minstrelsy Studies Matter 23 The Old Ethiopians at Home: Ken Emerson's Doo-Dah! 40 Before the Blues: David Wondrich's Stomp and Swerve 43 Rhythms of the Universe: Ned Sublette's Cuba and Its Music 46 Black Melting Pot: David B. Coplan's In Township Tonight! 49 Bwana-Acolyte in the Favor Bank: Banning Eyre's In Griot Time 56 In the Crucible of the Party: Charles and Angelilki Keil's Bright Balkan Morning 59 Defining the Folk: Benjamin Filene's Romancing the Folk 64 Folking Around: David Hajdu's Positively 4th Street 67 Punk Lives: Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain's Please Kill Me 70 Biography of a Corporation: Nelson George's Where Did Our Love Go? 72 Hip-Hop Faces the World: Steven Hager's Hip Hop; David Toop's The Rap Attack; and Nelson George, Sally Banes, Susan Flinker, and Patty Romanowski's Fresh 75 Making Out Like Gangsters: Preston Lauterbach's The Chitlin' Circuit, Dan Charnas's The Big Payback, Ice-T's Ice, and Tommy James's Me, the Mob, and Music 80 Money Isn't Everything: Fred Goodman's The Mansion on the Hill 86 Mapping the Earworm's Genome: John Seabrook's The Song Machine 89 III. Critical Practice Beyond the Symphonic Quest: Susan McClary's Feminine Endings 97 All the Tune Family: Peter van der Merwe's Origins of the Popular Style 100 Bel Cantos: Henry Pleasant's The Great American Popular Singers 102 The Country and the City: Charlie Gillett's The Sound of the City 109 Reflections of an Aging Rock Critic: Jon Landau's It's Too Late to Stop Now 115 Pioneer Days: Kevin Avery's Everything Is an Afterthought and Nona Willis Aronowitz's (ed.) Out of the Vinyl Deeps 117 Impolite Discourse: Jim Derogatis's Let It Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer's A Whore Jus Like the Rest, and Nick Tosches's The Nick Torches Reader 123 Journalism and/or Criticism and/or Musicology and/or Sociology (and/or Writing): Simon Firth 129 Serious Music: Robert Walser's Running With the Devil 137 Fifteen Minutes of . . . : William York's Who's Who in Rock Music 139 The Fanzine Worldview, Alphabetized: Ira A. Robbins's (ed.) Trouser Press Guide to New Wave Records 140 Awesome: Simon Reynolds's Blissed Out 143 Ingenuousness Lost: James Miller's Flowers in the Dustbin 147 Rock Criticism Lives: Jessica Hopper's The Fist Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic 151 Emo Meets Trayvon Martin: Hanif Abdurraquib's They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us 156 IV. Lives in Music Inside and Out Great Book of Fire: Nick Tosches's Hellfire and Robert Palmer's Jerry Lee Lewis Rocks! 163 That Bad Man, Tough Old Huddie Ledbetter: Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell's The Life and Legend of Leadbelly 169 The Impenetrable Heroism of Sam Cooke: Peter Guralnick's Dream Boogie 171 Bobby and Dave: Bob Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One and Dave Van Ronk's The Mayor of MacDougal Street 178 Tell All: Ed Sanders's Fug You and Samuel R. Delany's The Motion of Light in Water 180 King of the Thrillseekers: Richard Hell's I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp 185 Lives Saved, Lives Lost: Carrie Brownstein's Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl and Patti Smith's M Train 189 The Cynic and the Bloke: Rod Stewart's Rod: The Autobiography and Donald Fagen's Eminent Hipsters 194 His Own Shaman: RJ Smith's The One 199 Spotlight on the Queen: David Ritz's Respect 201 The Realist Thing You've Ever Seen: Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run 205 V. Fictions Writing for the People: George Orwell's 1984 213 A Classic Illustrated: R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis 217 The Hippie Grows Older: Richard Brautigan's Sombrero Fallout 222 Comic Gurdjieffianism You Can Masturbate To: Marco Vassis' Mind Blower 224 Porn Yesterday: Walter Kendrick's The Secret Museum 225 What Pretentious White Men Are Good For: Robert Coover's Gerald's Party 230 Impoverished How, Exactly? Roddy Doyle's The Woman Who Walked into Doors 236 Sustainable Romance: Norman Rush's Mortals 237 Derrnig-Do Scrapping By: Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue 240 Futures by the Dozen: Bruce Sterling's Holy Fire 245 YA Poet of the Massa Woods: Sandra Newman's The Country of Ice Cream Star 248 A Darker Shade of Noir: The Indefatigable Walter Mosley 252 VI. Bohemia Meets Hegemony Épatant le Bourgeoisie: Jerrold Seigel's Bohemian Paris and T. J. Clark's The Painting of Modern Life 263 The Village People: Christine Stansell's American Moderns 278 A Slender Hope for Salvation: Charles Reich's The Greening of America 280 The Lumpenhippie Guru: Ed Sanders's The Family 285 Strait Are the Gates: Morris Dickstein's Gates of Eden 289 The Little Counterculture That Could: Carol Brightman's Sweet Chaos 293 The Pop-Boho Connection, Narrativized: Bernard F. Gendron's Between Montmarte and the Mudd Club 297 Cursed and Sainted Seekers of the Sexual Century: John Heidenry's What Wild Ecstasy 301 Bohemias Lost and Found: Ross Wetzsteon's Republic of Dreams, Richard Kostelanetz's SoHo, and Richard Lloyd's Neo-Bohemia 304 Autobiography of a Pain in the Neck: Meredith Maran's What It's Like to Live Now 309 VII. Culture Meets Capital Twentieth Century Limited: Marshall Berman's All That Is Solid Melts into Air 315 Dialectical Cricket: C. L. R. James's Beyond a Boundary 320 Radical Pluralist: Andrew Ross's No Respect 323 Inside the Prosex Wars: Nadine Strossen's Defending Pornography, Joanna Frueh's Eroctic Faculties, and Lara Kipnis's Bound and Gagged 327 Growing Up Kept Down: William Finnegan's Cold New World 331 Jesus Plus the Capitalist Order: Jeff Sharlet's The Family 334 Dark Night of the Quants: Ten Books About the Financial Crisis 338 They Bet Your Life: Four Books About Hedge Funds 345 Living in a Material World: Raymond Williams's Long Revolution 350 With a God on His Side: Terry Eagleton's Culture and the Death of God, Culture, and Materialism 369 My Friend Marshall: Marshall Berman's Modernism in the Streets 374 Index 381
£27.90
Duke University Press The Sonic Episteme
Book SynopsisRobin James examines how twenty-first-century conceptions of sound as acoustic resonance shape notions of the social world, personhood, and materiality in ways that support white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.Trade Review“Through skillful and perceptive negotiations among diverse theoretical paradigms and material practices, Robin James articulates a bold thesis about the shift from the visual character of modernity articulated by Foucault to the sonic episteme characteristic of twenty-first-century biopolitical neoliberalism. In James’s hands, the sonic episteme becomes a diagnostic tool as well as an all-embracing metaphor of the way the new regime of neoliberal biopower works, its modes of governmentality, and its production of excluded groups. An outstanding book.” -- Ewa Plonowska Ziarek, author of * Feminist Aesthetics and the Politics of Modernism *“The Sonic Episteme is a fascinating exploration of the problems of neoliberalism and the biopolitical that attends to the ways sound has come to be an object of study. Robin James asks readers to refuse the privileging of any one sense experience by examining the ways what she calls the sonic episteme is a part of neoliberal thought, not a break from it. The Sonic Episteme is about the practice of alternatives to the social order in thought and its epistemological possibilities rather than the search for alternatives emerging from the already given epistemological horizon and thrust of Western thought. As such, James offers a way to think sound studies, race, and material cultures together.” -- Ashon T. Crawley, author of * Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility *"James is an insightful philosopher and sharp cultural critic drawing comparisons between musical phenomena such as compression and the loudness wars, and the damages wreaked by neoliberal market economics." -- Karen D. Tregaskin * The Wire *"What makes The Sonic Episteme an impressive accomplishment is its academically acceptable reliance on Philosophy combined with a crucial gesture, beyond Philosophy’s purview, to commercially successful pop music, which has the potential to present a crucial something else." -- Jeff Heinzl * Spectrum Culture *"This extensive assemblage of source texts generates unexpected and often striking conclusions. Most valuably, James organises crucial texts at the intersection of sound studies and critical race studies, proffering their diverse methodologies as alternatives to the techniques of post-democratic perceptual coding. For those interested in the consequences of frequency modeling and the broader project of approaching philosophy through sound, The Sonic Episteme presents a bold . . . foray into the rich territory of neoliberal sonic representation." -- Madeline Collier * Sound Studies *“Robin James’s The Sonic Episteme is an incredibly provocative, well-argued, well-written, and necessary study of popular music and neoliberalism. It will surely be of interest to those in philosophy, popular music studies, sound studies, cultural studies, and Black studies.” -- Elliot H. Powell * Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism *“With The Sonic Episteme, James intervenes upon sound by asking us to think more critically, inclusively, and ethically with and about it.... [Its] topical and methodological breadth makes it a productive and useful addition to the field of popular music studies.” -- Kate Galloway * Journal of Popular Music Studies *“Robin James’ latest book is a compelling and rewarding showcase of her ability to use music and sound as a means to interrogate an array of contemporary philosophical, political, cultural and scientific perspectives.... By aggregating vernacular and non-elite ways of knowing, as expressed through a range of music and sound practices, she has succeeded in developing credible and coherent alternatives.” -- Matthew Lovett * Popular Music *"The Sonic Episteme promises to be an important addition to graduate syllabi and should push music scholars and practitioners to see how our ideas about the nature of sound might hamper our efforts to reshape the places, settings, and institutions where we make music." -- Alexandra M. Apolloni * Journal of the Society of American Music *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1. Neoliberal Noise and the Biopolitics of (Un)Cool: Acoustic Resonance as Political Economy 23 2. Universal Envoicement: Acoustic Resonance as Political Ontology 51 3. Vibration and Diffraction: Acoustic Resonance as Materialist Ontology 87 4. Neoliberal Sophrosyne: Acoustic Resonance as Subjectivity and Personhood 126 5. Social Physics and Quantum Physics: Acoustic Resonance as the Model for a "Harmonious" World 158 Conclusion 181 Notes 185 Bibliography 227 Index 239
