Music-History & Criticism

The Smashing Pumpkins rose to fame during the grunge movement of the early nineties, however, the Chicago quartet's soaring guitar-driven anthems and beautifully crafted ballads instantly set them apart from their Seattle contemporaries. Possessing not one but two magnum opuses in their extensive back...

Charlie Chaplin the actor is universally synonymous with his beloved Tramp character. Chaplin the director is considered one of the great auteurs and innovators of cinema history. Less well known is Chaplin the composer, whose instrumental theme for Modern Times (1936) later became the...

This study examines Armstrong's cornet and trumpet work during his most innovative period, 1923-28, with a view to laying bare the sources of some of the impulses which contribute to the great outburst of emotion and variety of styles that inform that work. Analysis...

Of all the British bands that blasted to fame in rock's golden age, Nektar remain the most mysterious and least documented. Because they chose to base themselves in West Germany, until now commentators in their native land have tended to overlook them. They're all...

Authoritatively written and including rare photography and memorabilia, this beautiful slipcased hardcover is the only illustrated gift book to examine Prince's most iconic album and film, Purple Rain. In 1984, Prince, along with his band, The Revolution, released what would become his best-selling album...

In 1906, Denver's Pietro Satriano and his 25-piece brass band became the first musical act to perform at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, then christened the Garden of the Titans. Over a century later, Denver is a must-stop for every nationally touring act, and Red Rocks,...

Though ubiquitous today, available as a single microchip and found in any electronic device requiring sound, the synthesizer when it first appeared was truly revolutionary. Something radically new--an extraordinary rarity in musical culture--it was an instrument that used a genuinely new source of sound:...

TUPAC SHAKURSPIRITUALITY AND POLITICSBy William WhalenTupac Shakur (1971-1996) is one of the great hip-hop stars. Still a hugely influential figure in the music world, there is much more to Tupac Shakur than his controversial media image suggests. This new book aims to interpret and...

Captures classic rockers from Journey to Bruce Springsteen to the Cars, nascent new wavers such as the Police, Talking Heads and the Clash, as well as the year's greatest releases from rock, R&B, country and jazz stars.The On Record series is an year-by-year, comprehensive...

This book is, at its core, about music and the people who listen to it--your friends, your neighbors and you. A fresh approach toward our cultural and sensical relationship to sound, this melodic examination of the world of music explores two big questions: How...

A corporeal history of music-making in early modern Europe. Music in the Flesh reimagines the lived experiences of music-making subjects--composers, performers, listeners--in the long seventeenth century. There are countless historical testimonies of the powerful effects of music upon the early modern body; it is...

Though American attitudes toward religion changed dramatically during the 1960s, interest in spirituality itself never diminished. If we listen closely, Michael Gilmour contends, we can hear an extensive religious vocabulary in the popular music of the decades that followed--articulating each generation's spiritual quest, a...

Postmodernity's Musical Pasts covers topics from classical to popular and neo-traditional musics to concerns of the disciplines of musicology. These provide insights how the progression of time and history can be conceptually understood after 1945. Postmodernity's Musical Pasts relies on an extensive and varied...

Dora Bright was a 'stage star' before the term 'star' had even been invented. After a successful period at the Royal Academy of Music, reports of her ability circulated the globe from America, across Europe and as far as Australia. She became known as...

The Doors Summer's Gone is a compilation of author Harvey Kubernik's interviews with the members of the Doors; keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger conducted between 1974-2017, as well as Doors' engineer/producer Bruce Botnick and Elektra Records' founder Jac Holzman....

When he first started working on Pet Sounds, Brian Wilson said that he was going to write "the greatest rock album ever made." That album, released in 1966, fifty years ago, changed the face of popular music. From conception and composition to arrangement and...

The brand of jazz that developed in the Kansas City area in the period from the late 1920s to the late 1930s is recognised as both a distinct stylistic variation within the larger genre and a transitional stage between earlier forms of African-American music,...

Using as its epigraph and unifying principle Luc Sante's notion that "Every human being is an archeological site," Field Recordings from the Inside provides a deep and personal examination at the impact of music on our lives. Bonomo effortlessly moves between the personal and...

The first compact history of jazz to place it within broader context. With an eye on the music, the musicians, and the audience, Mr. Peretti traces the emergence of jazz and follows its progress to the present, showing how it has reflected shifting American...

Mines the grunge phenomenon from Nirvana to Pearl Jam, the explosion of rap (Public Enemy, Ice Cube), superstars from Garth Brooks to Paula Abdul to Metallica, and a full complement of one-hit wonders and underground sensations. The On Record series is an year-by-year, comprehensive...

In the autumn of 1961, an obscure recording by a little-known college folk group climbed to the top of the Billboard charts. Upon returning to campus for their senior year, the five Highwaymen found themselves with the number one song not only in the...

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our...

Based in part on the recent interviews with more than 125 people--among them Tommy Ramone, Chris Stein (Blondie), Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Group), Hilly Kristal (CBGBs owner), and John Zorn--this book focuses on punk's beginnings in New York City to show that punk was...

Can sound be perceived independently of its social dimension? Or is it always embedded in a discursive network? Postcolonial Repercussions explores these questions in form of a collective conversation. The contributors have collected sound stories and sound knowledge from Brazil to Morocco, listened to...

