Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios" in Music

John Cage has been described as the most important composer of our time. He combined classical European training with Eastern spirituality to produce an American amalgam of such vitality and originality that it continues to define what we mean by avant-garde. His influence has touched generations of artists, including Philip Glass, David Byrne, and his longtime collaborator Merce Cunningham. His work and ideas have influenced not only the world of music but also dance, painting, printmaking, video art, and poetry.

From the triumphant “Main Title” in Star Wars to the ominous bass line of Jaws, John Williams has penned some of the most unforgettable film scores—while netting more than fifty Academy Award nominations. This updated and revised edition of Emilio Audissino’s groundbreaking volume takes stock of Williams’s creative process and achievements in music composition, including the most recent sequels in the film franchises that made him famous. Audissino details his lasting impact and cements his legacy as one of the most important composers in movie history.

He is the proud torchbearer of the Beatles, the greatest band in the history of popular music, and one of the most closely-studied artists in show business, yet secrets and surprises remain in the life of Sir Paul McCartney. The full story is told in Fab. Howard Sounes, author of the acclaimed Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan, spent more than two years investigating every aspect of Sir Paul’s life and work, including interviewing over 200 people.

Pamela Des Barres, celebrated “queen of the groupies,” chronicled her adventures with rock stars in her bestseller I’m with the Band. This book picks up where that one left off, with Pamela embarking on marriage and motherhood, all the while sharing quarters and making friends with stars. But this is a survivor’s story about the anguish of coping with loved ones’ addictions, about suffering divorce, about the joys and terrors of raising a gifted son.

Acclaimed journalist Randall Sullivan follows Russell Poole, a highly decorated LAPD detective who in 1997 was called to investigate a controversial cop-on-cop shooting, eventually to discover that the officer killed was tied to Marion “Suge” Knight’s notorious gangsta rap label, Death Row Records. During his investigation, Poole came to realize that a growing cadre of black officers were allied not only with Death Row, but with the murderous Bloods street gang. And incredibly, Poole began to uncover evidence that at least some of these “gangsta cops” may have been involved in the murders of rap superstars Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur.

Holly Knight’s singular music career included crafting a good part of the soundtrack to the MTV '80s with mega-hits for Tina Turner (“The Best”), Pat Benatar (“Love Is a Battlefield”), and Patty Smyth (“The Warrior”)—songs that celebrated female empowerment and shaped pop and rock for years to come.

The story of the music that accompanies the cinematic adventures of Ian Fleming's intrepid Agent 007 is one of surprising real-life drama. In The Music of James Bond, author Jon Burlingame throws open studio and courtroom doors alike to reveal the full and extraordinary history of the sounds of James Bond, spicing the story with a wealth of fascinating and previously undisclosed tales.

Smart and incisive, this unique book takes us through Bruce Springsteen’s life by tracing the cultural, political, and personal forces that shaped his music. Beyond his constant stylistic adaptations, Springsteen developed over the decades from expressing the voice of a guy from working-class New Jersey to writing about the larger issues facing the country, including war, class disparity, and prejudice. Marc Dolan draws on a range of new and little-known sources - including hundreds of unreleased studio recordings and bootlegs of live performances - making this an indispensable reference for avid Springsteen fans as well as those interested in learning the stories behind his music.

Alice Cooper is an American rock star whose career has spanned more than four decades. With a stage show that features guillotines, electric chairs, boa constrictors and baby dolls, Cooper has pioneered a grandly theatrical and violent brand of hard rock designed to shock.

In "Society's Child," you'll journey with Janis as she spends time with luminaries of the century-Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Aretha Franklin-singers and songwriters who both influenced and befriended her. Her book takes an unblinking look at the music business, her own remarkable path through it, and what was really happening backstage-with honesty and integrity.

The story of Stax Records unfolds like a Greek tragedy. A white brother and sister build a record company that becomes a monument to racial harmony in 1960’s segregated south Memphis. Their success is startling, and Stax soon defines an international sound. Then, after losses both business and personal, the siblings part, and the brother allies with a visionary African-American partner. Under integrated leadership, Stax explodes as a national player until, Icarus-like, they fall from great heights to a tragic demise.

