Showing titles in History & Criticism

Hit the lights and jump in the fire, you're about to enter the School of Rock! Today's lecture will be a crash course in brain surgery. This hard and fast lesson is taught by instructors who graduated from the old school - they actually paid $5.98 for The $5.98 EP. But back before these philosophy professors cut their hair, they were lieutenants in the Metal Militia.

Profiles offer revealing insights into what drove each individual to create the musical masterpieces - symphonies, concertos and operatic scores - that changed the direction of classical music and are still celebrated as masterpieces today. The audiobook introduces the key influences, themes and working methods of each individual, setting their works within a wider historical and cultural context.

It is belived that, in his lifetime, Michael Jackson sold around 750 million records, making him one of the most successful entertainers ever. This in-depth and affectionate biography traces the rise of the man, from child prodigy to tortured megastar. It is the definitive portrait of a pop legend whose strange and brilliant life will never be forgotten.

Quincy Troupe's account of his friendship with Miles Davis is a revealing portrait of a great musician and an intimate study of a unique relationship. It is also an engrossing chronicle of the author's own development, both artistically and personally. A keen and critical observer, Troupe captures and conveys the power of Miles' presence, the mesmerizing force of his personality, and the restless energy that lay at the root of his creativity.

And After All gives the mic to the fans that launched Oasis to stratospheric fame and takes a deep dive into the band’s formation, history, and reunion. Through the lens of the fans who were there for all the songs, feuds, and incredible shows, journalist Melissa Locker examines the path Oasis charted as they cemented their place in modern rock history.

After February 9, 1964, everyone wanted to be Debbie Gendler. She was one of a handful of lucky fans who were in the live audience for the Beatles' historic performance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Everyone has a story about where they were when they watched the appearance, but very few were there in-person—and even fewer would go on not just to meet the Beatles, but end up building a career around the band. But Debbie did.

Featuring a player rejected by both Nirvana and Soundgarden who became a decorated special forces soldier, Britpoppers who spiralled into addiction before becoming novelists and missionaries, the terrifying story of Guns N' Roses' first drummer, super-rejecting band leaders, self-destroying rappers, troubled hard rock bassists and girl-band burnouts, The Rejects takes an intimate, thoughtful look at people who've been kicked out of bands, what they experienced and what came afterwards.

Although Greenwich Village takes up less than a square mile in downtown New York, rarely has such a concise area supported and nurtured so many groundbreaking artists and genres. Musician used the Village’s smokey coffeehouses and clubs to chronicle the tumultuous Sixties, rewrite jazz history, and take rock & roll into eclectic places it hadn’t been before. Based on new interviews with surviving participants, previously unseen and unheard archives, and author David Browne's years immersed in the scene, Talkin’ Greenwich Village lends the saga the epic, panoramic scope it has long deserved.

Fallopian Rhapsody: The Story of the Lunachicks is a coming-of-age tale about a band of NYC teenagers who forged a sisterhood, found salvation, and fervently crashed the gates of punk rock during the '90s, accidentally becoming feminist icons along the way. More than that, this is a story about the enduring friendship among the book's three central voices: Theo Kogan, Sydney Silver, and Gina Volpe.

Following open heart surgery, poet and writer Peter Carpenter was given one instruction - 'Walk, if you want to stay on this planet'. And so when his hero and inspiration David Bowie died in 2016, he knew what he had to do. The man who was to so many a companion and guide had left no shrine, no focal point of understanding. To reconnect with Bowie, he would take a walk into the past, to the streets, towns and places where David Jones became something more.

No longer dismissed as relics of the hippie era, a new generation has lionized the Dead for creating a culture that paved the way for social networking, free music swapping, and the uncompromising anticorporate attitude of indie rock. Now, fifty years after the band first began changing rock 'n' roll both sonically and psychically, So Many Roads paints the most vivid portrait yet of the Grateful Dead, one of the most enduring institutions in American music and culture.

Ace Collins has dug deep to uncover the true stories behind your favorite Christmas songs. Explore how these songs came into being, and discover a deeper appreciation for these melodic messages of peace, hope, and joy that celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Sympathy for the Drummer: Why Charlie Watts Matters is both a gonzo rush - capturing the bristling energy of the Rolling Stones and the times in which they lived - and a wide-eyed reflection on why the Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band in the World needed the world's greatest rock 'n' roll drummer. Across five decades, Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts has had the best seat in the house.

Award-winning music journalist and author Stuart Nicholson takes the listener on an entertaining journey from jazz's early stirrings in America’s south through to the present day, when almost every country in the world has its own vibrant jazz scene. En route we meet a host of jazz heroes past and present, from Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman and Miles Davis, to Keith Jarrett and Kamasi Washington. Each chapter is accompanied by a playlist designed to provide a stimulating and enjoyable entry point to what has been described as the most exciting art form of all.

Camp has been an inescapable part of popular culture for at least the last 150 years. Famously unrestrained and ever evolving, it has not only captured the cultural imagination, but also played an important role as a form of protest and resistance. Paul Baker takes us through camp's rebellious and revolutionary past with warmth, humour and sensitivity, starting with the court of Louis XIV and the dandies of the eighteenth century through to Showgirls, Harlem's drag balls and Columbian telenovelas.

The spiritual journey of the Beatles is the story of an entire generation of visionaries in the sixties who transformed the world. The Inner Light illumines hidden meanings of the Beatles' India-influenced lyrics and sounds, decoded by Susan Shumsky—a rare insider who spent two decades in the ashrams and six years on the personal staff of the Beatles' mentor, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Take a walk through almost any neighborhood in Manhattan and you’ll likely pass some of the most significant clubs in American music history. But you won’t know it—almost all of these venues have been demolished or repurposed, leaving no record of what they were, how they shaped music scenes, or their impact on the neighborhoods around them. This Must Be the Place examines how these scenes came together and fell apart—and shows how these communal artistic experiences are not just for rarefied geniuses but available to us all.

Frémeaux & Associés, label de référence historiographique du jazz avec la Collection Quintessence d'Alain Gerber, édite dans le cadre de la collection "Une histoire expliquée par" avec les Presses Universitaires de France, une histoire du jazz racontée par Laurent Cugny, professeur à la Faculté des Lettres de Sorbonne Université et ancien directeur de l'ONJ (Orchestre national de jazz).

The story of two outsiders and obsessives whose collision prompted an evangelistic alliance on the furthest frontiers of underground music. Steve Davis first met Kavus Torabi - guitarist with Gong, Guapo, Cardiacs and Knifeworld - in the mid-2000s at a gig by French underground rock legends Magma. Over the next few years, this unlikely duo's shared affinity for visionary psychedelic music would become the foundation of not only a firm friendship, but also the most infectiously inclusive broadcasting style since the much-mourned death of John Peel.

The result of a lifetime's passion for gig-going by one of British television's most respected writers, Foreground Music is at once enthusiastically detailed and tremendously illuminating - of both the concert moment and its place in popular culture. It is an engaging memoir of a life lived to the fullest, and a vivid, insightful, and humorous exploration of what music writing might be. Foreground Music captures the energy and power of life-changing gigs, while tracing the evolution of 40 years of musical movements and subcultures.