Showing titles in History & Criticism

Bloomsbury presents M Train written and read by Patti Smith. 'So honest and pure as to count as a true rapture' JOAN DIDION 'A poetic masterpiece' JOHNNY DEPP 'Our St John of the Cross, a mystic full of compassion' EDMUND WHITE 'A roadmap to my life', from the National Book Award-winning author...

Ways of Listening is a love letter to music, a sharp analysis of our current cultural reality, and a joyful celebration of the artists who keep creating against all odds. How has the internet changed the way we listen to, and love, the music that shapes our lives? Award-winning musician Rollie...

Jimi Hendrix's road manager and confidant Eric Barrett breaks fifty-five years of silence As Jimi Hendrix's road manager, Eric Barrett was there when the amps blew in Milan, when Hendrix set Woodstock ablaze, when paranoia crackled through the Toronto airport, when his music electrified a sea of...

Bloomsbury presents Pub Rock by Mark Wilkerson, read by Kenneth Medford The scene that bulldozed the path from prog and glam to punk and new wave, pub rock was a short-lived phenomenon in the U.K., emerging amidst the bloated landscape of prog rock and an increasingly oppressive economic outlook...

The glorious repertoire for solo piano includes many of classical music’s most beloved masterpieces. In these 24 musically rich lectures, you’ll dig deeply into this magnificent tradition, in an in-depth exploration of the art of listening. With Professor Kautsky’s inspired guidance and expert playing, you’ll highlight key works of each composer, and unpack their structure, the musical materials that drive them, and the specific features that affect listeners so strongly, giving you a clear grounding in how to approach and hear this great music.

Howard Bloom - called “the greatest press agent that rock and roll has ever known” by Derek Sutton, the former manager of Styx, Ten Years After, and Jethro Tull - is a science nerd who knew nothing about popular music. But he founded the biggest PR firm in the music industry and helped build or sustain the careers of our biggest rock legends, including Michael Jackson, Prince, Bob Marley, Bette Midler, Billy Joel, Billy Idol, Chaka Khan, and 100 more. What was he after? He was on a hunt for the gods inside of you and me.

You can’t truly understand the last decade of the 20th century without a look at the muddy, electrifying rock music that would come to define it: grunge. For such a short-lived genre—at least in the mainstream—grunge had a lasting impact on American music and culture. It also provides a unique lens through which to examine the post-Reagan, pre-internet America of the 1990s. In the six lectures of The Story of Grunge, you’ll explore the rise and evolution of the genre, tracing it from Seattle subculture to MTV and the Billboard charts, all the way to its decline and evolution into new forms.

"Raw, authoritative, and unflinching ... An elaborately detailed, darkly surprising, definitive history of the LA gangsta rap era." -- Kirkus, starred review A monumental, revealing narrative history about the legendary group of artists at the forefront of West Coast hip-hop: Eazy-E, Dr. Dre...

’An absolutely masterly work’ Stephen Fry Alex Ross, renowned author of the international bestseller The Rest Is Noise, reveals how Richard Wagner became the proving ground for modern art and politics—an aesthetic war zone where the Western world wrestled with its capacity for beauty and...

Eminent and highly respected nature writer Richard Mabey regards Whistling in the Dark as one of his Top Ten most significant books. After being exceptionally well-received on publication, it remains the only title from his collection that is no longer in print, and the timing feels perfect to...

FOREWORD BY JAMES MURPHY 'Literally changed the course of my life' James Murphy When someone says, 'You have to know your history...' this is it. A pop culture classic for over two decades, now fully refreshed and updated as part of White Rabbit's Deep Cuts series, Last Night a DJ ... is the...

Nick has been fantastically involved throughout the production of this download, so that it has become something far more than simply an author reading his work. For once, we can genuinely say this audiobook comes complete with bells and whistles, not to mention some Arctic winds, Venetian canals, telephones, aeroplanes, and a squealing pig or two!

Schumann: The Faces and the Masks is a groundbreaking account of a major composer whose life and works have been the subject of intense controversy ever since his attempted suicide and early death in an insane asylum. Schumann was a key figure in the Romanticism which swept Europe and America in the 19th century, inspiring writers, musicians and painters, delighting their enthralled audiences and reaching to the furthest corners of the world.

Brought to you by Penguin. 'A sparkling debut by an outstanding and gifted author. A brilliant guide to Russia of the past and the present, set around an extraordinary search for the heart, soul and lost keyboards of centuries gone by.’ PETER FRANKOPAN 'An extraordinary, cadenced journey into...

Danny Goldberg's new book is a subjective history of 1967, the year he graduated from high school. It is, he writes, "an attempt at trying to remember the culture that mesmerized me, to visit the places and conversations I was not cool enough to have been a part of." It is also a refreshing and new analysis of the era; by looking at not only the political causes, but also the spiritual, musical, and psychedelic movements, Goldberg provides a unique perspective on how and why the legacy of 1967 lives on today.

In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Abdurraqib's is a voice that matters. Whether he's attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown's grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy that resonates profoundly. In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others—Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times.

In this magisterial volume, Harvey Sachs, author of the highly acclaimed biography Toscanini, takes listeners into the heart of 10 great works of classical music - works that have endured because they were created by composers who had a genius for drawing music out of their deepest wellsprings. These masters - Mozart and Beethoven; Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz, Verdi, and Brahms; Sibelius, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky - communicated their life experiences through music, and through music they universalized the intimate.

From Mozart to Mendelssohn, this comprehensive guide to classical music history and classical music biography is the perfect latest addition to the best-selling Big Ideas series. Easy to understand and clear to follow, this history of classical music explores and explains music theory and the impact of seminal pieces, while also providing fascinating stories about the lives of crucial composers and performers. Including an insightful foreword by Katie Derham, The Classical Music Book analyses more than 90 works by famous composers.

Unlike all previous versions of rock 'n' roll history, this book omits almost every iconic performer and ignores the storied events and turning points everyone knows. Instead, in a daring stroke, Greil Marcus selects 10 songs recorded between 1956 and 2008 and then proceeds to dramatize how each embodies rock 'n' roll as a thing in itself in the story it tells, inhabits, and acts out - a new language, something new under the sun.

Music journalists Dean Budnick and Josh Baron chronicle the behind-the-scenes history of the modern concert industry. Filled with entertaining rock-and-roll anecdotes about The Rolling Stones, The Grateful Dead, Pearl Jam, and more - and charting the emergence of players like Ticketmaster, StubHub, Live Nation, and Outbox - Ticket Masters will transfix every concertgoer who wonders just where the price of admission really goes. This edition has an updated epilogue that covers recent industry developments.