Music-History & Criticism

"A variety of approaches are brought to bear on fascinating repertoire, but with the underlying aim of better understanding some brilliant music. There's nothing more exciting in music writing than something which entices you to listen to what's familiar to you in a new...

Through the long history of man sound has always been a fixture within the context of occult ritualism. From the tribal beat of a shamanic ritual, to the manner of speech and elocution employed for propaganda purposes, to strictly occult music in the modern...

The Drive-By Truckers' Southern Rock Opera takes listeners on a road trip through the American South, with stops along mean old highways and soul-sucking swamps, iconic recording studios and doomed chartered jets, and even Heaven and Hell. Along the way, the Truckers attempt to...

When LCD Soundsystem broke up in 2011, they left behind a small but remarkable catalog of music. On top of the genius singles and a longform composition for Nike, there was a trilogy of full-length albums. During that initial run, LCD Soundsystem-and the project's...

Relive all the excitement of Elvis on Tour This book goes into extreme detail of his entire touring schedule from 1954 until his untimely death in 1977. Packed full of rare pictures and stories.Author: Matt DollarISBN-10: 1497390206ISBN-13: 9781497390201Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing PlatformLanguage: EnglishPublished: 03/18/2014Pages:...

In The Gaithers and Southern Gospel, Ryan P. Harper examines songwriters Bill and Gloria Gaither's Homecoming video and concert series--a gospel music franchise that, since its beginning in 1991, has outperformed all Christian and much secular popular music on the American music market. The...

The Beatles' North American tours turned the entertainment business on its ear and forever changed the landscape of the concert touring industry. In February 1964, after finally achieving a number-one hit in America, the Fab Four came to the country with high hopes, performing...

Bands from Jimmy Eat World to Green Day have one thing in common--they would be nothing without punk. This book explores punks earliest roots and takes the reader all the way to the present--from Second Wave and New Wave to Oi and Punk, it's...

Jethro Tull was one of the truly innovative rock bands to emerge from the late 1960s. At their peak the idiosyncratic group, fronted by multi-instrumentalist Ian Anderson, resembled a troupe of roving English minstrels. Crafting a signature progressive rock sound that resisted easy categorization,...

The town of Parker underwent several name changes before adopting its current title. First called Pine Grove for its setting in a copse of ponderosa pines at the northern edge of Colorado's Black Forest, that name lasted through the final days of stagecoach travel....

Author: Larry SchweikartISBN-10: 1450783090ISBN-13: 9781450783095Publisher: Future Vision InternationalLanguage: EnglishPublished: 07/15/2011Pages: 286Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.93lbsSize: 9.02h x 5.98w x 0.64d

Claude Debussy holds a place as a one of the most recognizable and influential composers in the classical music. Debussy forged a new and influential sound for the twentieth century with his remarkable harmonies, fluid rhythms, airy textures, and an instinct for mystery and...

On the back of his published diary Brian Eno describes himself variously as: a mammal, a father, an artist, a celebrity, a pragmatist, a computer-user, an interviewee, and a 'drifting clarifier'. To this list we might add rock star (on the first two Roxy...

Before the popularity of the electric guitar and before every teenager with a rock 'n' roll dream had a band in their garage, Manny's Music in New York City was providing the hardware for swing stars and big bands, and establishing itself as the...

Now in paperback, the definitive anthology from a writer who "set the standard for newspaper pop-music criticism" (The Philadelphia Inquirer), the New York Times' first chief pop music critic and Rolling Stone contributor Robert Palmer. Robert Palmer's extraordinary knowledge and boundless love of music...

Hit the lights and jump in the fire, you're about to enter the School of Rock! Today's lecture will be a crash course in brain surgery. This hard and fast lesson is taught by instructors who graduated from the old school--they actually paid $5.98...

Offers new perspectives on the nineteenth-century composer Johannes Brahms - from his childhood and personal matters to his compositional legacy.Author: Natasha LogesISBN-10: 1316615197ISBN-13: 9781316615195Publisher: Cambridge University PressLanguage: EnglishPublished: 08/19/2021Pages: 435Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.28lbsSize: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.89d

Jack Boss takes a unique approach to analyzing Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone music, adapting the composer's notion of a 'musical idea' - problem, elaboration, solution - as a framework and focusing on the large-scale coherence of the whole piece. The book begins by defining 'musical...

When Mark Murphy died in October 2015, the world lost one of the greatest jazz singers in history. Murphy was the last of his kind, a hipster of the Kerouac generation, who rejected the straight life of prosperity and numb consumerism. With a catalogue...

Anthony Reynolds' fascinating and detailed biography draws on scores of new interviews conducted with Cohen's band members past and present, his business associates, editors, friends, fans, producers, colleagues, enemies and peers. As well as their revealing accounts, the author has gained access to hours...

"The days of poets moping around castle steps wearing black capes is over. The poets of today are amplified."-- LEONARD COHENPicking up where Samuel Johnson left off more than two centuries ago, Ray Robertson's Lives of the Poets (with Guitars) offers up an amplified...

There is no question about the fascinating tales that come with celebrated violins, as in this volume, and the enormous prices. In 2011, a 1721 Stradivari was sold for nearly ten million pounds. Yet the storied value of old violins has been challenged by...

Culled from the Southern California Sheet Music Collection of the Los Angeles Public Library, this unprecedented anthology tells the story of Los Angeles through its songs. Featuring the elaborately designed covers of more than one hundred pieces of vintage sheet music, Songs in the...

Martha's Vineyard has a rich musical legacy that stretches back to the earliest drumbeats of the Wampanoags and the whaling chanteys of the nineteenth century. Returning Civil War veterans formed the island's oldest continuous music ensemble, the Vineyard Haven Band. Vineyarders embrace all things...

Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan's life in music is revisited by his foremost interpreter -- weaving individual moods and moments into a brilliant history of their changing times. The book begins in Berkeley in 1968, and ends with a piece on Dylan's show at...

Greil Marcus saw Bob Dylan for the first time in a New Jersey field in 1963. He didn't know the name of the scruffy singer who had a bit part in a Joan Baez concert, but he knew his performance was unique. So began...

A practical but scholarly guide to Japanese instruments by one of the country's leading composers. The unique sounds of the biwa, shamisen, and other traditional instruments from Japan are heard more and more often in works for the concert hall and opera house. Composing...

Paris at the turn of the 20th century was obsessed with the interrelations of the arts. It was a time when artists and writers spoke of poetry as music, sounds as colors, and paintings as symphonies. The music of Claude Debussy, with its unique...

The marriage of music and social change didn't originate with the movements for civil rights and Black Power in the 1950s and 1960s, but never before and never again was the relationship between the two so dynamic. In Keep On Pushing, author Denise Sullivan...

The Troopers Drum & Bugle Corps was founded in Casper, Wyoming, in November 1957. It was the dream of one man, Jim Jones. He believed that any kid who wanted to march with the Troopers should be afforded the chance. In 10 years, Jones...

The great acts--from Hendrix to Joplin and from Kiss to Korn--played to the Orange County crowd at such classic venues as Huntington Beach's Golden Bear, the Anaheim Convention Center and Anaheim's Doll Hut. Rock 'n' roll's OC roots include Leo Fender's electric guitar factory...

Known for The Fest, Less Than Jake and Hot Water Music, Gainesville became a creative hub in the 1980s and 90s for many of punk rock s greats. Whether playing at the Hardback or wild house parties, earnest acts like Against Me , Spoke...

Blues was once described as the devil's music. It eventually became some of the most beloved American music that was embraced by a global audience. Originating in African American communities in the South in the late 1800s, it was inspired by gospel and spiritual...

Following the success of his 2016 book Razama-Snaz! The Listener's Guide to Nazareth, Robert Lawson returns with this meticulous reviewing of every Cheap Trick album, song by song. In his book, Still Competition: The Listener's Guide to Cheap Trick, Lawson outlines the band's significant...

Through forty-five creative and concise essays by an international team of authors, this Cambridge History brings the fifteenth century to life for both specialists and general readers. Combining the best qualities of survey texts and scholarly literature, the book offers authoritative overviews of central...

Can you change the world through song? This appealing idea has long been the professed aim of singers who are part of choruses affiliated with the Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses (GALA). Theses choruses first emerged in the 1970s, and grew out of...

They lasted only a decade and never lit up the world's charts, but progressive rock connoisseurs always knew what today's audiences are now beginning to discover: that Gentle Giant belong in the pantheon of great bands of the era. At times edgy and experimental...

Twentieth-century composers created thousands of original works for solo percussion and percussion ensemble. Concise and ideal for the classroom, Artful Noise offers an essential and much-needed survey of this unique literature. Percussionist Thomas Siwe organizes and analyzes the groundbreaking musical literature that arose during...

To the tune of "Yankee Doodle," the American obsession with politics was born alongside America itself. From the end of the Revolutionary War through to the antebellum era, music made front page news and brought men to blows. Both common citizens and politicians稙ven early...

Tom Santopietro has written the ultimate Sound of Music fan book with all the details from behind-the-scenes stories of the filming in Austria and Hollywood to new interviews with Johannes von Trapp and others. Santopietro looks back at the real-life story of Maria von...

Rock It Come Over describes the music and lore of Slavery from the early sixteenth century through emancipation in 1838 to the mid twentieth century. Lewin explores the role of music in the lives of the slaves as a method of communication, as a...

The concept of closure is crucial to understanding music from the "classical" style. This volume focuses on the primary means of achieving closure in tonal music: the cadence. Written by leading North American and European scholars, the nine chapters seek to account for the...

Combining the personal memories and critical analysis of a self-confessed pop addict with a wealth of contemporary documentary evidence, Gathered From Coincidence reconstructs a truly momentous era to tell the story of the music of the Sixties year by year. By tracing in parallel...

Let's Dance: A Celebration of Ontario's Dance Halls and Summer Dance Pavilions is a nostalgic musical journey, recapturing the unforgettable music of youth and lasting friendships, the days when the live mellow sounds of Big Bands wafted through the air.Author: Peter YoungISBN-10: 1896219020ISBN-13: 9781896219028Publisher:...

Hundreds of candid and intimate photographs of the artists and producers who brought the reggae sound to the international stage, captivating a generation. Includes never-before-seen shots of Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, Toots Hibbert, Burning Spear, Jacob Miller, Third World, Lee "Scratch" Perry, and of...

In the late 1970s and early 1980s a new phenomenon emerged in UK popular music - female guitarists, bass-players, keyboard-players and drummers began playing in bands. Before this time, women's presence in rock bands, with a few notable exceptions, had always been as vocalists....

New research throws light on the history of the viol after Purcell, including its revival in the late eighteenth century through Charles Frederick Abel. It is normally thought that the bass viol or viola da gamba dropped out of British musical life in the...

Brings together in one volume the full text of some 450 letters in first-time English translation, organized into sections each prefaced by an introduction. All the letters are fully annotated and they yield information about Viennese society, culture and politics of the time. The...

Everyone knows Queen and their most famous songs. 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love', 'Another One Bites the Dust', 'Under Pressure' and 'Bohemian Rhapsody' were huge hits wherever anyone could hear a radio. However, many contemporary reviews were savage, and yet their songs-from the radio-friendly...

It's a life of the two of us.' The complete surviving correspondence between Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. To read these letters is to climb up a wall and peer into the secret garden of two giants.' From the Foreword by FIONA SHAW This...