Long before drag queens dominated the media, before gender-bending, before punk, even before Stonewall, there was Jayne County. From the 60s to the 90s she was the craziest, the most extreme queen ever to hit a rock 'n' roll stage. She's known and worked with Warhol, Bowie, and Derek Jarman, been an actress, a singer and a prostitute. She's the world's original rock 'n' roll trans star, crossing the genders in the full glare of publicity.

Paul McCartney and John Lennon described him as the Beatles' "favorite group", he won Grammy awards, wrote and recorded hit songs, and yet no figure in popular music is as much of a paradox, or as underrated, as Harry Nilsson. In this first ever full-length biography, Alyn Shipton traces Nilsson's life from his Brooklyn childhood to his Los Angeles adolescence and his gradual emergence as a uniquely talented singer-songwriter.

Brasília catalisou as influências do punk e do pós-punk, com suas letras politizadas e a efervescência de uma juventude que questionava "que país é esse?". Para atear fogo nesse estopim nasceu uma das bandas mais icônicas dessa geração: a Plebe Rude. E se tem um cara que pode contar essa história é Philippe Seabra, o brasiliense que nasceu em Washington e se tornou em um dos melhores guitarristas do rock nacional. Pela primeira vez, depois de cinco anos elaborando, ele revela em detalhes essa história, em um relato inédito e profundo que descortina a cena roqueira de uma geração.

In the '60s and '70s, America's music scene was marked by raucous excess, reflected in the tragic overdoses of young superstars such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. At the same time, the uplifting harmonies and sunny lyrics that propelled Karen Carpenter and her brother, Richard, to international fame belied a different sort of tragedy - the underconsumption that led to Karen's death at age 32 from the effects of an eating disorder.

Written by award-winning jazz historian Ted Gioia, this comprehensive guide offers an illuminating look at more than 250 seminal jazz compositions. In this comprehensive and unique survey, here are the songs that sit at the heart of the jazz repertoire, ranging from "Ain't Misbehavin'" and "Autumn in New York" to "God Bless the Child," "How High the Moon," and "I Can't Give You Anything But Love." Gioia includes Broadway show tunes written by such greats as George Gershwin and Irving Berlin, and classics by such famed jazz musicians as Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, and John Coltrane.

Throughout his genre-defying career as one of the most innovative musicians of our time, iconoclastic guitar player Marc Ribot has consistently defied expectation at every turn. Here, in his first collection of writing, we see that same uncompromising sensibility at work as he playfully interrogates our assumptions about music, life, and death. Through essays, short stories, and the occasional unfilmable film "mistreatment" that showcase the sheer range of his voice, Unstrung captures an artist whose versatility with words rivals his dexterity onstage.

Bob Harris first became known as the face of the 1970s live music TV show The Old Grey Whistle Test and his infectious enthusiasm for music and ability to discover new talent has seen him become a national treasure. He continues to be a household name today and his velvety voice can be heard on Radio 2's The Bob Harris Show and Bob Harris Country. In this fully revised and updated autobiography, with a forward by Robert Plant, Bob tells his story of over 40 years of broadcasting.

The American pianist Jonathan Biss is known to audiences throughout the world for his artistry, musical intelligence and deeply felt interpretations. What is less known until now is that Jonathan Biss writes about music in a most compelling and engaging way. For anyone who has ever enjoyed a Beethoven concert or a Beethoven recording or one of the many films about Beethoven, this audiobook is an inspiring listening experience. For those of you who have heard Beethoven in concert or listened to a Beethoven recording, Jonathan Biss takes you behind the scenes of those performances.

Take one of the crowning musical geniuses of mid-nineteenth century Europe; surround him with enemies, some of whom are fiercely jealous of his talent, others in love with his beautiful wife (a musical genius in her own right); add several scoundrels including a seller of stolen jewels and a kleptomaniac music critic who ends up murdered under highly mysterious circumstances and there you have the world of Robert and Clara Schumann in the Germany of the 1850s, as told by the narrator, Dsseldorfs top detective, Inspector Hermann Preiss.