£98.60
Duke University Press The Sonic Episteme
Book SynopsisIn The Sonic Episteme Robin James examines how twenty-first-century conceptions of sound as acoustic resonance shape notions of the social world, personhood, and materiality in ways that support white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Drawing on fields ranging from philosophy and sound studies to black feminist studies and musicology, James shows how what she calls the sonic episteme—a set of sound-based rules that qualitatively structure social practices in much the same way that neoliberalism uses statistics—employs a politics of exception to maintain hegemonic neoliberal and biopolitical projects. Where James sees the normcore averageness of Taylor Swift and Spandau Ballet as contributing to the sonic episteme''s marginalization of nonnormative conceptions of gender, race, and personhood, the black feminist political ontologies she identifies in Beyoncé''s and Rihanna''s music challenge such marginalization. In using sound to theorize political ontology, sTrade Review“Through skillful and perceptive negotiations among diverse theoretical paradigms and material practices, Robin James articulates a bold thesis about the shift from the visual character of modernity articulated by Foucault to the sonic episteme characteristic of twenty-first-century biopolitical neoliberalism. In James’s hands, the sonic episteme becomes a diagnostic tool as well as an all-embracing metaphor of the way the new regime of neoliberal biopower works, its modes of governmentality, and its production of excluded groups. An outstanding book.” -- Ewa Plonowska Ziarek, author of * Feminist Aesthetics and the Politics of Modernism *“The Sonic Episteme is a fascinating exploration of the problems of neoliberalism and the biopolitical that attends to the ways sound has come to be an object of study. Robin James asks readers to refuse the privileging of any one sense experience by examining the ways what she calls the sonic episteme is a part of neoliberal thought, not a break from it. The Sonic Episteme is about the practice of alternatives to the social order in thought and its epistemological possibilities rather than the search for alternatives emerging from the already given epistemological horizon and thrust of Western thought. As such, James offers a way to think sound studies, race, and material cultures together.” -- Ashon T. Crawley, author of * Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility *"James is an insightful philosopher and sharp cultural critic drawing comparisons between musical phenomena such as compression and the loudness wars, and the damages wreaked by neoliberal market economics." -- Karen D. Tregaskin * The Wire *"What makes The Sonic Episteme an impressive accomplishment is its academically acceptable reliance on Philosophy combined with a crucial gesture, beyond Philosophy’s purview, to commercially successful pop music, which has the potential to present a crucial something else." -- Jeff Heinzl * Spectrum Culture *"This extensive assemblage of source texts generates unexpected and often striking conclusions. Most valuably, James organises crucial texts at the intersection of sound studies and critical race studies, proffering their diverse methodologies as alternatives to the techniques of post-democratic perceptual coding. For those interested in the consequences of frequency modeling and the broader project of approaching philosophy through sound, The Sonic Episteme presents a bold . . . foray into the rich territory of neoliberal sonic representation." -- Madeline Collier * Sound Studies *“Robin James’s The Sonic Episteme is an incredibly provocative, well-argued, well-written, and necessary study of popular music and neoliberalism. It will surely be of interest to those in philosophy, popular music studies, sound studies, cultural studies, and Black studies.” -- Elliot H. Powell * Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism *“With The Sonic Episteme, James intervenes upon sound by asking us to think more critically, inclusively, and ethically with and about it.... [Its] topical and methodological breadth makes it a productive and useful addition to the field of popular music studies.” -- Kate Galloway * Journal of Popular Music Studies *“Robin James’ latest book is a compelling and rewarding showcase of her ability to use music and sound as a means to interrogate an array of contemporary philosophical, political, cultural and scientific perspectives.... By aggregating vernacular and non-elite ways of knowing, as expressed through a range of music and sound practices, she has succeeded in developing credible and coherent alternatives.” -- Matthew Lovett * Popular Music *"The Sonic Episteme promises to be an important addition to graduate syllabi and should push music scholars and practitioners to see how our ideas about the nature of sound might hamper our efforts to reshape the places, settings, and institutions where we make music." -- Alexandra M. Apolloni * Journal of the Society of American Music *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1. Neoliberal Noise and the Biopolitics of (Un)Cool: Acoustic Resonance as Political Economy 23 2. Universal Envoicement: Acoustic Resonance as Political Ontology 51 3. Vibration and Diffraction: Acoustic Resonance as Materialist Ontology 87 4. Neoliberal Sophrosyne: Acoustic Resonance as Subjectivity and Personhood 126 5. Social Physics and Quantum Physics: Acoustic Resonance as the Model for a "Harmonious" World 158 Conclusion 181 Notes 185 Bibliography 227 Index 239
£25.19
Duke University Press Playing for Keeps
Book SynopsisThe contributors to Playing for Keeps examine the ways in which musical improvisation can serve as a way to negotiate violence, trauma, systemic inequality, and the aftermaths of war and colonialism.Trade Review“Casting an eye on the world of improvisation, Playing for Keeps is a major corrective to the latent ethnocentrism of improvisation studies and shifts the field's focus in a revolutionary way. The volume challenges readers to think more carefully and critically about the status of improvisation in various traditional cultural contexts and the intersection of those contexts found in contemporary society. A smart, decisive statement on globalism and improvisation.” -- John Corbett, author of * Vinyl Freak: Love Letters to a Dying Medium *"This is a rewarding project that is already extended by a special edition of the Journal Critical Studies In Improvisation and is to be further extended in a companion book now in progress." -- Phil England * The Wire *"A major academic achievement, Playing for Keeps: Improvisation In The Aftermath is an enlightening examination of different manifestations of improvisation, their transforming possibilities, and of the ethics of listening." -- Ian Patterson * All About Jazz *"I was deeply touched by the description of your experience of our visit to Ramallah and the camps together. I would sincerely hope that your book will be read by more than the academics and intelligentsia, it’s very important." -- John McLaughlin"Playing for Keeps collects critical, thoughtfully selected on how musical improvisation can respond to and through trauma. . . . Case studies in this collection illustrate global improvisatory practices, framing them as solutions to encounters with difference that have failed in the past. These solutions seem especially timely for a world reckoning with dual crises: racism and disease. Each case study testifies to improvisation’s power to maintain and restore dignity through dialogic exchanges of creative response to horrific injustices, exchanges that facilitate co-creation of new community identities with an eye toward nurturing rather than perpetuating destruction. . . . Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals." -- S. Schmalenberger * Choice *“With beautifully written individual chapters on different musical events and communities, and each writer’s interpretation of improvisation in their research topic, [Playing for Keeps] is significant as a collection of essays, and builds upon the growing field of interdisciplinary critical research on improvisation.” -- Rebecca Zola * Jazz Perspectives *“[Playing for a Keeps] is a beacon of hope in times of crisis and will continue to be a reference point as the aftermaths of current crises persist in the years to come. The authors all outline ways in which improvisatory musics—and, more fundamentally, improvisation itself—can help those who suffer through and navigate crises and, afterward, salve the psychological wounds of the survivors.” -- Mike Ford * Current Musicology *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Playing for Keeps: An Introduction / Daniel Fischlin and Eric Porter 1 1. manifesto / Matana Roberts 25 2. The Exhibition of Vandalizim: Improvising Healing, Politics, and Film in South Africa / Stephanie Vos 29 3. The Rigors of Afro/Canarian Jazz: Sounding Peripheral Vision with Severed Tongues / Mark Lomanno 55 4. "Opening Up a Space That Maybe Wouldn't Exist Otherwise" / Holding It Down in the Aftermath / Vijay Iyer in conversation with Daniel Fischlin and Eric Porter 81 5. Experimental and Improvised Norths: The Sonic Geographies of Tanya Tagaq's Collaborations with Derek Charke and the Kronos Quartet / Kate Galloway 94 6. Nina Simone: CIVIL JAZZ! / Randy DuBurke 121 7. Free Improvised Music in Postwar Beirut: Differential Sounds, Intersectarian Collaborations, and Critical Collective Memory / Rana El Kadi 129 8. Street Concerts and Sexual Harassment in Post-Mubarak Egypt: Tarab as Affective Politics / Darci Sprengel 160 9. Improvisation, Grounded Humanity, and Witnessing in Palestine: An Interview with Al-Mada's Odeh Turjman and Reem Abdul Hadi / Daniel Fischlin 191 10. Silsulim (Improvised "Curls") in the Vocal Performance of Israeli Popular Music: Identity, Power, and Politics / Moshe Morad 250 11. Three Moments in Kī Hō`alu (Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar): Improvising as a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) Adaptive Strategy / Kevin Fellezs 275 12. From Prepeace to Postconflict: The Ethics of (Non) Listening and Cocreation in a Divided Society / Sara Ramshaw and Paul Stapleton 300 Contributors 325 Index 331
£112.20
Duke University Press Playing for Keeps
