Showing titles in History & Criticism

Bloomsbury presents A Sound Mind by Paul Morley, read by Paul Morley, Roger May and Olivia Dowd. An alternately funny and moving book about the most important art form on Planet Earth. Destined to become a classic (pun intended)' Jarvis Cocker Music critic and writer Paul Morley weaves together...

'Hungry Beat is the story of an all-too-brief era where the short-circuiting of that industry seemed viable. But hell, the times were luminous as was the music these artists made. The songs and many of the players remain, and here they tell their story and lick their wounds' Ian Rankin The...

Can’t Stop Won’t Stop meets Girls to the Front in this essential and long overdue history of hip-hop’s female pioneers and its enduring stars. Every history of hip-hop previously published, from Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop Won’t Stop to Shea Serrano’s The Rap Yearbook, focuses...

Audiobuch über das Leben und Wirken des legendären Sängers und Songwriters. John Denver lebt: zumindest in den Gedanken der immer noch riesigen Fangemeinde des 1997 durch einen Flugzeugabsturz ums Leben gekommenen amerikanischen Sängers und Songwriters. Jetzt ist ein Hörbuch über ihn erschienen, das über das Leben und Wirken des Künstlers informiert. Das Hörbuch enthält dazu Interviewpassagen von einer Pressekonferenz, die John Denver auf seiner letzten Deutschlandtournee im Jahre 1995 gegeben hat.

In haar hoorcollege over 120 jaar stijlen en substijlen in jazz en in de geïmproviseerde muziek geeft Vera Vingerhoeds inzicht in de muzikale ontwikkelingen in jazz. Wat is jazz? Hoe ontwikkelen zich nieuwe vormen van jazz? Welke muzikale ingrediënten zijn kenmerkend voor een stijl? Hoe wordt er geïmproviseerd? Van worksongs en blues via swing, bebop en free jazz naar postbop, fusion, wereldjazz en de urban jazz van vandaag: meer dan 20 jazzstijlen komen aan bod met gebruikmaking van veel luisterfragmenten.

Thirty years ago, Chuck Berry starred in the seminal music documentary Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock 'N' Roll, which profiled the legend during a star-studded concert celebrating his 60th birthday. Now comes the complete story behind one of America's most enduring and embattled icons. Compiled as an oral history by the film's producer, Stephanie Bennett, Johnny B. Bad combines interviews from the film's participants, including its music director - Keith Richards. These unique interviews and accounts paint a vivid and multifaceted picture of the artist.

Laurel Canyon was the neighborhood perched above the clubs and record companies of Sunset Strip where Joni Mitchell, Jim Morrison, Graham Nash, Cass Elliot, Carole King, Don Henley, and Peter Tork, just to name a few, lived and collaborated to make an indelible mark on our music and our culture.

The year 1972 saw the beginning of a five-year span in which Stevie Wonder released five groundbreaking, critically acclaimed albums, garnering him more than half a dozen Grammys and more than 10 million albums sold, securing his place as one of the most important American musicians and songwriters in history. For the first time, uncover the untold story of an extraordinary artistic journey that shaped the greatest creative era in popular music history.

Music composed for television had, until recently, never been taken seriously by scholars or critics. Catchy TV themes, often for popular weekly series, were fondly remembered but not considered much more culturally significant than commercial jingles. Yet noted composers like John Williams, Henry Mancini, and Jerry Goldsmith learned and/or honed their craft in television before going on to major success in feature films.

THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES, GRAMMY-NOMINATED BESTSELLER A SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, ROLLING STONE, AND ROUGH TRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR A panoramic experience that tells the story of Beastie Boys, a book as unique as the band itself-by band members AD-ROCK and Mike D, with contributions from Amy...

The inspiration for the Play It Loud exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art "Every guitar player will want to read this book twice. And even the casual music fan will find a thrilling narrative that weaves together cultural history, musical history, race, politics, business case studies...

Roger Scruton is a polymath. He has written authoritatively on a huge range of subjects from the environment to wine, from cosmology to the Middle East. He is also an accomplished musician (organ and piano) and a composer of works including an opera and a song cycle. This is Scruton’s second major work on music for Bloomsbury - the first being Understanding Music (Continuum, 2009).

Can a nation spend lavishly on music and still fail to develop a musical voice of its own? In Music, American composer and critic Deems Taylor takes a sharp, often humorous look at the state of American musical culture in the early twentieth century. Taylor argues that the United States has...

OVER THE LAST SEVEN DECADES, one of rock 'n' roll's most celebrated figureheads have flirted with the imagery and theater of the Third Reich. From Keith Moon and Vivian Stanshall kitting themselves out in Nazi uniforms to Siouxsie Sioux and Sid Vicious brandishing swastikas in the pomp of punk...

A preeminent Harvard professor and poetry expert explains the artistry—and the celebrity—of Taylor Swift “This is an outstanding look at one of the world’s most beloved entertainers.”―Kirkus (starred) Taylor Swift has become a peerless superstar, ceaselessly productive and...

A glimpse into the creative power of music. Ever since the Beatles British Invasion, numerous rock bands and singers have created albums that still have many fans love and devotion today. Was it raw talent, or was there something below the surface that transformed these dreamers into Hollywood...

This gritty bestselling memoir by the singer Mark Lanegan of Screaming Trees, Queens of the Stone Age, and Soulsavers documents his years as a singer and drug addict in Seattle in the '80s and '90s. When Mark Lanegan first arrived in Seattle in the mid-1980s, he was just "an arrogant...

Pop music didn't begin with the Beatles in 1963, or with Elvis in 1956, or even with the first seven-inch singles in 1949. There was a pre-history that went back to the first recorded music, right back to the turn of the 20th century . . . Let's Do It is the first book to tell the definitive story of the birth of pop, from the invention of the 78 rpm record at the end of the 19th century to the beginnings of rock and the modern pop age.

When it comes to how societies commemorate their own distant dreams and catastrophes, we often think of books, archives, or memorials carved from stone. But in Time's Echo, Jeremy Eichler makes a revelatory case for the power of music as culture's memory, an art form uniquely capable of carrying forward meaning from the past. Eichler shows how four towering composers - Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Benjamin Britten and Dmitri Shostakovich - lived through the era of the Second World War and the Holocaust and later transformed their experiences into deeply moving works of music.

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...