Showing titles in History & Criticism

When we think of rock stars, we are entrained to think of them as having come from regular, working-class backgrounds, and having worked their way up the slippery pole to success through hard work and talent alone. The reality is that all household name musicians are selected for success. Barely a plumber in sight. But no shortage of generals, admirals, politicians, civil servants and spies. Mark Devlin offers further evidence to show how the corporate music industry exists solely for the mind-control of the masses, with artists becoming little more than hand-picked puppets.

NOW A NETFLIX ORIGINAL MOVIE STARRING MACHINE GUN KELLY, DANIEL WEBBER, DOUGLAS BOOTH, AND IWAN RHEON, DIRECTED BY JEFF TREMAINE. Celebrate over thirty years of the world's most notorious rock band with the audiobook edition of The Dirt—the outrageous, legendary, no-holds-barred autobiography...

From Gregorian Chant to Henryk Gorecki, the first living classical composer to get into the pop album charts, here is the fascinating story of over a thousand years of Western classical music and the composers who have sought to express in music the deepest of human feelings and emotions. Also available: The History of Opera.

Craze is a journey into sound, a book which along the way will bring to you a new colour; new dimension; a new understanding of the cultural, technological, and chemical strands that led to the Electronic Music Revolution. Take a trip down rave memory lane into Sydney’s early warehouse scene and explore the forging of a global cultural phenomenon. Re-live the Second Summer of Love from the unique Australian perspective of its farthest flung outpost.

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.

The fascinating story behind the making of Bruce Springsteen’s most surprising album, Nebraska, revealing its pivotal role in Springsteen’s career—now with a new afterword Soon to be a major motion picture starring Jeremy Allen White (The Bear) “Brilliant . . . For fans of American music...

In this, the first book to take a big-picture view of the entire post punk period, acclaimed author and music journalist Simon Reynolds recreates a time of tremendous urgency and idealism in pop music. Full of anecdote and insight, and featuring the likes of Joy Division, The Fall, Pere Ubu, PiL and Talking Heads, Rip It Up And Start Again stands as one of the most inspired and inspiring books on popular music ever written.

For millennia, the sacred drummers of pre-Christian Mediterranean and western Asia were women. In this inspiring book, Layne Redmond, herself a renowned drummer, tells their history.

"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...

The finest book on Britain's most popular rock 'n' roll band 'Read on … It's all true' Noel Gallagher Featuring an exclusive interview with Noel Gallagher and bespoke artwork by celebrated Oasis album designer Brian Cannon Think Oasis was just Britpop and brawls? Think again. John Robb was...

Ted Gioia's History of Jazz has been universally hailed as a classic - acclaimed by jazz critics and fans around the world. Now Gioia brings his magnificent work completely up-to-date, drawing on the latest research and revisiting virtually every aspect of the music, past and present. Gioia tells the story of jazz as it had never been told before, in a book that brilliantly portrays the legendary jazz players, the breakthrough styles, and the world in which it evolved. Here are the giants of jazz and the great moments of jazz history.

Dive into the songwriting, musicianship, and production of some of the most influential popular music ever created. Kenneth Womack and Scott Freiman provide accessible, close readings of each song – based on cutting-edge Beatles research – and tackle hard-hitting questions: What were the song's origins, and how was it written? How was the song transformed in the studio? What instruments were used and how did that impact the song's arrangement?

In 2020, guitar expert John Stubbings released a limited-edition book on the American acoustic guitar that sold out in days. Now, The Devil Is in It returns with additional research and subject matter for a new generation of listeners. Stubbings traveled the country and met with guitar makers, players, collectors, and historians to unravel the long and rich history of the acoustic guitar, its evolution, and the music it has made over the last hundred years.

Weird Era: How Pitchfork Changed Music Forever: A Memoir by Ryan Schreiber is a forthcoming title from MCD Books...

The follow-up to The McCartney Legacy, Volume 1, the most complete work on the life and work of Paul McCartney ever published. Volume 2 continues to paint the portrait of one of the world’s greatest musicians, his work post-Beatles, and his life from 1974 to 1980. By 1974 the Beatles were a...

Joe Boyd tells of his journey through Sixties music, from tour managing Muddy Waters and Coleman Hawkins, to plugging in Bob Dylan's electric guitar while working as production manager at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, to becoming a leading record producer. His first session was Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood's "Crossroads" followed by Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, the Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny and many more.

In this first of a groundbreaking multivolume set, THE MCCARTNEY LEGACY, VOL 1: 1969-73 captures the life of Paul McCartney in the years immediately following the dissolution of the Beatles, a period in which McCartney recreated himself as both a man and a musician. Informed by hundreds of...

From the joyous communal connections fostered through shared auditory experience to the devastating impact of noise pollution in the deep sea, musician and author Damon Krukowski urges readers to reconsider the significance of sound and its role in both our personal and collective well-being. He looks despairingly at how the multipronged efforts of urban dwellers to mitigate city noise have led to increased isolation, loss of community, and a sense of physical detachment from one’s surroundings.

Exploding on the music scene in the early 1970s, the rock group KISS combined raw energy with theatrical showmanship—not to mention face painting! Founding member Gene Simmons—an outrageous star whose superlong tongue, legendary sexual exploits, and demonic makeup have made him a rock icon—recounts his own story as well as the history of the band. In KISS and Make-Up, Simmons shares a wild, shocking, and unbelievable tale about an immigrant boy from Israel who studied to be a rabbi but was saved by rock and roll and became one of the most notorious rock stars in the world.

A leading music journalist’s riveting chronicle of how beloved band Pearl Jam shaped the times, and how their legacy and longevity have transcended generations. Ever since Pearl Jam first blasted onto the Seattle grunge scene three decades ago with their debut album, Ten, they have sold 85M+...