Book SynopsisThe contributors to Playing for Keeps examine the ways in which musical improvisation can serve as a way to negotiate violence, trauma, systemic inequality, and the aftermaths of war and colonialism.Trade Review“Casting an eye on the world of improvisation, Playing for Keeps is a major corrective to the latent ethnocentrism of improvisation studies and shifts the field's focus in a revolutionary way. The volume challenges readers to think more carefully and critically about the status of improvisation in various traditional cultural contexts and the intersection of those contexts found in contemporary society. A smart, decisive statement on globalism and improvisation.” -- John Corbett, author of * Vinyl Freak: Love Letters to a Dying Medium *"This is a rewarding project that is already extended by a special edition of the Journal Critical Studies In Improvisation and is to be further extended in a companion book now in progress." -- Phil England * The Wire *"A major academic achievement, Playing for Keeps: Improvisation In The Aftermath is an enlightening examination of different manifestations of improvisation, their transforming possibilities, and of the ethics of listening." -- Ian Patterson * All About Jazz *"I was deeply touched by the description of your experience of our visit to Ramallah and the camps together. I would sincerely hope that your book will be read by more than the academics and intelligentsia, it’s very important." -- John McLaughlin"Playing for Keeps collects critical, thoughtfully selected on how musical improvisation can respond to and through trauma. . . . Case studies in this collection illustrate global improvisatory practices, framing them as solutions to encounters with difference that have failed in the past. These solutions seem especially timely for a world reckoning with dual crises: racism and disease. Each case study testifies to improvisation’s power to maintain and restore dignity through dialogic exchanges of creative response to horrific injustices, exchanges that facilitate co-creation of new community identities with an eye toward nurturing rather than perpetuating destruction. . . . Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals." -- S. Schmalenberger * Choice *“With beautifully written individual chapters on different musical events and communities, and each writer’s interpretation of improvisation in their research topic, [Playing for Keeps] is significant as a collection of essays, and builds upon the growing field of interdisciplinary critical research on improvisation.” -- Rebecca Zola * Jazz Perspectives *“[Playing for a Keeps] is a beacon of hope in times of crisis and will continue to be a reference point as the aftermaths of current crises persist in the years to come. The authors all outline ways in which improvisatory musics—and, more fundamentally, improvisation itself—can help those who suffer through and navigate crises and, afterward, salve the psychological wounds of the survivors.” -- Mike Ford * Current Musicology *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Playing for Keeps: An Introduction / Daniel Fischlin and Eric Porter 1 1. manifesto / Matana Roberts 25 2. The Exhibition of Vandalizim: Improvising Healing, Politics, and Film in South Africa / Stephanie Vos 29 3. The Rigors of Afro/Canarian Jazz: Sounding Peripheral Vision with Severed Tongues / Mark Lomanno 55 4. "Opening Up a Space That Maybe Wouldn't Exist Otherwise" / Holding It Down in the Aftermath / Vijay Iyer in conversation with Daniel Fischlin and Eric Porter 81 5. Experimental and Improvised Norths: The Sonic Geographies of Tanya Tagaq's Collaborations with Derek Charke and the Kronos Quartet / Kate Galloway 94 6. Nina Simone: CIVIL JAZZ! / Randy DuBurke 121 7. Free Improvised Music in Postwar Beirut: Differential Sounds, Intersectarian Collaborations, and Critical Collective Memory / Rana El Kadi 129 8. Street Concerts and Sexual Harassment in Post-Mubarak Egypt: Tarab as Affective Politics / Darci Sprengel 160 9. Improvisation, Grounded Humanity, and Witnessing in Palestine: An Interview with Al-Mada's Odeh Turjman and Reem Abdul Hadi / Daniel Fischlin 191 10. Silsulim (Improvised "Curls") in the Vocal Performance of Israeli Popular Music: Identity, Power, and Politics / Moshe Morad 250 11. Three Moments in Kī Hō`alu (Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar): Improvising as a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) Adaptive Strategy / Kevin Fellezs 275 12. From Prepeace to Postconflict: The Ethics of (Non) Listening and Cocreation in a Divided Society / Sara Ramshaw and Paul Stapleton 300 Contributors 325 Index 331
£27.90
Duke University Press Songbooks
Book SynopsisIn Songbooks, critic and scholar Eric Weisbard offers a critical guide to books on American popular music from William Billings''s 1770 New-England Psalm-Singer to Jay-Z''s 2010 memoir Decoded. Drawing on his background editing the Village Voice music section, coediting the Journal of Popular Music Studies, and organizing the Pop Conference, Weisbard connects American music writing from memoirs, biographies, and song compilations to blues novels, magazine essays, and academic studies. The authors of these works are as diverse as the music itself: women, people of color, queer writers, self-educated scholars, poets, musicians, and elites discarding their social norms. Whether analyzing books on Louis Armstrong, the Beatles, and Madonna; the novels of Theodore Dreiser, Gayl Jones, and Jennifer Egan; or varying takes on blackface minstrelsy, Weisbard charts an alternative history of American music as told through its writing. As Weisbard demonstrates, thTrade Review“Entertaining scholarship! Entertaining criticism! What a revelation! Eric Weisbard is one of those rare writers who understands that in mirroring the music it addresses, literary analysis should provide pleasure as well as insights. With great verve, Songbooks provides both.” -- David Ritz, co-composer, “Sexual Healing”“Embracing the fact that there's no hearing any music without mediations of crosstalk, mythography, humbug, gatekeeping, and taste war, Eric Weisbard's exuberant and encyclopedic history of music writing delivers two and a half centuries of vernacular bounce—sheets of sound, if you will. Heroic, acutely discerning, compulsively readable, and bound to be enduringly useful.” -- Eric Lott, author of * Black Mirror: The Cultural Contradictions of American Racism *“Eric Weisbard is the rare critic who can pair a deep, intersectional, and breathtakingly intelligent survey of music writing with the nuance and joy of someone who has actually done the strange, difficult work of parsing sound on paper. Songbooks is an extraordinary look at how we try to make sense of the music that buoys and destroys us. It made me rethink what criticism can do, what music can do, and how both can change our lives.” -- Amanda Petrusich, author of * Do Not Sell at Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78 rpm Records *"Weisbard reshuffles the canon, paying close attention to Black, gay and other voices that have often been pushed to the margins. . . . He doesn’t penetrate his subjects so much as hurl himself at them and bounce off, like a bird smacking into a window. Weisbard falls to the ground, dusts himself off, then counts the intellectual change that’s fallen from his pockets." -- Dwight Garner * New York Times *"Weisbard’s comprehensiveness means he may introduce many music fans to works they might not know otherwise. . . . A valuable literature review of American pop. . . ." * Kirkus Reviews *"Weisbard’s book will be required reading for all music critics and journalists." -- Henry Carrigan * No Depression *"Could you perchance use an overview of everything that’s been thought in the 50-plus years since rock critics turned popular music journalism into an intellectually and for a while economically viable enterprise? Songbooks is it, only it goes back a lot further—two and a half centuries. . . . An inspiring, provocative vision of the many ways popular music matters." -- Robert Christgau"Songbooks is the kind of book you keep picking up and dipping into for the rest of your life." -- Michaelangelo Matos * Rock and Roll Globe *"Weisbard's book is a valuable resource for those who are interested in researching and learning more about the history of American popular music." -- Kristine Dizon * European Journal of American Studies *"In 500-some pages that read like 200 — the writing is fluid, playful, funny, tough, fast on the eye — Weisbard lightly packs more critical judgment and original phrase-making into each of his two- or three-page chapters than most scholars can manage in 50. This is a literary history of American popular music, but it’s also a map of the country so many other writers have marked out. . . . Songbooks is a great reference book, but before and after that it’s a funhouse." -- Greil Marcus * Chronicle of Higher Education *"Songbooks is a Herculean achievement of both research and tribute, a book that excavates and illuminates the intellectual history that it promises and so much more." -- Jack Hamilton * Journal of Popular Music Studies *"... Serious students of American popular music will find the book a strong introduction to the literature and scholarship that have defined American popular music. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty." * Choice *"On more than one occasion, I was reminded of late-night conversations I have enjoyed at popular music conferences – witty, erudite, entertaining debates, in which a variety of connections and comparisons, explanations and opinions compete for attention, often straying from the original topic. . . . [T]he essays here illuminate the diverse histories and circumstances of popular song. In that regard, the essays here are not unlike the musics of the past two centuries to which they refer: revelatory, confusing, dynamic, irritating, rewarding, ephemeral, unexpected, disruptive and always provocative." -- Ian Inglis * Popular Music *"[Weisbard's] task, distilling the American music experience into under 600 pages, is ambitious, and his efforts to incorporate a broad range of titles are noteworthy and commendable. . . . Weisbard’s expertise, passion, and knowledge are undeniable." -- Gregory Stall * Library Journal *"As a valuable resource for scholars of popular music, Songbooks should encourage more writers to enter the discussion. Eric Weisbard has now provided a guidebook to the sometimes chaotic but always vital conversation in popular music studies." -- Leigh H. Edwards * American Literary History *"Songbooks takes us on a fascinating journey through an alternative American popular music history, written not just by experts, but by people usually at the fringes – women, people of color, practitioners, and non-academics. Reading this book from start to finish will give one the best overview of this journey, but the book is perhaps better enjoyed by just dipping in and skipping around as time or interest permits. This book is recommended for all readers interested in popular music and for library collections of popular music." -- Mary Huisman * Music Reference Services Quarterly *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 Part I: Setting the Scene First Writer, of Music and on Music: William Billings: The New-England Psalm-Singer, 1770 20 Blackface Minstrelsy Extends Its Twisted Roots: T.D. Rice, "Jim Crow," c. 1832 22 Shape-Note Singing and Early Country: B.F. White and E.J. King, The Sacred Harp, 1944 25 Music in Captivity: Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave: 1853 26 Champion of the White Male Vernacular: Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855 28 Notating Spirituals: William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison, eds., Slave Songs of the United States, 1867 30 First Black Music Historian: James Trotter, Music and Some Highly Musical People: The Lives of Remarkable Musicians of the Colored Race, 1878 32 Child Ballads and Folklore: James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 5 vols., 1882-1898 33 Women Not Inventing Ethnomusicology: Alice Fletcher, A Study of Omaha Indian Music, 1893 35 First Hit Songwriter, from Pop to Folk and Back Again: Morrison Foster, Biography, Songs and Musical Compositions of Stephen C. Foster, 1896 39 Americana Emerges: Emma Bell Miles, The Spirit of the Mountains, 1905 44 Documenting the Story: O.G. Sonneck, Bibliography of Early Secular American Music, 1905 45 Tin Pan Alley's Sheet Music Biz: Charles K. Harris, How to Write a Popular Song, 1906 47 First Family of Folk Collecting: John A. Lomax, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, 1910 50 Proclaiming Black Modernity: James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, 1912 52 Songcatching in the Mountains: Olive Dame Campbell and Cecil Sharp, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, 1917 54 Part II: The Jazz Age Stories for the Slicks: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers, 1920 62 Remembering the First Black Star: Mabel Rowland, ed., Bert Williams, Son of Laughter, 1923 64 Magazine Criticism across Popular Genres: Gilbert Seldes, The Seven Lively Arts, 1924 67 Harlem Renaissance: Alain Locke, ed., The New Negro: An Interpretation, 1925 69 Tin Pan Alley's Standards Setter: Alexander Woollcott, The Story of Irving Berlin, 1925 71 Broadway Musical as Supertext: Edna Ferber, Show Boat, 1926 74 Father of the Blues in Print: W.C. Handy, ed., Blues: An Anthology, 1926 76 Poet of the Blare and Racial Mountain: Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues, 1926 78 Blessed Immortal, Forgotten Songwriter: Carrie Jacobs-Bond, The Roads of Melody, 1927 80 Tune Detective and Expert Explainer: Sigmund Spaeth, Read 'Em and Weep: The Songs Your Forgot to Remember, 1927 82 Pop's First History Lesson: Isaac Goldberg: Tin Pan Alley: A Chronicle of the American Popular Music Racket, 1930 84 Roots Intellectual: Constance Rourke, American Humor: A Study of the National Character, 1931 85 Jook Ethnography, Inventing Black Music Studies: Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men, 1935 87 What He Played Came First: Louis Armstrong, Swing That Music, 1936 90 Jazz's Original Novel: Dorothy Baker, Young Man with a Horn, 1938 94 Introducing Jazz Critics: Frederic Ramsey Jr. and Charles Edward Smith, eds., Jazzmen, 1939 95 Part III: Midcentury Icons Folk Embodiment: Woody Guthrie, Bound for Glory, 1943 104 A Hack Story Soldiers Took to War: David Ewen, Men of Popular Music, 1944 106 From Immigrant Jew to Red Hot Mama: Sophie Tucker, Some of These Days, 1945 108 White Negro Drug Dealer: Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe, Really the Blues, 1946 110 Composer of Tone Parallels: Barry Ulanov, Duke Ellington, 1946 111 Jazz's Precursor as Pop and Art: Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, They All Played Ragtime: The True Story of an American Music, 1950 114 Field Recording in the Library of Congress: Alan Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and "Inventor of Jazz," 1950 118 Dramatizing Blackness from a Distance: Ethel Waters with Charles Samuels, His Eye Is on the Sparrow, 1951 120 Centering Vernacular Song: Gilbert Chase, America's Music, 1955 122 Writing about Records: Roland Gelatt, The Fabulous Phonograph: From Tin Foil to High Fidelity, 1955 124 Collective Oral History of Document Scenes: Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, eds., Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz as Told by the Men Who Made It, 1955 127 The Greatest Jazz Singer's Star Text: Billie Holiday with William Dufty, Lady Sings the Blues, 1956 129 Beat Generation: Jack Kerouac, On the Road, 1957 133 Borderlands Folklore and Transnational Imaginaries: Américo Paredes, "With His Pistol in His Hands": A Border Ballad and Its Hero, 1958 136New Yorker Critic of a Genre Becoming Middlebrow: Whitney Balliett, The Sound of Surprise: 46 Pieces on Jazz, 1959 141 Part IV. Vernacular Counterculture Blues Revivalists: Samuel Charters, The Country Blues, 1959; Paul Oliver, Blues Fell This Morning: The Meaning of the Blues, 1960 148 Britpop in Fiction: Colin MacInnes, Absolute Beginners, 1959 151 Form-Exploding Indeterminacy: John Cage, Silence, 1961 153 Science Fiction Writer Pens First Rock and Roll Novel: Harlan Ellison, Rockabilly [Spider Kiss], 1961 155 Pro-Jazz Scene Sociology: Howard Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, 1963 159 Reclaiming Black Music: LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Blues People: Negro Music in White America, 1963 159 An Endless Lit, Limited Only in Scope: Michael Braun, "Love Me Do!": The Beatles Progress, 1964 162 Music as a Prose Master's Jagged Grain: Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act, 1964 167 How to Succeed in . . .: M. William Krasilovsky and Sidney Schemel, This Business of Music, 1964 169 Schmaltz and Adversity: Sammy Davis Jr. and Burt Boyar, Yes I Can, 1965 171 New Journalism and Electrified Syntax: Tom Wolfe, Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, 1965 173 Defining a Genre: Bill C. Malone, Country Music, U.S.A.: A Fifty-Year History, 1968 175 Swing's Movers as an Alternate History of American Pop: Marshall and Jean Stearns, Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance, 1968 177 Rock and Roll's Greatest Hyper: Nik Cohn, Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom, 1969/1970 182Ebony's Pioneering Critic of Black Pop as Black Power: Phyl Garland, The Sound of Soul: The Story of Black Music, 1969 184 Entertainment Journalism and the Power of Knowing: Lillian Roxon, Rock Encyclopedia, 1969 185 An Over-the-Top Genre's First Reliable History: Charlie Gillett, The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1970 187 Rock Critic of the Trivially Awesome: Richard Meltzer, The Aesthetics of Rock, 1970 188 Black Religious Fervor as the Core of Rock and Soul: Anthony Heilbut, The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times, 1971 190 Jazz Memoir of "Rotary Perception" Multiplicity: Charles Mingus, Beneath the Underdog, 1971 193 Composing a Formal History: Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans, 1971 194 Krazy Kat Fiction of Viral Vernaculars: Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo, 1972 196 Derrière Garde Prose and Residual Pop Styles: Alec Wilder, American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950, 1972 198 Charts as a New Literature: Joel Whitburn, Top Pop Records, 1955–1972, 1973 201 Selling Platinum across Formats: Clive Davis with James Willwerth, Clive, Inside the Record Business, 1975 203 Blues Relationships and Black Women's Deep Songs: Gayl Jones, Corregidora, 1975 205 "Look a the World in a Rock 'n' Roll Sense . . . What Does That Even Mean?": Greil Marcus, Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music, 1975 207 Cultural Studies Brings Pop from the Hallway to the Classroom: Hall and Tony Jefferson, eds., Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, 1976 211 Life in Country for an Era of Feminism and Counterculture: Loretta Lynn with George Vecsey, Coal Miner's Daughter, 1976 214 Introducing Rock Critics: Jim Miller, ed., The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, 1976 216 Patriarchal Exegete of Black Vernacular as "Equipment for Living": Albert Murray, Stomping the Blues, 1976 219 Reading Pop Culture as Intellectual Obligation: Roland Barthes, Image—Music—Text, 1977 221 Paging through Books to Make History: Dean Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War, 1977 223 Historians Begin to Study Popular Music: Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom, 1977 225 Musicking to Overturn Hierarchy: Christopher Small, Music, Society, Education, 1977 226 Drool Data and Stained Panties from a Critical Noise Boy: Nick Tosches, Country: The Biggest Music in America, 1977 229 Part V: After the Revolution Punk Negates Rock: Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons, The Boy Looked at Johnny: The Obituary of Rock and Roll, 1978 236 The Ghostwriter behind the Music Books: Ray Charles and David Ritz, Brother Ray: Ray Charles' Own Story, 1978 240 Disco Negates Rock: Andrew Holleran, Dancer from the Dance, 1978 242 Industry Schmoozer and Black Music Advocated Fills Public Libraries with Okay Overviews: Arnold Shaw, Honkers and Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues, 1978 245 Musicology's Greatest Tune Chronicler: Charles Hamm, Yesterdays: Popular Song in America, 1979 247 Criticism's Greatest Album Chronicler: Robert Christgau, Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the '70s, 1981 248 Rock's Frank Capra: Cameron Crowe: Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story, 1981 251 Culture Studies/Rock Critic Twofer!: Simon Frith, Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock'n'Roll, 1981 252 A Magical Explainer of Impure Sounds: Robert Palmer, Deep Blues, 1981 255 Feminist Rock Critic, Pop-Savvy Social Critic: Ellen Willis, Beginning to See the Light: Pieces of a Decade, 1981 257 New Deal Swing Believer Revived: Otis Ferguson, In the Spirit of Jazz: The