Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Music

On the eve of his fortieth birthday, a professor of no discernible musical talent learns to play the guitar and investigates how anyone of any age might master a new skill. Just about every human being knows how to listen to music, but what does it take to make music? Is musicality something we...

A neuroscience-based approach to learning how to play music at any age You can learn to play music, no matter what you've been told about your musical talent or aptitude. Each and every one of us has been gifted with a fully customizable brain, one we can mold to learn anything, at any age. With...

For 70 years now Desert Island Discs has managed that rare feat - to be both enduring and relevant. By casting away the biggest names of the day in science, business, politics, showbiz, sport, and the arts, it presents a cross-sectional snapshot of the times in which we live. As the decades have passed, the programme has kept pace; never frozen in time yet always, somehow, comfortingly the same.

BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs celebrates its 70 birthday in 2012.

An exploration into the question of greatness from the Chief Classical Music Critic of the New York Times When he began to listen to the great works of classical music as a child, Anthony Tommasini had many questions. Why did a particular piece move him? How did the music work? Over time, he...

A candid and moving memoir from the critically acclaimed singer and songwriterFor thirty years as a musician, Rosanne Cash has enjoyed both critical and commercial success, releasing a series of albums that are as notable for their lyrical intelligence as for their musical excellence.Now, in her...

As the lead singer of the Doors, Jim Morrison’s searing poetic vision and voracious appetite for sexual, spiritual, and psychedelic experience inflamed the spirit and psyche of a generation. Since his mysterious death in 1971, millions more fans from a new generation have embraced his legacy...

"This book inspires us all to immerse ourselves in the vast potential of music and other creative arts to heal our wounds, sharpen our minds, enliven our bodies, and restore our broken connections.” —Bessel van der Kolk, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Body Keeps the Score...

The remarkable life and times of the man who popularized American folk music and created the science of songFolklorist, archivist, anthropologist, singer, political activist, talent scout, ethnomusicologist, filmmaker, concert and record producer, Alan Lomax is best remembered as the man who...

On a sunny Saturday morning in May 1956, a fifteen-year-old, then called Harry Webb, was mooching down Waltham Cross High Street, with two mates. They heard some music blaring out of a parked car. It stopped them in their tracks. The song was 'Heartbreak Hotel' by Elvis Presley. It sounded like nothing they had ever heard before. In that instant, the schoolboy who was destined to take the hit parade by storm as Cliff Richard fell in love with rock and roll. It gave him the thrill, the purpose and the mission that has shaped his life ever since.

In this warm, intimate and humorous book, rich with nostalgia and unexpected intimate detail, Gary Barlow unpacks the people, music, places, things and cultural phenomena that have made him the man that he is. From the working men's club where it all began through to the sold out stadium tours, this is the story of Gary's life told through music.

From a Gold Star polycotton shirt to a pack of Wrigley's Extra, from his teenage attempts to write songs to the Sexy Laughs Fantastic Dirty Joke Book, this is the hard evidence of Jarvis's unique life, Pulp, 20th-century pop culture, the good times and the mistakes he'd rather forget. And this accumulated debris of a lifetime reveals his creative process—writing and musicianship, performance and ambition, style and stagecraft.

A quietly influential force in African American literature and art, Clarence Major makes his Penguin Classics debut with the twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of Dirty Bird Blues The PRH Audio book of Dirty Bird Blues by Clarence Major won a 2022 EARPHONE AWARD. Narrated by Dion Graham. A...

The singer, guitarist, and songwriter, best known for his work with Wilco, opens up about his past, his songs, the music, and the people that have inspired him. Few bands have inspired as much devotion as the Chicago rock band Wilco, and it's thanks, in large part, to the band's singer...

The Beatles landing in New York in February 1964 was the opening shot in a cultural revolution nobody predicted. Suddenly the youth of the richest, most powerful nation on earth was trying to emulate the music, manners and the modes of a rainy island that had recently fallen on hard times.

The era of the LP began in 1967, with Sgt Pepper; The Beatles didn’t just collect together a bunch of songs, they Made an Album. Henceforth, everybody else wanted to Make an Album. The end came only 15 years later, coinciding with the release of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. By then the Walkman had taken music out of the home and into the streets, and the record business had begun trying to reverse engineer the creative process in order to make big money. Nobody would play music or listen to it in quite the same way ever again.

Pop music’s a simple pleasure. Is it catchy? Can you dance to it? Do you fancy the singer? What’s fascinating about pop is our relationship with it. This relationship gets more complicated the longer it goes on. It’s been going on now for 50 years. David Hepworth is interested in the human side of pop. He’s interested in how people make the stuff and, more importantly, what it means to us. In this wide-ranging collection of essays, he shows how it is possible to take music seriously and, at the same time, not drain the life out of it.

The Spice Girls gave a generation their first glimpse of the power of friendship, of staying true to yourself, of sheer bloody-mindedness. And the girl power generation went on to kick-start a new conversation around gender equality. We may have grown up asking What Would the Spice Girls Do?, but their particular brand of feminism is as relevant today as it was 20 years ago - we still need that fun and fearlessness, we still need accessible and all-embracing equality...we still need a zig-a-zig-ah.

From humble beginnings in County Donegal in Ireland to worldwide recording success, Daniel O'Donnell recounts the incredible story of his life, charting the ups and downs with remarkable honesty. Through wonderful anecdotes, Daniel recalls his early years and the moment he set his heart on becoming a singer, and gives a personal acount of his spreading popularity and subsequent perfomances all over the world.

Brought to you by Penguin. THE #MERKY STORY SO FAR Edited and co-written by Jude Yawson Contributions by Team #Merky 'It's been a long time coming, I swear...' In four years Stormzy has risen from one of the most promising musicians of his generation to a spokesperson for a generation. Rise Up...

Jo Whiley is someone millions of us recognise and very few of us know. Jo's a mother, sister, DJ, wife and music-industry insider who throughout her career - and in an age of fleeting celebrity - has earned the respect of her peers and fans by simply being herself and by her constant enthusiasm, be it for established rock 'n roll royalty or for emerging talent. For Jo Whiley, it's all about the music.