Unlike many forms of popular music, whose fans are fickle and transitory, metalheads tend to embrace their favorite bands and follow them over decades. Metal is not only a pastime for these people; it's a lifestyle and obsession that permeates every aspect of their being.The book will feature over 250 interviews conducted by renowned journalists Jon Wiederhorn and Katherine Turman over the past 25 years. The book will include candid and confessional commentary from late icons of the genre. In addition, the book will feature comprehensive interviews with established metal musicians discussing their often-traumatic upbringings, musical histories, battles with substance abuse, sexual exploits, plus expert analysis of the heavy metal scene from the '60s to the present. Industry insiders (managers, record label A&R people, family members, friends, scenesters, groupies, journalists, porn stars and tattoo artists) will provide additional insight.

    Before turning his hand to writing, he ran a jazz club in Tokyo, and from The Beatles' Norwegian Wood to Franz Liszt's Years of Pilgrimage, the aesthetic and emotional power of music permeates every one of his much-loved books. Now, in Absolutely on Music, Murakami fulfills a personal dream, sitting down with his friend, acclaimed conductor Seiji Ozawa, to talk, over a period of two years, about their shared interest. Transcribed from lengthy conversations about the nature of music and writing, here they discuss everything from Brahms to Beethoven, from Leonard Bernstein to Glenn Gould, from record collecting to pop-up orchestras, and much more. Ultimately this book gives readers an unprecedented glimpse into the minds of the two maestros. It is essential reading for book and music lovers everywhere.

    Profusely and superbly illustrated, Country stands as one of the most brilliant explorations of American musical culture ever written.

    Here Benjamin evolves a theory of language as the medium of all creation, discusses theater and surrealism, reminisces about Berlin in the 1920s, recalls conversations with Bertolt Brecht, and provides travelogues of various cities, including Moscow under Stalin. He moves seamlessly from literary criticism to autobiography to philosophical-theological speculations, cementing his reputation as one of the greatest and most versatile writers of the twentieth century. Also included is a new preface by Leon Wieseltier that explores Benjamin's continued relevance for our times.

    It bridges the gap between the natural sciences and music theory and, nearly a century after its first publication, it is still a standard text for the study of physiological acoustics — the scientific basis of musical theory. It is also a treasury of knowledge for musicians and students of music and a major work in the realm of aesthetics, making important contributions to physics, anatomy, and physiology in its establishment of the physical theory of music. Difficult scientific concepts are explained simply and easily for the general reader.The first two parts of this book deal with the physics and physiology of music. Part I explains the sensation of sound in general, vibrations, sympathetic resonances, and other phenomena. Part II cover combinational tones and beats, and develops Helmholtz's famous theory explaining why harmonious chords are in the ratios of small whole numbers (a problem unsolved since Pythagoras).Part III contains the author's theory on the aesthetic relationship of musical tones. After a survey of the different principles of musical styles in history (tonal systems of Pythagoras, the Church, the Chinese, Arabs, Persians, and others), he makes a detailed study of our own tonal system (keys, discords, progression of parts).Important points in this 576-page work are profusely illustrated with graphs, diagrams, tables, and musical examples. 33 appendices discuss pitch, acoustics, and music, and include a very valuable table and study of the history of pitch in Europe from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries.

    With an afterword by Michael McClure.

    These culminated in What is Art?, published in 1898. Although Tolstoy perceived the question of art to be a religious one, he considered & rejected the idea that art reveals & reinvents through beauty. The works of Dante, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Baudelaire & even his own novels are condemned in the course of Tolstoy's impassioned & iconoclastic redefinition of art as a force for good, for the improvement of humankind.

    Until the day he heard something so astonishing that he had an epiphany: rather than quashing rare or bizarre sounds, we should be celebrating these sonic treasures.This is the story of his investigation into the mysteries of these Sonic Wonders of the World. In the Mojave Desert he finds sand dunes that sing. In France he discovers an echo that tells jokes. In California he drives down a musical road that plays the William Tell Overture. In Cathedrals across the world he learns how acoustics changed the history of the Church.Touching on physics, music, archaeology, neuroscience, biology, and design, Cox explains how sound is made and altered by the environment and how our body reacts to peculiar noises – from the exotic sonic wonders he encounters on his journey, or the equally unique and surprising sounds of our everyday environment.In a world dominated by the visual, Sonic Wonderland encourages us to become better listeners and to open our ears to the glorious cacophony around us. Listen to a selection of astonishing sounds here: https://soundcloud.com/sonicwonderland

    Herman Poole "Sonny" Blount (1914–1993), has been hailed as "one of the great big-band leaders, pianists, and surrealists of jazz" (New York Times) and as "the missing link between Duke Ellington and Public Enemy" (Rolling Stone). Composer, keyboardist, bandleader, philosopher, poet, and self-proclaimed extraterrestrial from Saturn, Sun Ra led his "Intergalactic Arkestra" of thirty-plus musicians in a career that ranged from boogie-woogie and swing to be-bop, free jazz, fusion, and New Age music. This definitive biography reveals the life, philosophy, and musical growth of one of the twentieth century's greatest avant-garde musicians.