Otis Ferguson Reader, 1982 259 Ethnomusicology and Pop, Forever Fraught: Bruno Nettl, The Study of Ethnomusicology: Twenty-Nine Issues and Concepts, 1983 260 Autodidact Deviance, Modeling the Rock Generation to Come: V. Vale and Andrea Juno, eds., RE/Search #6/7: Industrial Culture Handbook, 1983 263 The Rolling Stones of Rolling Stones Books: Stanley Booth, The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones, 1984 266 Finding the Blackface in Bluegrass: Robert Cantwell, Bluegrass Breakdown: The Making of the Old Southern Sound, 1984 268 Cyberpunk Novels and Cultural Studies Futurism: William Gibson, Neuromancer, 1984 269 Glossary Magazine Features Writer Gets History's Second Draft: Gerri Hirshey, Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music, 1984 272 Theorizing Sound as Dress Rehearsal for the Future: Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music, 1977; Translation 1985 274 Classic Rock, Mass Market Paperback Style: Stephen Davis, Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zepplin Saga, 1985 275Love and Rockets, Signature Comic of Punk Los Angeles as Borderland Imaginary: Los Bros Hernandez, Music for Mechanics, 1985 277 Plays about Black American Culture Surviving the Loss of Political Will: August Wilson, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, 1985 280 Putting Pop in the Big Books of Music: H. Wiley Hitchcock and Stanley Sadie, eds., The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, 1986 282 Popular Music's Defining Singer and Swinger: Kitty Kelley, His Way, The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra, 1986 284 Anti-Epic Lyricizing of Black Music after Black Power: Nathaniel Mackey, Bedouin Hornbook, 1986 288 Lost Icon of Rock Criticism: Lester Bangs, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, 1987 290 Veiled Glimpses of the Songwriter Who Invented Rock and Roll as Literature: Chuck Berry, Chuck Berry: The Autobiography, 1987 292 Making "Wild-Eyed Girls" a More Complex Narrative: Pamela Des Barres, I'm with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie, 1987 294 Reporting Black Music as Art Mixed with Business, Nelson George, The Death of Rhythm & Blues, 1988 295 Sessions with the Evil Genius of Jazz: Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography, 1989 298 Part VI: New Voices, New Method Literature of New World Order Americanization: Jessica Hagedorn, Dogeaters, 1990 308 Ethnic Studies of Blended Musical Identities: George Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture, 1990 310 Ballad Novels for a Baby Boomer Appalachia: Sharyn McCrumb, If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O, 1990 312 Pimply, Prole, and Putrid, but with a Surprisingly Diverse Genre Literature: Chuck Eddy, Stairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe, 1991 314 How Musicology Met Cultural Studies: Susan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality, 1991 318 Idol for Academic Analysis and a Changing Public Sphere: Madonna, Sex, 1992 320 Black Bohemian Cultural Nationalism: Greg Tate, Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America, 1992 324 From Indie to Alternative Rock: Gina Arnold, Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana, 1993 326 Musicology on Popular Music—In Pragmatic Context: Richard Crawford, The American Musical Landscape, 1993 330 Listenign, Queerly, Wayne Koestenbaum, The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire, 1993 332 Blackface as Stolen Vernacular: Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, 1993 334 Media Studies of Girls Listening to Top 40: Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media, 1994 338 Ironies of a Contested Identity: Peter Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley, 1994 339 Two Generations of Leading Ethnomusicologists Debate the Popular: Charles Keil and Steven Feld: Music Grooves: Essays and Dialogues, 1944 344 Defining Hip-Hop as Flow, Layering, Rupture, and Postindustrial Resistance: Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, 1994 346 Regendering Music Writing, with the Deadly Art of Attitude: Evelyn McDonnell and Ann Powers, eds., Rock She Wrote: Women Write about Rock, Pop, and Rap, 1995 348 Soundscaping References, Immersing Trauma: David Toop, Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds, 1995 348 Sociologist Gives Country Studies a Soft-Shell Contrast to the Honky-Tonk: Richard Peterson, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity, 1997 354 All That Not-Quite Jazz: Gary Giddins, Visions of Jazz: The First Century, 1998 355 Jazz Studies Conquers the Academy: Robert G. O'Meally, ed., The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, 1998 357 Part VII: Topics in Progress Paradigms of Club Culture, House and Techno to Rave and EDM: Simon Reynolds, Energy Flash: A Journey through Rave Music and Dance Culture, 1998 368 Performance Studies, Minoritarian Identity, and Academic Wildness: José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentification: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics, 1999 372 Left of Black: Networking a New Discourse: Mark Anthony Neal, What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture, 1999 375 Aerobics as Genre, Managing Emotions: Tia DeNora, Music in Everyday Life, 2000 377 Confronting Globalization: Thomas Turino, Nationalists, Cosmopolitans, and Popular Music in Zimbabwe, 2000 378 Evocations of Cultural Migration Centered on Race, Rhythm, and Eventually Sexuality: Alejo Carpentier, Music in Cuba, 2001 (1946) 382 Digging Up the Pre-Recordings Creation of a Black Pop Paradigm: Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff, Out of Sight: The Rise of African American Popular Music, 1889–1895, 2002 386 When Faith in Popular Sound Wavers, He's Waiting: Theodor Adorno, Essays on Music, ed. Richard Leppert, 2002 388 Codifying a Precarious but Global Academic Field: David Hesmondhalgh and Keith Negus, eds., Popular Music Studies, 2002 391 Salsa and the Mixings of Global Culture: Lise Waxer, City of Musical Memory: Salsa, Record Grooves, and Popular Culture in Cali, Colombia, 2002 393 Musicals as Pop, Nationalism, and Changing Identity: Stacy Wolf, A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical, 2002 396 Musical Fiction and Criticism by the Greatest Used Bookstore Clerk of All Time: Jonathan Lethem, Fortress of Solitude, 2003 399 Poetic Ontologies of Black Musical Style: Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, 2003 401 Rescuing the Afromodern Vernacular: Guthrie Ramsey Jr., Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop, 2003 402 Sound Studies and the Songs Question: Jonathan Sterne: The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction, 2003 404 Dylanologist Conventions: Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One, 2004 405 Two Editions of a Field Evolving Faster Than a Collection Could Contain: Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal, eds., That's the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, 2004, 2012 410 Revisionist Bluesology and Tangled Intellectual History: Elijah Wald, Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, 2004 412 Trying to Tell the Story of a Dominant Genre: Jeff Chang, Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, 2005 415 Refiguring American Music—And Its Institutionalizations: Josh Kun, Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America, 2005 419 Country Music Scholars Pioneer Gender and Industry Analysis: Diane Pecknold, The Selling Sound: The Rise of the Country Music Industry, 2007 423 Where Does Classical Music Fit In?: Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, 2007 426 Poptimism, 33 1/3 Books, and the Struggles of Music Critics: Carl Wilson, Let's Talk about Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, 2007 429 Novelists Collegial with Indie Music: Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad, 2010 432 YouTube, Streaming, and the Popular Music Performance Archive: Will Friedwald, A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers, 2010 437 Idiosyncratic Musician Memoirs—Performer as Writer in the Era of the Artist as Brand: Jay-Z, Decoded, 2010 438 Acknowledgments 443 Works Cited 447 Index 513
£90.95
Duke University Press Songbooks
Book SynopsisIn Songbooks, critic and scholar Eric Weisbard offers a critical guide to books on American popular music from William Billings''s 1770 New-England Psalm-Singer to Jay-Z''s 2010 memoir Decoded. Drawing on his background editing the Village Voice music section, coediting the Journal of Popular Music Studies, and organizing the Pop Conference, Weisbard connects American music writing from memoirs, biographies, and song compilations to blues novels, magazine essays, and academic studies. The authors of these works are as diverse as the music itself: women, people of color, queer writers, self-educated scholars, poets, musicians, and elites discarding their social norms. Whether analyzing books on Louis Armstrong, the Beatles, and Madonna; the novels of Theodore Dreiser, Gayl Jones, and Jennifer Egan; or varying takes on blackface minstrelsy, Weisbard charts an alternative history of American music as told through its writing. As Weisbard demonstrates, thTrade Review“Entertaining scholarship! Entertaining criticism! What a revelation! Eric Weisbard is one of those rare writers who understands that in mirroring the music it addresses, literary analysis should provide pleasure as well as insights. With great verve, Songbooks provides both.” -- David Ritz, co-composer, “Sexual Healing”“Embracing the fact that there's no hearing any music without mediations of crosstalk, mythography, humbug, gatekeeping, and taste war, Eric Weisbard's exuberant and encyclopedic history of music writing delivers two and a half centuries of vernacular bounce—sheets of sound, if you will. Heroic, acutely discerning, compulsively readable, and bound to be enduringly useful.” -- Eric Lott, author of * Black Mirror: The Cultural Contradictions of American Racism *“Eric Weisbard is the rare critic who can pair a deep, intersectional, and breathtakingly intelligent survey of music writing with the nuance and joy of someone who has actually done the strange, difficult work of parsing sound on paper. Songbooks is an extraordinary look at how we try to make sense of the music that buoys and destroys us. It made me rethink what criticism can do, what music can do, and how both can change our lives.” -- Amanda Petrusich, author of * Do Not Sell at Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78 rpm Records *"Weisbard reshuffles