When the Swedish concert singer Jenny Lind toured the U.S. in 1850, she became the prototype for the modern pop star. Meanwhile, her manager, P.T. Barnum, became the prototype for another figure of enduring significance: the pop culture impresario. Starting with Lind's fabled U.S....

How To Dance The Cha-Cha-Cha And Other Latin American Dances is a comprehensive guidebook written by Barry Guy that teaches readers how to dance various Latin American dances. The book covers a range of dance styles, including the cha-cha-cha, samba, rumba, and salsa, among...

""Mediaeval and Renaissance Choral Music: For Equal Voices, A Cappella"" by Georgia Stevens is a comprehensive collection of choral music from the medieval and Renaissance periods. The book is specifically designed for equal voice choirs and features a cappella arrangements of some of the...

The oboe, including its earlier forms the shawm and the hautboy, is an instrument with a long and rich history. In this book two distinguished oboist-musicologists trace that history from its beginnings to the present time, discussing how and why the oboe evolved, what...

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our...

The Song Play Book: Singing Games For Children is a book written by Mary A. Wollaston and published in 1917. The book is a collection of songs and singing games specifically designed for children. It includes a variety of traditional and original songs, as...

"In Cool Wooden Box, Rand Smith has cleverly woven person, social, and musical histories into a compelling narrative. In doing so, Smith has illustrated just how, well, cool the steel string acoustic guitar, its makers, and its players are." --John Thomas, author of Kalamazoo...

Samuel Charters has been studying and writing about New Orleans music for more than fifty years. A Trumpet around the Corner: The Story of New Orleans Jazz is the first book to tell the entire story of a century of jazz in New Orleans....

Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique is a key work in the understanding of romanticism, programme music, and the development of the orchestra, post-Beethoven. It is noted for having a title and a detailed programme, and for its connection with the composer's personal life and loves. This...

A fascinating study of how pub rock started, thrived and ultimately evolved into the New Wave. Blaney starts during the 1960s with the hippie roots of the movement, and then covers the main bands (Eggs Over Easy, Brinsley Schwarz, Ducks Deluxe et al). He...

Rocking China traces the rise and spread of indie rock scenes from the rock capital of Beijing to Shanghai and many other cities in China. Through interviews with key players in these scenes over a period of twenty years, Andrew Field explores the meanings...

Music and Maestros was first published in 1952. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.Music lovers all over the United States as well as in other...

Made in Scotland: Studies in Popular Music serves as a comprehensive and thorough introduction to the history, politics, culture and musicology of twentieth and twenty-first century popular music in Scotland.Author: Simon FrithISBN-10: 1032161973ISBN-13: 9781032161976Publisher: RoutledgeLanguage: EnglishPublished: 09/29/2023Pages: 186Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.76lbsSize: 9.69h x 6.85w x...

Journey back through American mid-century Doo Wop motel architecture, with the largest collection and in one of the birthplaces of rock n' roll - Wildwood, New Jersey!... Learn about the legend and folklore surrounding the motel architecture movement named after the touring vocal groups...

"I'm not here to change your mind about Dusty Springfield or Shostakovich or Tupac Shakur or synthpop. I'm here to change your mind about your mind." There are countless books on music with much analysis given to musicians, bands, eras and/or genres. But rarely...

This book is, at its core, about music and the people who listen to it--your friends, your neighbors and you. A fresh approach toward our cultural and sensical relationship to sound, this melodic examination of the world of music explores two big questions: How...

Untangles the intricately knotted issues around hip-hop culture and its treatment of young black women Pimps Up, Ho's Down pulls at the threads of the intricately knotted issues surrounding young black women and hip hop culture. What unravels for Tracy D. Sharpley-Whiting is a...

Singular and star-studded writings on America's neon-lit playground At once a Technicolor wonderland and the embodiment of American mythology, Las Vegas exists at the Ground Zero of a reverence for risk-taking and the transformative power of a winning hand. Jake Johnson edits a collection...

Becoming Audible explores the phenomenon of human and animal acoustic entanglements in art and performance practices. Focusing on the work of artists who get into the spaces between species, Austin McQuinn discovers that sounding animality secures a vital connection to the creatural.To frame his...

In this classic work of American music writing, renowned critic Albert Murray argues beautifully and authoritatively that "the blues as such are synonymous with low spirits. Not only is its express purpose to make people feel good, which is to say in high spirits,...

Cinema is the form of entertainment that can be, above all, identified with the twentieth century. It gradually replaced theatre as a popular form of performed storytelling, and replaced opera too as the new multimedia art form, soon incorporating music as one of cinema's...

This well-known study by an eminent musicologist constitutes one of the best mid-level explorations of the nature and function of the orchestra. Tracing the beginnings of modern music from the seventeenth through early twentieth centuries, the survey presents forty-four musical excerpts and thirteen sketches...

Cowboy Songs is a classic collection of American folk music lyrics as compiled by John A. Lomax. It is now four or five years since my attention was called to the collection of native American ballads from the Southwest, already begun by Professor Lomax....

Shawn Henning's new book is a powerful and overwhelming tribute and legacy to Michael Jackson. In one book, he's collected love letters, reflections, eulogies, poems, essays and drawings from people throughout the world who have a special appreciation for the King of Pop, Michael...

Spanning the entire history of the Doors, this book will long remain the definitive biography of a band that forever changed popular music. But it's not the story you think you know. Yes, Jim Morrison died in Paris in 1971--but not in a bathtub....

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our...