Standing In Two Circles: The Collected Works Of Boyd Rice


Boyd Rice - 2008
    A pioneering noise musician and countercultural maven, from the late 1970s to the present Rice has worked in an array of capacities, playing the roles of: musician, performer, artist, photographer, essayist, interviewer, editor, occult researcher, filmmaker, actor, orator, deejay, gallery curator and tiki bar designer, among others. First coming to prominence as an avant-garde audio experimentalist (recording under the moniker NON), Rice was a seminal founder of the first wave of industrial music in the late 1970s. In the 1980s, through collaborations with Re/Search Publications, Rice further established his position in underground with recountings of his uproarious pranks and the promotion of "incredibly strange" cult films and "industrial" culture. Rice's influence on subculture was further exerted through his vanguard exhibition of found photographs and readymade thrift store art, as well as his adamant endorsements of outsider music, tiki culture and bygone pop culture in general. Rice is also notorious for his public associations with nefarious figures both infamous and obscure, including friendships and ideological collusions with the likes of cult leader Charles Manson and Church Of Satan founder Anton LaVey, among others. His work continues to profoundly affect the countercultural underground at large, inspiring and enraging in equal measure. STANDING IN TWO CIRCLES contains: Essays 1986-2007 / Lyrics 1988-2007 / Art & Photography (38 plates) STANDING IN TWO CIRCLES also includes an extensive biography of Boyd Rice from the 1970s to the present, by the book's editor, Brian M Clark.

Original Rude Boy: From Borstal to The Specials


Neville Staple - 2009
    In 1979, Thatcher's Britain was a country crippled by strikes, joblessness, and economic gloom, divided by race and class—and skanking to a new beat: 2 Tone. The unruly offspring of white boy punk and rude boy ska, the Specials burst on to the scene. On stage they were electric, and at the heart of this energy was the vocal chemistry of the ethereal Terry Hall and Jamaican rude boy Neville Staple. In 1961, five-year-old Neville was sent to England to live with his father, a man for whom discipline bordered on child abuse. As he recounts here, growing up black in the Midlands of the 1960s and 1970s wasn't easy, and his youth was marked by scuffles with skins, compulsive womanizing, and a life of crime that led from shoplifting to burglary and eventually prison. But throughout there was music, and Nev reveals how he became part of the most important band of the 1980s. He remembers sound system battles; the legendary 2 Tone tour with the Selecter, Madness, and Dexy's, and their clashes with white nationalist thugs. He recalls the band's increasing tensions and eventual split; his subsequent foray into bubblegum pop with Fun Boy Three; and a newfound fame in America as godfather to Third Wave ska bands. Finally he reflects on the Specials' reunion and how even now, 30 years later, they can't help tearing themselves apart.

America


Ralph Steadman - 1974
    Thompson collaborator Ralph Steadman delivers a heaping helping of anti-American vitriol with trademarked bombast, based on his travels throughout the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

The Road Most Traveled


Chuck Ragan - 2012
    There couldn't be a better person to put together this tome than Hot Water Music's Chuck Ragan and here he's collected tales from members of the Gaslight Anthem, Rise Against, At The Drive-In and more, all of whom share their own unique perspective on travel. The road isn't always glamorous but for some of us it's in our blood. These are those stories.

The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard


Leonard Bernstein - 1976
    These lectures, Mr. Bernstein's most recent venture in musical explication, will make fascinating reading as well. Virgil Thomson says of the lectures: "Nobody anywhere presents this material so warmly, so sincerely, so skillfully. As musical mind-openers they are first class; as pedagogy they are matchless."Mr. Bernstein considers music ranging from Hindu ragas through Mozart and Ravel, to Copland, suggesting a worldwide, innate musical grammar. Folk music, pop songs, symphonies, modal, tonal, atonal, well-tempered and ill-tempered works all find a place in these discussions. Each, Mr. Bernstein suggests, has roots in a universal language central to all artistic creation. Using certain linguistic analogies, he explores the ways in which this language developed and can be understood as an aesthetic surface. Drawing on his insights as a master composer and conductor, Mr. Bernstein also explores what music means below the surface: the symbols and metaphors which exist in every musical piece, of whatever sort. And, finally, Mr. Bernstein analyzes twentieth century crises in the music of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, finding even here a transformation of all that has gone before, as part of the poetry of expression, through its roots in the earth of human experience.These talks, written and delivered when Leonard Bernstein was Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University, are the newest of the author's literary achievements. In addition to a distinguished career as conductor, pianist, and composer, Mr. Bernstein is the recipient of many television Emmys for the scripts of his Young People's Concerts, Omnibus programs, and others, and is the author of The Infinite Variety of Music and The Joy of Music, for which he received the Christopher Award.

Takin' Over


Brandon McCartney - 2009
    Contents:Anything is possible! --It's about being based --Who is the superstar of your life? --Rappin' and The Pack --I'm happy you're alive --Women! --Dreamin' --Drugs and pain are the same thang --And we all get rich! --Rappin' and following dreams --Sprituality and the Caveman --I'm alive, I'm real and it's okay! --The elderly are gifts --Playing from the heart --Colors! --We are legend and we are takin' over!

Kraftwerk: Publikation


David Buckley - 2011
    This is a new and major biography of the first-ever all-electronic pop group and one of the most influential bands in popular music history, Kraftwerk.