the canon, paying close attention to Black, gay and other voices that have often been pushed to the margins. . . . He doesn’t penetrate his subjects so much as hurl himself at them and bounce off, like a bird smacking into a window. Weisbard falls to the ground, dusts himself off, then counts the intellectual change that’s fallen from his pockets." -- Dwight Garner * New York Times *"Weisbard’s comprehensiveness means he may introduce many music fans to works they might not know otherwise. . . . A valuable literature review of American pop. . . ." * Kirkus Reviews *"Weisbard’s book will be required reading for all music critics and journalists." -- Henry Carrigan * No Depression *"Could you perchance use an overview of everything that’s been thought in the 50-plus years since rock critics turned popular music journalism into an intellectually and for a while economically viable enterprise? Songbooks is it, only it goes back a lot further—two and a half centuries. . . . An inspiring, provocative vision of the many ways popular music matters." -- Robert Christgau"Songbooks is the kind of book you keep picking up and dipping into for the rest of your life." -- Michaelangelo Matos * Rock and Roll Globe *"Weisbard's book is a valuable resource for those who are interested in researching and learning more about the history of American popular music." -- Kristine Dizon * European Journal of American Studies *"In 500-some pages that read like 200 — the writing is fluid, playful, funny, tough, fast on the eye — Weisbard lightly packs more critical judgment and original phrase-making into each of his two- or three-page chapters than most scholars can manage in 50. This is a literary history of American popular music, but it’s also a map of the country so many other writers have marked out. . . . Songbooks is a great reference book, but before and after that it’s a funhouse." -- Greil Marcus * Chronicle of Higher Education *"Songbooks is a Herculean achievement of both research and tribute, a book that excavates and illuminates the intellectual history that it promises and so much more." -- Jack Hamilton * Journal of Popular Music Studies *"... Serious students of American popular music will find the book a strong introduction to the literature and scholarship that have defined American popular music. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty." * Choice *"On more than one occasion, I was reminded of late-night conversations I have enjoyed at popular music conferences – witty, erudite, entertaining debates, in which a variety of connections and comparisons, explanations and opinions compete for attention, often straying from the original topic. . . . [T]he essays here illuminate the diverse histories and circumstances of popular song. In that regard, the essays here are not unlike the musics of the past two centuries to which they refer: revelatory, confusing, dynamic, irritating, rewarding, ephemeral, unexpected, disruptive and always provocative." -- Ian Inglis * Popular Music *"[Weisbard's] task, distilling the American music experience into under 600 pages, is ambitious, and his efforts to incorporate a broad range of titles are noteworthy and commendable. . . . Weisbard’s expertise, passion, and knowledge are undeniable." -- Gregory Stall * Library Journal *"As a valuable resource for scholars of popular music, Songbooks should encourage more writers to enter the discussion. Eric Weisbard has now provided a guidebook to the sometimes chaotic but always vital conversation in popular music studies." -- Leigh H. Edwards * American Literary History *"Songbooks takes us on a fascinating journey through an alternative American popular music history, written not just by experts, but by people usually at the fringes – women, people of color, practitioners, and non-academics. Reading this book from start to finish will give one the best overview of this journey, but the book is perhaps better enjoyed by just dipping in and skipping around as time or interest permits. This book is recommended for all readers interested in popular music and for library collections of popular music." -- Mary Huisman * Music Reference Services Quarterly *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 Part I: Setting the Scene First Writer, of Music and on Music: William Billings: The New-England Psalm-Singer, 1770 20 Blackface Minstrelsy Extends Its Twisted Roots: T.D. Rice, "Jim Crow," c. 1832 22 Shape-Note Singing and Early Country: B.F. White and E.J. King, The Sacred Harp, 1944 25 Music in Captivity: Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave: 1853 26 Champion of the White Male Vernacular: Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855 28 Notating Spirituals: William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison, eds., Slave Songs of the United States, 1867 30 First Black Music Historian: James Trotter, Music and Some Highly Musical People: The Lives of Remarkable Musicians of the Colored Race, 1878 32 Child Ballads and Folklore: James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 5 vols., 1882-1898 33 Women Not Inventing Ethnomusicology: Alice Fletcher, A Study of Omaha Indian Music, 1893 35 First Hit Songwriter, from Pop to Folk and Back Again: Morrison Foster, Biography, Songs and Musical Compositions of Stephen C. Foster, 1896 39 Americana Emerges: Emma Bell Miles, The Spirit of the Mountains, 1905 44 Documenting the Story: O.G. Sonneck, Bibliography of Early Secular American Music, 1905 45 Tin Pan Alley's Sheet Music Biz: Charles K. Harris, How to Write a Popular Song, 1906 47 First Family of Folk Collecting: John A. Lomax, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, 1910 50 Proclaiming Black Modernity: James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, 1912 52 Songcatching in the Mountains: Olive Dame Campbell and Cecil Sharp, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, 1917 54 Part II: The Jazz Age Stories for the Slicks: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers, 1920 62 Remembering the First Black Star: Mabel Rowland, ed., Bert Williams, Son of Laughter, 1923 64 Magazine Criticism across Popular Genres: Gilbert Seldes, The Seven Lively Arts, 1924 67 Harlem Renaissance: Alain Locke, ed., The New Negro: An Interpretation, 1925 69 Tin Pan Alley's Standards Setter: Alexander Woollcott, The Story of Irving Berlin, 1925 71 Broadway Musical as Supertext: Edna Ferber, Show Boat, 1926 74 Father of the Blues in Print: W.C. Handy, ed., Blues: An Anthology, 1926 76 Poet of the Blare and Racial Mountain: Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues, 1926 78 Blessed Immortal, Forgotten Songwriter: Carrie Jacobs-Bond, The Roads of Melody, 1927 80 Tune Detective and Expert Explainer: Sigmund Spaeth, Read 'Em and Weep: The Songs Your Forgot to Remember, 1927 82 Pop's First History Lesson: Isaac Goldberg: Tin Pan Alley: A Chronicle of the American Popular Music Racket, 1930 84 Roots Intellectual: Constance Rourke, American Humor: A Study of the National Character, 1931 85 Jook Ethnography, Inventing Black Music Studies: Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men, 1935 87 What He Played Came First: Louis Armstrong, Swing That Music, 1936 90 Jazz's Original Novel: Dorothy Baker, Young Man with a Horn, 1938 94 Introducing Jazz Critics: Frederic Ramsey Jr. and Charles Edward Smith, eds., Jazzmen, 1939 95 Part III: Midcentury Icons Folk Embodiment: Woody Guthrie, Bound for Glory, 1943 104 A Hack Story Soldiers Took to War: David Ewen, Men of Popular Music, 1944 106 From Immigrant Jew to Red Hot Mama: Sophie Tucker, Some of These Days, 1945 108 White Negro Drug Dealer: Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe, Really the Blues, 1946 110 Composer of Tone Parallels: Barry Ulanov, Duke Ellington, 1946 111 Jazz's Precursor as Pop and Art: Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, They All Played Ragtime: The True Story of an American Music, 1950 114 Field Recording in the Library of Congress: Alan Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and "Inventor of Jazz," 1950 118 Dramatizing Blackness from a Distance: Ethel Waters with Charles Samuels, His Eye Is on the Sparrow, 1951 120 Centering Vernacular Song: Gilbert Chase, America's Music, 1955 122 Writing about Records: Roland Gelatt, The Fabulous Phonograph: From Tin Foil to High Fidelity, 1955 124 Collective Oral History of Document Scenes: Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, eds., Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz as Told by the Men Who Made It, 1955 127 The Greatest Jazz Singer's Star Text: Billie Holiday with William Dufty, Lady Sings the Blues, 1956 129 Beat Generation: Jack Kerouac, On the Road, 1957 133 Borderlands Folklore and Transnational Imaginaries: Américo Paredes, "With His Pistol in His Hands": A Border Ballad and Its Hero, 1958 136New Yorker Critic of a Genre Becoming Middlebrow: Whitney Balliett, The Sound of Surprise: 46 Pieces on Jazz, 1959 141 Part IV. Vernacular Counterculture Blues Revivalists: Samuel Charters, The Country Blues, 1959; Paul Oliver, Blues Fell This Morning: The Meaning of the Blues, 1960 148 Britpop in Fiction: Colin MacInnes, Absolute Beginners, 1959 151 Form-Exploding Indeterminacy: John Cage, Silence, 1961 153 Science Fiction Writer Pens First Rock and Roll Novel: Harlan Ellison, Rockabilly [Spider Kiss], 1961 155 Pro-Jazz Scene Sociology: Howard Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, 1963 159 Reclaiming Black Music: LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Blues People: Negro Music in White America, 1963 159 An Endless Lit, Limited Only in Scope: Michael Braun, "Love Me Do!": The Beatles Progress, 1964 162 Music as a Prose Master's Jagged Grain: Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act, 1964 167 How to Succeed in . . .: M. William Krasilovsky and Sidney Schemel, This Business of Music, 1964 169 Schmaltz and Adversity: Sammy Davis Jr. and Burt Boyar, Yes I Can, 1965 171 New Journalism and Electrified Syntax: Tom Wolfe, Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, 1965 173 Defining a Genre: Bill C. Malone, Country Music, U.S.A.: A Fifty-Year History, 1968 175 Swing's Movers as an Alternate History of American Pop: Marshall and Jean Stearns, Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance, 1968 177 Rock and Roll's Greatest Hyper: Nik Cohn, Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom, 1969/1970 182Ebony's Pioneering Critic of Black Pop as Black Power: Phyl Garland, The Sound of Soul: The Story of Black Music, 1969 184 Entertainment Journalism and