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Blue Note Records: The Biography
Richard Cook - 2001
With record-collector zeal, Cook analyzes everything from Sidney Bechet's 78s to Norah Jones' recent chart-topper.
Lee Brilleaux: Rock'n'Roll Gentleman
Zoë Howe - 2015
But he was also one of its greatest gentlemen - a class act with heart, fire, wanderlust and a wild streak. Exploding out of Canvey Island in the early 1970s - an age of glam rock, post-hippy folk and pop androgyny - the Feelgoods, with Lee Brilleaux and Wilko Johnson at the helm, charged into London, grabbed the pub rock scene by the throat and sparked a revolutionary new era, proving that you didn't have to be middle class, wearing the 'right clothes' or living in the 'right place' to succeed. Lee Brilleaux: Rock'n'Roll Gentleman, while a totally different work, is a companion of sorts to the hugely popular Wilko Johnson book: Looking Back At Me (also co-authored by Howe). It is the first comprehensive appreciation of Lee Brilleaux and, with its numerous exclusive interviews and previously unseen images, is a book no Dr Feelgood fan would wish to be without.
The Best Bar Trivia Book Ever: All You Need for Pub Quiz Domination
Michael O'Neill - 2014
president's daughter?Brimming with answers to popular questions like these, The Best Bar Trivia Book Ever arms you with the knowledge your team needs to annihilate your bar trivia competition. This must-have guide features hundreds of facts, covering everything from sports and pop culture to history and science, so that you're always ready to deliver the ultimate trivia smackdown. You'll also get all the ins and outs of your favorite event with information on important bar trivia rules, assembling a team, and claiming victories week after week.Whether you're new to the scene or want to dominate at your local bar, this book will help your team outsmart the competition every single week!
Dion: The Wanderer Talks Truth (Stories, Humor Music)
Dion DiMucci - 2011
He continued to make great music while slowly returning to his Catholic roots. His hard-won wisdom filters through his stories whether he's recalling how he went shopping with John Lennon and ended up on the cover of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band or what it was like to travel in the Jim Crow South with Sam Cooke.Praise for Dion... "To this day nobody, nobody can rock like Dion."—Lou Reed "He always had the name that said it all...Dion."—Bruce Springsteen "If you want to hear a great singer, listen to Dion. His genius has never deserted him."—Bob DylanThe audio edition of this book can be downloaded via Audible.
Monolithic Undertow: In Search of Sonic Oblivion
Harry Sword - 2020
Harry Sword traces the line from neolithic Indo-European traditions to the modern underground by way of mid-20th Century New York, navigating a beguiling topography of archeoacoustics, ringing feedback, chest plate sub bass, avant-garde eccentricity, and fervent spiritualism. From ancient beginnings to bawdy medieval troubadours, Sufi mystics to Indian raga masters, North Mississippi bluesmen to cone-shattering South London dub reggae sound systems, Hawkwind's Ladbroke Grove to the outer reaches of Faust, Ash Ra Temple and sonic architects like La Monte Young, Brian Eno, and John Cale, the opium-fueled fug of The Theatre of Eternal Music to the caveman doom of Saint Vitus, the cough syrup reverse hardcore of Swans to the seedy VHS hinterland of Electric Wizard, ritual amp worship of Earth and Sunn O))) and the many touch points in between, Monolithic Undertow probes the power of the drone: something capable of affording womb-like warmth or evoking cavernous dread alike.This story does not start in the twentieth century underground: the monolithic undertow has bewitched us for millennia. The book takes the drone not as codified genre but as an audio carrier vessel deployed for purposes of ritual, personal catharsis, or sensory obliteration, revealing also a naturally occurring auditory phenomenon spanning continents and manifesting in fascinatingly unexpected places.Monolithic Undertow will be a book about music and the very human need for transcendence and intoxication through sound. It seeks to reveal the drone as a tool of personal liberation that exists far outside the brittle confines of commodity culture.
Chaise Longue
Baxter Dury - 2021
One experience that would take some beating is that endured by Baxter Dury.When punk rock star Ian Dury disappeared to make films in the late 80s, he left his teenage son in the care of his roadie, in a rundown flat in Hammersmith. But this was no ordinary roadie; this was the Sulphate Strangler. The Strangler, having taken a lot of LSD in the 60s, was prone to depression, anger and hallucinations. He was also, as the name suggests, a drug dealer. What could possibly go wrong?In a period that we can now only imagine, a young Baxter ricocheted from one adventure to another, narrowly swerving one disaster only immediately to collide with another. At times, his situation was perilous in the extreme - the world is lucky to have him at all. CHAISE LONGUE is an intimate account of those escapades, evocatively illuminating a bohemian west London populated with feverishly grubby characters. Narrated in Dury's candid tone, both sad and funny, this moving story will leave an indelible imprint on its readers.
There's Something Happening Here: The Story Of Buffalo Springfield For What It's Worth
John Einarson - 1997
Eye-witness perspective of founding band member Richie Furay, the story of an influential group, pop culture, and politics in the 60's and 70's.