The Lyrics: 1961-2012


Bob Dylan - 2016
    This definitive collection brings together the entire catalogue of lyrics by Bob Dylan, one of the most legendary songwriters in history. From his early protest songs, like "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a Changing" to his revolutionary "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and "Like a Rolling Stone," Dylan's music has entertained and inspired generations and influenced such artists as John Lennon, Paul Simon, and Neil Young. This is the ultimate volume for any Dylan fan, containing the entire Dylan canon, a wide array of original album art, and in-depth commentary and annotations from literary critic and acclaimed Dylan expert Christopher Ricks. "The Complete Annotated Lyrics" marks a major publishing event, perfect for Dylan devotees of course, but also a unique gift for anyone interested in poetry or visually stunning books.

Only Half There


Devin Townsend - 2016
    It traces his beginnings in British Columbia growing up hearing a wealth of music, continues through his rapid rise to professional status, touring and recording with Steve Vai and developing his career with Strapping Young Lad and Devin Townsend Project. More than just an honest and intimate autobiography though, Only Half There is also a brutally honest expression of his life as a working, touring and recording artist, a husband, father and bi-polar artist.

Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music


Christoph Cox - 2004
    Rather than offering a history of contemporary music, Audio Culture traces the genealogy of current musical practices and theoretical concerns, drawing lines of connection between recent musical production and earlier moments of sonic experimentation. It aims to foreground the various rewirings of musical composition and performance that have taken place in the past few decades and to provide a critical and theoretical language for this new audio culture. Via writings by philosophers, cultural theorists, and composers, Audio Culture explores the interconnections among such forms as minimalism, indeterminacy, musique concrète, free improvisation, experimental music, avant-rock, dub reggae, Ambient music, HipHop, and Techno. Instead of focusing on the putative "crossover" between "high art" and "popular culture," Audio Culture takes all of these musics as experimental practices on par with, and linked to, one another. While cultural studies has tended to look at music (primarily popular music) from a sociological perspective, the concern here is philosophical, musical, and historical. Audio Culture includes writing by some of the most important musical thinkers of the past half-century, among them John Cage, Brian Eno, Glenn Gould, Umberto Eco, Ornette Coleman, Jacques Attali, Simon Reynolds, Pauline Oliveros, Paul D. Miller, David Toop, John Zorn, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and many others. The book is divided into nine thematically-organized sections, each with its own introduction. Section headings include topics such as "Modes of Listening," "Minimalisms," and "DJ Culture." In addition, each essay has its own short introduction, helping the reader to place the essay within musical, historical, and conceptual contexts. The book concludes with a glossary, a timeline, and an extensive discography.

Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond


Michael Nyman - 1974
    First published in 1974, it has remained the classic text on a significant form of music making and composing that developed alongside, and partly in opposition to, the postwar modernist tradition of composers such as Boulez, Berio, or Stockhausen. The experimentalist par excellence was John Cage whose legendary 4' 33'' consists of four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence to be performed on any instrument. Such pieces have a conceptual rather than purely musical starting point and radically challenge conventional notions of the musical work. Nyman's book traces the revolutionary attitudes that were developed toward concepts of time, space, sound, and composer/performer responsibility. It was within the experimental tradition that the seeds of musical minimalism were sown and the book contains reference to the early works of Reich, Riley, Young, and Glass. This second edition contains a new Foreword, an updated discography, and a historical overview by the author.

The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic


Jessica Hopper - 2015
    With this volume spanning from her punk fanzine roots to her landmark piece on R. Kelly's past, The First Collection leaves no doubt why The New York Times has called Hopper's work "influential." Not merely a selection of two decades of Hopper's most engaging, thoughtful, and humorous writing, this book documents the last 20 years of American music making and the shifting landscape of music consumption. The book journeys through the truths of Riot Grrrl's empowering insurgence, decamps to Gary, IN, on the eve of Michael Jackson's death, explodes the grunge-era mythologies of Nirvana and Courtney Love, and examines emo's rise. Through this vast range of album reviews, essays, columns, interviews, and oral histories, Hopper chronicles what it is to be truly obsessed with music. The pieces in The First Collection send us digging deep into our record collections, searching to re-hear what we loved and hated, makes us reconsider the art, trash, and politics Hopper illuminates, helping us to make sense of what matters to us most.

Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture


Simon Reynolds - 1998
    A celebration of rave's quest for the perfect beat definitive chronicle of rave culture and electronic dance music

Van Halen: A Visual History, 1978-1984


Neil Zlozower - 2007
    Nobody rockedor partiedharder. Photographer Neil Zlozower first met the band in 1978, worked with them again on Van Halen II, and soon became their friend, hanging out in L.A. and hitting the road on tour with them. Van Halen collects more than 250 backstage, candid, and full rock-out photos of the all-powerful, spandexed, high-kicking, guitar blazing, stadium-shaking, original Van Halen lineup. Accompanying Zlozower's amazing photos are an introduction about his wild ride with VH, a foreword by David Lee Roth, and testimony from the rock pantheon paying homage to the band, including members of Led Zeppelin, Guns N' Roses, Def Leppard, Judas Priest, KISS, Motley Cre, and more. Turn it up!

Orchestration


Walter Piston - 1955
    No practical aspect of instrumentation for the orchestra is neglected, and comprehensive treatment is given to each significant component. The author approaches orchestration from the premise that the principles can best be presented by analysis of music as it has been written.The essentials of instrument combination discussed here are those which can be observed operating in the scores of great composers from Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven down to our own day.Orchestration is notable for the clarity and logic of its organization. From a consideration of the individual instruments and their technical problems the author skillfully develops his analysis of orchestration, covering his analysis of orchestration, covering instrumentation of primary and secondary melodies, part-writing, chords, and contrapuntal techniques. Finally, he discusses typical problems in orchestration together with some examples of their solutions.Orchestration is profusely illustrated with hundreds of musical examples and with drawings of the various musical instruments that make up the modern orchestra.