the Power of Knowing: Lillian Roxon, Rock Encyclopedia, 1969 185 An Over-the-Top Genre's First Reliable History: Charlie Gillett, The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1970 187 Rock Critic of the Trivially Awesome: Richard Meltzer, The Aesthetics of Rock, 1970 188 Black Religious Fervor as the Core of Rock and Soul: Anthony Heilbut, The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times, 1971 190 Jazz Memoir of "Rotary Perception" Multiplicity: Charles Mingus, Beneath the Underdog, 1971 193 Composing a Formal History: Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans, 1971 194 Krazy Kat Fiction of Viral Vernaculars: Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo, 1972 196 Derrière Garde Prose and Residual Pop Styles: Alec Wilder, American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950, 1972 198 Charts as a New Literature: Joel Whitburn, Top Pop Records, 1955–1972, 1973 201 Selling Platinum across Formats: Clive Davis with James Willwerth, Clive, Inside the Record Business, 1975 203 Blues Relationships and Black Women's Deep Songs: Gayl Jones, Corregidora, 1975 205 "Look a the World in a Rock 'n' Roll Sense . . . What Does That Even Mean?": Greil Marcus, Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music, 1975 207 Cultural Studies Brings Pop from the Hallway to the Classroom: Hall and Tony Jefferson, eds., Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, 1976 211 Life in Country for an Era of Feminism and Counterculture: Loretta Lynn with George Vecsey, Coal Miner's Daughter, 1976 214 Introducing Rock Critics: Jim Miller, ed., The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, 1976 216 Patriarchal Exegete of Black Vernacular as "Equipment for Living": Albert Murray, Stomping the Blues, 1976 219 Reading Pop Culture as Intellectual Obligation: Roland Barthes, Image—Music—Text, 1977 221 Paging through Books to Make History: Dean Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War, 1977 223 Historians Begin to Study Popular Music: Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom, 1977 225 Musicking to Overturn Hierarchy: Christopher Small, Music, Society, Education, 1977 226 Drool Data and Stained Panties from a Critical Noise Boy: Nick Tosches, Country: The Biggest Music in America, 1977 229 Part V: After the Revolution Punk Negates Rock: Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons, The Boy Looked at Johnny: The Obituary of Rock and Roll, 1978 236 The Ghostwriter behind the Music Books: Ray Charles and David Ritz, Brother Ray: Ray Charles' Own Story, 1978 240 Disco Negates Rock: Andrew Holleran, Dancer from the Dance, 1978 242 Industry Schmoozer and Black Music Advocated Fills Public Libraries with Okay Overviews: Arnold Shaw, Honkers and Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues, 1978 245 Musicology's Greatest Tune Chronicler: Charles Hamm, Yesterdays: Popular Song in America, 1979 247 Criticism's Greatest Album Chronicler: Robert Christgau, Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the '70s, 1981 248 Rock's Frank Capra: Cameron Crowe: Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story, 1981 251 Culture Studies/Rock Critic Twofer!: Simon Frith, Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock'n'Roll, 1981 252 A Magical Explainer of Impure Sounds: Robert Palmer, Deep Blues, 1981 255 Feminist Rock Critic, Pop-Savvy Social Critic: Ellen Willis, Beginning to See the Light: Pieces of a Decade, 1981 257 New Deal Swing Believer Revived: Otis Ferguson, In the Spirit of Jazz: The Otis Ferguson Reader, 1982 259 Ethnomusicology and Pop, Forever Fraught: Bruno Nettl, The Study of Ethnomusicology: Twenty-Nine Issues and Concepts, 1983 260 Autodidact Deviance, Modeling the Rock Generation to Come: V. Vale and Andrea Juno, eds., RE/Search #6/7: Industrial Culture Handbook, 1983 263 The Rolling Stones of Rolling Stones Books: Stanley Booth, The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones, 1984 266 Finding the Blackface in Bluegrass: Robert Cantwell, Bluegrass Breakdown: The Making of the Old Southern Sound, 1984 268 Cyberpunk Novels and Cultural Studies Futurism: William Gibson, Neuromancer, 1984 269 Glossary Magazine Features Writer Gets History's Second Draft: Gerri Hirshey, Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music, 1984 272 Theorizing Sound as Dress Rehearsal for the Future: Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music, 1977; Translation 1985 274 Classic Rock, Mass Market Paperback Style: Stephen Davis, Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zepplin Saga, 1985 275Love and Rockets, Signature Comic of Punk Los Angeles as Borderland Imaginary: Los Bros Hernandez, Music for Mechanics, 1985 277 Plays about Black American Culture Surviving the Loss of Political Will: August Wilson, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, 1985 280 Putting Pop in the Big Books of Music: H. Wiley Hitchcock and Stanley Sadie, eds., The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, 1986 282 Popular Music's Defining Singer and Swinger: Kitty Kelley, His Way, The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra, 1986 284 Anti-Epic Lyricizing of Black Music after Black Power: Nathaniel Mackey, Bedouin Hornbook, 1986 288 Lost Icon of Rock Criticism: Lester Bangs, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, 1987 290 Veiled Glimpses of the Songwriter Who Invented Rock and Roll as Literature: Chuck Berry, Chuck Berry: The Autobiography, 1987 292 Making "Wild-Eyed Girls" a More Complex Narrative: Pamela Des Barres, I'm with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie, 1987 294 Reporting Black Music as Art Mixed with Business, Nelson George, The Death of Rhythm & Blues, 1988 295 Sessions with the Evil Genius of Jazz: Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography, 1989 298 Part VI: New Voices, New Method Literature of New World Order Americanization: Jessica Hagedorn, Dogeaters, 1990 308 Ethnic Studies of Blended Musical Identities: George Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture, 1990 310 Ballad Novels for a Baby Boomer Appalachia: Sharyn McCrumb, If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O, 1990 312 Pimply, Prole, and Putrid, but with a Surprisingly Diverse Genre Literature: Chuck Eddy, Stairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe, 1991 314 How Musicology Met Cultural Studies: Susan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality, 1991 318 Idol for Academic Analysis and a Changing Public Sphere: Madonna, Sex, 1992 320 Black Bohemian Cultural Nationalism: Greg Tate, Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America, 1992 324 From Indie to Alternative Rock: Gina Arnold, Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana, 1993 326 Musicology on Popular Music—In Pragmatic Context: Richard Crawford, The American Musical Landscape, 1993 330 Listenign, Queerly, Wayne Koestenbaum, The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire, 1993 332 Blackface as Stolen Vernacular: Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, 1993 334 Media Studies of Girls Listening to Top 40: Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media, 1994 338 Ironies of a Contested Identity: Peter Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley, 1994 339 Two Generations of Leading Ethnomusicologists Debate the Popular: Charles Keil and Steven Feld: Music Grooves: Essays and Dialogues, 1944 344 Defining Hip-Hop as Flow, Layering, Rupture, and Postindustrial Resistance: Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, 1994 346 Regendering Music Writing, with the Deadly Art of Attitude: Evelyn McDonnell and Ann Powers, eds., Rock She Wrote: Women Write about Rock, Pop, and Rap, 1995 348 Soundscaping References, Immersing Trauma: David Toop, Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds, 1995 348 Sociologist Gives Country Studies a Soft-Shell Contrast to the Honky-Tonk: Richard Peterson, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity, 1997 354 All That Not-Quite Jazz: Gary Giddins, Visions of Jazz: The First Century, 1998 355 Jazz Studies Conquers the Academy: Robert G. O'Meally, ed., The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, 1998 357 Part VII: Topics in Progress Paradigms of Club Culture, House and Techno to Rave and EDM: Simon Reynolds, Energy Flash: A Journey through Rave Music and Dance Culture, 1998 368 Performance Studies, Minoritarian Identity, and Academic Wildness: José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentification: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics, 1999 372 Left of Black: Networking a New Discourse: Mark Anthony Neal, What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture, 1999 375 Aerobics as Genre, Managing Emotions: Tia DeNora, Music in Everyday Life, 2000 377 Confronting Globalization: Thomas Turino, Nationalists, Cosmopolitans, and Popular Music in Zimbabwe, 2000 378 Evocations of Cultural Migration Centered on Race, Rhythm, and Eventually Sexuality: Alejo Carpentier, Music in Cuba, 2001 (1946) 382 Digging Up the Pre-Recordings Creation of a Black Pop Paradigm: Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff, Out of Sight: The Rise of African American Popular Music, 1889–1895, 2002 386 When Faith in Popular Sound Wavers, He's Waiting: Theodor Adorno, Essays on Music, ed. Richard Leppert, 2002 388 Codifying a Precarious but Global Academic Field: David Hesmondhalgh and Keith Negus, eds., Popular Music Studies, 2002 391 Salsa and the Mixings of Global Culture: Lise Waxer, City of Musical Memory: Salsa, Record Grooves, and Popular Culture in Cali, Colombia, 2002 393 Musicals as Pop, Nationalism, and Changing Identity: Stacy Wolf, A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical, 2002 396 Musical Fiction and Criticism by the Greatest Used Bookstore Clerk of All Time: Jonathan Lethem, Fortress of Solitude, 2003 399 Poetic Ontologies of Black Musical Style: Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, 2003 401 Rescuing the Afromodern Vernacular: Guthrie Ramsey Jr., Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop, 2003 402 Sound Studies and the Songs Question: Jonathan Sterne: The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction, 2003 404 Dylanologist Conventions: Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One, 2004 405 Two Editions of a Field Evolving Faster Than a Collection Could Contain: Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal, eds., That's the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, 2004, 2012 410 Revisionist Bluesology and Tangled Intellectual History: Elijah Wald, Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, 2004 412 Trying to Tell the Story of a Dominant Genre: Jeff Chang, Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, 2005 415 Refiguring American Music—And Its Institutionalizations: Josh Kun, Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America, 2005 419 Country Music Scholars Pioneer Gender and Industry Analysis: Diane Pecknold, The Selling Sound: The Rise of the Country Music Industry, 2007 423 Where Does Classical Music Fit In?: Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, 2007 426 Poptimism, 33 1/3 Books, and the Struggles of Music Critics: Carl Wilson, Let's Talk about Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, 2007 429 Novelists Collegial with Indie Music: Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad, 2010 432 YouTube, Streaming, and the Popular Music Performance Archive: Will Friedwald, A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers, 2010 437 Idiosyncratic Musician Memoirs—Performer as Writer in the Era of the Artist as Brand: Jay-Z, Decoded, 2010 438 Acknowledgments 443 Works Cited 447 Index 513