    Recipes for poetic terror, anarcho -black magic, post-situ psychotropic surgery, denunciations of spiritual addictions to vapid infotainment cults - this is the bastard classic, the watermark impressed upon our minds. Where conscience informs praxis, and action infects consciousness, T.A.Z. is beginning to worm its way into above-ground culture. This book offers inspired blasts of writing, from slogans to historical essays, on the need to insert revolutionary happiness into everyday life through poetic action, and celebrating the radical optimism present in outlaw cultures. It should appeal to alternative thinkers and punks everywhere, as it celebrates liberation, love and poetic living. The new edition contains the full text of Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism, the complete communiques and flyers of the Association fo Ontological Anarchy, the long essay 'The Temporary Autonomous Zone, ' and a new preface by the author

    Swept up in the motley crew, which included Joni Mitchell, Mick Ronson, Allen Ginsberg, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, and Ramblin' Jack Elliot, was playwright Sam Shepard, ostensibly hired to write, on the spot, the script for a Fellini-esque, surreal movie that would come out of the tour. The script never materialized, but throughout the many moods and moments of his travels with Dylan and his troupe, Shepard kept an impressionistic Rolling Thunder Logbook of life on the road. Illuminated by forty candid photographs by official tour photographer Ken Regan, Shepard's mental-snap shots capture the camaraderie, isolation, head games, and pill-popping mayhem of the tour, providing a window into Dylan's singular talent, enigmatic charisma, and vision of America.

    "Like Hanslick, Professor Payzant is both musician and philosopher; and he has brought the knowledge and insights of both disciplines to this large undertaking." --Gordon Epperson, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

    It situates different musics in their cultural and historical context, and analyses them in terms of cultural aesthetics. Paul Hegarty argues that noise is a judgement about sound, that what was noise can become acceptable as music, and that in many ways the idea of noise is similar to the idea of the avant-garde.While it provides an excellent historical overview, the book's main concern is in the noise music that has emerged since the mid 1970s, whether through industrial music, punk, free jazz, or the purer noise of someone like Merzbow. The book progresses seamlessly from discussions of John Cage, Erik Satie, and Pauline Oliveros through to bands like Throbbing Gristle and the Boredoms. Sharp and erudite, and underpinned throughout by the ideas of thinkers like Adorno and Deleuze, Noise/Music is the perfect primer for anyone interested in the louder side of experimental music.

    In Against Expression, editors Craig Dworkin and Kenneth Goldsmith present the most innovative works responding to the challenges posed by these developments.Charles Bernstein has described conceptual poetry as "poetry pregnant with thought." Against Expression, the premier anthology of conceptual writing, presents work that is by turns thoughtful, funny, provocative, and disturbing. Dworkin and Goldsmith, two of the leading spokespersons and practitioners of conceptual writing, chart the trajectory of the conceptual aesthetic from early precursors including Samuel Beckett and Marcel Duchamp to the most prominent of today’s writers. Nearly all of the major avant-garde groups of the past century are represented here, including Dada, OuLiPo, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, and Flarf to name just a few, but all the writers are united in their imaginative appropriation of found and generated texts and their exploration of nonexpressive language. Against Expression is a timely collection and an invaluable resource for readers and writers alike.

    The future, a long time coming, finally arrived. But how did we get here?In Mars by 1980, David Stubbs charts the evolution of electronic music from the earliest mechanical experiments in the late nineteenth century to the pre-World War 1 inventions of the Futurist Luigi Russolo, author of the 'Art Of Noises' manifesto. He takes us through the musique concrete of radical composers such as Edgard Varese, Pierre Schaeffer, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, to the gradual absorption of electronic instrumentation into the mainstream: be it through the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and the work of pioneers like Delia Derbyshire, grandiose prog rock, or the more DIY approach of electronica, house, and techno.It's a tale of mavericks and future dreamers overcoming Luddite resistance, malfunctioning devices, and sonic mayhem. Its beginnings are in the world of avant-classical composition, but the book also encompasses the cosmic funk of Stevie Wonder, Giorgio Moroder, and unforgettable 80s electronic pop from the likes of Depeche Mode, the Pet Shop Boys, and Laurie Anderson - right up to present day innovators on the underground scene. But above all, it's an essential story of authenticity: is this music? Is it legitimate? What drew its creators to make it? Where does it stand, in relation to rock and pop, classical and jazz music, to the modern society that generated it? And why does it resonate more strongly than ever in our own postmodern, seemingly post-futurist times? Mars by 1980 is the definitive account that answers these questions.