Turn On Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock
Jim DeRogatis - 2003
Whether or not psychedelic drugs played a role (and as many musicians say they've used them as not), psychedelic rock has consistently charted brave new worlds that exist only in the space between the headphones. The history books tell us the music's high point was the Haight-Ashbury scene of 1967, but the genre didn't start in San Francisco, and its evolution didn't end with the Summer of Love. A line can be drawn from the hypnotic drones of the Velvet Underground to the disorienting swirl of My Bloody Valentine; from the artful experiments of the Beatles' Revolver to the flowing, otherworldly samples of rappers P.M. Dawn; from the dementia of the 13th Floor Elevators to the grungy lunacy of the Flaming Lips; and from the sounds and sights at Ken Kesey's '60s Acid Tests to those at present-day raves. Turn On Your Mind is an attempt to connect the dots from the very first groups who turned on, tuned in, and dropped out, to such new-millennial practitioners as Wilco, the Elephant 6 bands, Moby, the Super Furry Animals, and the so-called "stoner-rock" and "ork-pop" scenes.
100 Lost Rock Albums From The 1970s
Matthew Ingram - 2012
From The Wire: "Matthew Ingram, aka Woebot, has published a book titled 100 Lost Rock Albums From The 1970s. The book takes in strands of metal, glam rock, French artists, punk and pub rock, and is released digitally as a self-published eBook via Amazon. Ingram says: 'Last year I started writing an article on the 100 Lost Rock Albums From The 1970s but it ballooned out of all proportions and I decided to turn it into an eBook.''Over time we have lost touch with the original character of the 70s. Using 'lost' records I've attempted to re-examinine the decade and redress what I see as imbalance. Beyond small reviews of a meticulously-selected 100 albums there's quite a lot of contemporary history, much theorising and lots of gags.'"
Brian Eno's Another Green World (33 1/3 Book 67)
Geeta Dayal - 2009
It was the first Brian Eno album tobe composed almost completely in the confines of a recording studio,over a scant few months in the summer of 1975. The album was a proofof concept for Eno's budding ideas of "the studio as musicalinstrument," and a signpost for a bold new way of thinking aboutmusic.In this book, Geeta Dayal unravels Another Green World's abundantmysteries, venturing into its dense thickets of sound. How was analbum this cohesive and refined formed in such a seemingly ad hoc way?How were electronics and layers of synthetic treatments used to createan album so redolent of the natural world? How did a deck of cardsfigure into all of this? Here, through interviews and archivalresearch, she unearths the strange story of how Another Green Worldformed the link to Eno's future -- foreshadowing his metamorphosisfrom unlikely glam rocker to sonic painter and producer.
Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius
Kwame Dawes - 2003
He was a performer who held true to his religious and cultural heritage, yet he is still awarded the status of world rock star. Renowned poet and scholar Kwame Dawes analyses in detail what his actual verses and lyrics meant when matched against the social and political climate of the time and what it meant to be a black man in the modern world.
The Creation Records Story: My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry for the Prize
David Cavanagh - 2000
During the Britpop boom of the mid-90s, the astonishing success of Oasis brought Creation fame on the world stage. In 1999, however, McGee announced his shock departure as his label's influence over a generation of British music came to a confusing and disappointing end.
The Many Lives of Tom Waits
Patrick Humphries - 1989
This book provides a critical overview of the career of a man whose voice is described as sounding 'like Ethel Merman and Louis Armstrong meeting in hell'.
The Blue Moment: Miles Davis's Kind of Blue and the Remaking of Modern Music
Richard Williams - 2009
It is the sound of isolation that has sold itself to millions.” Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue is the best-selling piece of music in jazz history and, for many listeners, among the most haunting works of the twentieth century. It is also, notoriously, the only jazz album many people own. Recorded in 1959 (in nine miraculous hours), there has been nothing like it since. Richard Williams’s “richly informative” (The Guardian) history considers the album within its wider cultural context, showing how the record influenced such diverse artists as Steve Reich and the Velvet Underground.In the tradition of Alex Ross and Greil Marcus, the “effortlessly versatile” Williams (The Times) “connects these seemingly disparate phenomena with purpose, finesse and journalistic flair” (Financial Times), making masterly connections to painting, literature, philosophy, and poetry while identifying the qualities that make the album so uniquely appealing and surprisingly universal.
The Life and Death of Classical Music
Norman Lebrecht - 2007
Lebrecht compellingly demonstrates that classical recording has reached its end point, but this is not simply an expos? of decline and fall. It is, for the first time, the full story of a minor art form, analyzing the cultural revolution wrought by Schnabel, Toscanini, Callas, Rattle, the Three Tenors, and Charlotte Church. It is the story of how stars were made and broken by the record business; how a war criminal conspired with a concentration-camp victim to create a record empire; and how advancing technology, boardroom wars, public credulity and unscrupulous exploitation shaped the musical backdrop to our modern lives. The book ends with a suitable shrine to classical recording: the author's critical selection of the 100 most important recordings, and the 20 most appalling.Filled with memorable incidents and unforgettable personalities, from Goddard Lieberson, legendary head of CBS Masterworks who signed his letters as God; to Georg Solti, who turned the Chicago Symphony into the loudest symphony on earth - this is at once the captivating story of the life and death of classical recording and an opinionated, insider's guide to appreciating the genre, now and for years to come.