£20.69
Duke University Press The Politics of Vibration
Book SynopsisMarcus Boon explores music as a material practice of vibration that emerges from a politics of vibration and which constructs a vibrational space of individual and collective transformation.Trade Review"The boldest aspect of Boon's argument . . . is his move to the level of ontology—to the nature of being or reality itself. For him music's social and racial significance operates not at the level of social codes or experience, but as an intervention in how reality itself is organised: 'music does tell us something about being.' His framework certainly allows a place for aspects of music-making that usually get screened out of modern criticism: its religious power, its role in many cultures' sense of the world's structure. . . ." -- Dan Barrow * The Wire *Table of ContentsIntroduction. Music as a Cosmopolitical Practice 1 1. Lord’s House, Nobody’s House: Pandit Pran Nath and Music as Sadhana 29 2. The Drone of the Real: The Sound-Works of Catherine Christer Hennix 75 3. Music and the Continuum 125 4. Slowed and Throwed: DJ Screw and the Decolonization of Time 179 Coda. July 2, 2020 227 Acknowledgments 231 Notes 235 Bibliography 255 Index 269
£70.55
University of Toronto Press Leo Smith
Book SynopsisLEO SMITH—cellist, journalist, composer, and teacher—was one of the most picturesque and frequently idolized artists on the Canadian scene. His career spanned the years between the old music and the new, between the time when artistic education was private and the time when people fasten their cultural hopes on public education and government funds, between the last days when white gloves were worn to drawing room musicales and the days when men dash to recitals without ties. Throughout this period, Leo Smith not only composed and performed for the public, but carried his public with him into the new era. His history, then, provides a changing picture of the Canadian cultural scene through one of the most formative periods in the country's social history. To the crowds at large popular concerts such as the Toronto Proms, this elderly, contented musician represented the epitome of the music maker. In his music, Leo Smith bridged the gap between the old orthodoxies and
£17.09
Hal Leonard Corporation On the Road
Book SynopsisThis book tells the story of a life spent on the road recording the rich diversity of music in America when it was a major part of our lives, not just digital background noise. For music fans, there was a golden era of live music stretching from the 1960s through the 1980s, and even evolving into the 1990s, if you want to be generous. In the pre digital era, music fans spent a large part of their free time (and money) listening to their favorite artist's recordings. It was an analog world so if they wanted to hear the music, they actually had to listen to the radio, buy the records, and go to the concerts. Popular artists had long performed live concerts in the major markets, but it took rock n'' roll to make national touring a viable business. Touring sound systems grew from scratch to keep up with larger and larger venues. Likewise, the ability to record those shows had to grow as well. The rudimentary collection of semi-professional gear grew into full-blown remote
£21.25
Hal Leonard Corporation Get Tusked
Book SynopsisIn this behind-the-scenes look at the making of Fleetwood Mac's epic, platinum-selling double album, Tusk, producers and engineers Ken Caillat and Hernan Rojas tell their stories of spending a year with the band in their new million-dollar studio trying to follow up Rumours, the biggest rock album of the time. Following their massive success, the band continued its infamous soap opera when its musical leader and guitarist, Lindsey Buckingham, threatened to quit if he didn't get things his way, resulting in clashes not only with his band but especially Caillat, who had been essential to the band's Grammy-winning sound. Hernan Rojas's story recounts a young man who leaves Chile after General Pinochet's coup to seek his future in the music industry of Los Angeles, where he finds success at one of the hottest studios in town. When Fleetwood Mac arrives, Rojas falls in love with its star singer, Stevie Nicks, and the two of them become romantically involved.
£15.29
Hal Leonard Corporation Metallica
Book SynopsisMetallica: The $24.95 Book features an in-depth look at Metallica''s cultural significance with chapters devoted to each member, each album, touring, fashion, books, film, influences, fandom, and more, exploring the band''s politics and religion along the way. With over 125 million records sold worldwide, Metallica is the biggest metal band of all time. Four decades into their unparalleled career, Metallica is a massive cultural force who drastically changed the sound of popular music by creating their own rules. Yet for all their popularity, Metallica can seem impenetrable. They've built the unexpected into their music and career, raising more questions and inspiring more discourse as their mythos grows. Metallica questions run deeper than what people find on the internet. Metallica questions deserve a book. Metallica, by dedicated fan and music journalist Ben Apatoff (including a foreword by What
£17.09
Globe Pequot Press Moving Pictures
Book SynopsisMoving Pictures takes a novel historical approach to the making and recording of Rush''s album by the same name. This 1981 release was a landmark record, not only for Rush, but also for the entirety of progressive rock.There''s nothing else like it in the Rush catalog. Permanent Waves and Hemispheres were important releases in their evolution as a progressive band, but neither provided the necessary commercial firepower to blast the Canadian trio into the stratosphere of rock stardom. Moving Pictures, with its thematic work and positioning as the antithesis of a concept record, balanced opposing creative sensibilities, garnered the attention of radio programmers across North America, and sold millions of copies around the globe.As the title of the record suggests, each track projects unique filmic properties, allowing the collective work to escape into the realm of the audiovisual. Unparalleled in the band''s recorded output, Moving Pictures boasts multisensory qualiti
£17.09
Hal Leonard Corporation Take a Sad Song
Book SynopsisIn Take a Sad Song: The Emotional Currency of Hey Jude, James Campion dives deeply into the song''s origins, recording, visual presentation, impact, and eventual influence, while also discovering what makes Hey Jude a classic musical expression of personal comfort and societal unity conceived by a master songwriter, Paul McCartney. Within its melodic brilliance and lyrical touchstones of empathy and nostalgia resides McCartney''s personal and professional relationship with his childhood friend and songwriting partner, John Lennon, and their simultaneous pursuit of the women who would complete them. There are also clues to the growing turmoil within the Beatles and their splintering generation scarred by war, assassination, and virulent protest.Campion''s journey into the song includes the insights of academic experts and professors in the field of musicology, sociology, philosophy, psychology, and history. Campion also reveals commentary from noted Beatles authors, biographer
£17.99
Hal Leonard Corporation Music Revolution
Book SynopsisEven before the Beatnik Riots of 1961, New York City''s Greenwich Village was the epicenter of revolutionary movements in American music and culture. But, in the early 1960s and throughout the decade, a new wave of writers and performers inspired by the folk music revival of the 1950s created socially aware and deeply personal songs that spoke to a generation like never before. These writersBob Dylan, Richard Fariña, Janis Ian, and Phil Ochs, to name a fewchanged the folk repertoire from traditional songs to songs sprung from personal, contemporary experiences and the nation''s headlines, raising the level of political self-expression to high art. Message and music merged and mirrored society.In Music + Revolution: Greenwich Village in the 1960s, Richard Barone tells this freewheelin'' historical narrative, peppered with personal stories and insights from those who were there, celebrating the lasting legacy of this pivotal decade with stories behind songs that resonate just a
£21.25
Globe Pequot Press The Jordanaires
Book SynopsisThe greatest backup group in the history of recorded music undoubtedly was the Jordanaires, a gospel group of mostly Tennessee boys, formed in the 1940s, that set the standard for studio vocal groups in the ''50s, ''60s, ''70s, and beyond. In their sixty-five-year career, from 1948 through 2013, the recordings they sang on have sold an estimated eight billion copies.They sang on more than 200 of Elvis''s recordings, including most of his biggest hits. They were in three of his best-known movies, appeared with him on most of his early nation-wide TV shows, and toured with him for many years. Throughout Elvis''s early career, they were his most trusted friends and probably his most positive influence. No telling how many thousands of miles we rode together over those fourteen years, remembered Gordon Stoker, the group''s manager and high tenor, and most of those miles were good miles, with lots of laughs, and lots of talk about life.While the Jordanaires'' bread and butt
£17.99
