Examines the impact of Harry Partch's hobo years from a variety of perspectives, exploring how the composer both engaged and frustrated popular conceptions of the hobo. Harry Partch (1901-74) was one of the most distinctive and influential American composers of the mid-twentieth century. During the Great Depression, Partch rode the railways, following the fruit harvest across the country. Although he is renowned for his immense stage works, such as Delusion of the Fury, and his use of highly sophisticated instruments of his own creation, Partch is still regularly called a "hobo composer." Yet few have questioned this label's impact on his musical output, compositional life, and reception. Focusing on Partch the person alongside the cultural icon he represented, this study examines Partch from historical, cultural, political, and musical perspectives. It outlines the cultural history of the hobo from the mid-1800s through the 1960s, as well as those figures associated with the hobo's image. It explores how Partch's music, which chronicled a disappearing subculture, was received, and how the composer ultimately engaged and frustrated popular conceptions of the hobo. And it follows Partch's later years to question his response to the hobo label and the ways in which others used it to define and contain him for over thirty years S. Andrew Granade is Associate Professor of Musicology in the Conservatory of Music and Dance, University of Missouri-Kansas City.

In her intense, brief life, Amy Winehouse's music spoke directly to millions. And since her death, her fans have only increased.

Amy Winehouse is one of those pop stars that comes along so rarely we're not sure we knew what we had when we had her. Her story speaks to us not because the relentless tabloid coverage of her darker days unfolded in real time, but because she tapped into deeply personal yet universal feelings and displayed them to us in all their painful, raw glory. She turned our demons into something we could dance and sing to, and she skewered those who wronged her in ways we could only dream of.

Robert Wyatt started out as the drummer and singer for Soft Machine, who shared a residency at Middle Earth with Pink Floyd and toured America with Jimi Hendrix. He brought a Bohemian and jazz outlook to the 60s rock scene, having honed his drumming skills in a shed at the end of Robert Graves' garden in Mallorca. His life took an abrupt turn after he fell from a fourth-floor window at a party and was paralysed from the waist down. He reinvented himself as a singer and composer with the extraordinary album Rock Bottom, and in the early eighties his solo work was increasingly political. Today, Wyatt remains perennially hip, guesting with artists such as Bjork, Brian Eno, Scritti Politti, David Gilmour and Hot Chip. Marcus O'Dair has talked to all of them, indeed to just about everyone who has shaped, or been shaped by, Wyatt over five decades of music history.

An oral history in the vein of Please Kill Me Leftoever Crack is a band of drug abusing, dumpster diving, cop-hating, queer positive, pro-choice, crust punks that successfully blend ska-punk, pop, hip-hop and death metal genres. They've been banned from clubs, states and counties and kicked off multiple record labels. They've received teen-idol adoration and death threats from their fans. They've played benefits for a multitude of causes while leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. But, if you dig below the crusty, black metal-patch encased surface, you'll find a contemplative, nuanced band that, quite literally, permanently changed the punk rock community. By combining catchy ska-punk with lyrics that referenced political theorist Michael Parenti, drug usage, and suicide, the band formed a unique melange that was both provocative and challenging. In fact, the band's hooks were so sharp that after releasing their debut LP, Mediocre Generica, an entire culture of "Crack City Rockers" grew around the band, pushing the youth towards both the positive and negative aspects of extreme punk rock. Of course, being the combustible band that they are, the band has gotten involved in its far share of fiascoes: full-scale riots in Phoenix and NYC, getting punched out by their own fans, showing up to tour Florida with machetes after receiving death threats from the local gang. Architects of Self-Destruction: An Oral History of Leftoever Crack traces the band's entire history by speaking to the band members themselves, fellow musicians, their fans, and of course, those that still hold a grudge against the LoC... FYI, that's a lot of people.

Carpet Burns is Tom Hingley's account of his life as lead singer of Inspiral Carpets, one of the big three bands of the Manchester movement who, along with The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, changed music for a generation. Tom's own words provide an account of what it felt like to be in the eye of a pop hurricane and what happens when the hits end and the arguments kick in.

What do Wagner's operas really mean? How much room do they leave for different perspectives? In this fresh and inventive book, James Treadwell lays open the rich possibilities for interpretation offered across the full range of Wagner's art. Focussing steadily on Wagner's music, dramas and prose writings, rather than on questions of biography or influence, the book carefully traces the tensions and uncertainties embedded within the composer's central themes. The result is a new and vivid depiction of the essential character of Wagner's work. Addressing both general Wagner enthusiasts and more scholarly students of music, Treadwell identifies and pursues the habitual concerns of Wagner's operas and writings: enchantment, seduction, heroism, victory, transcendence and sacredness. While Wagner's work repeatedly and urgently sets itself to deny various or ambiguous interpretations, the operas themselves are nevertheless far more intricate and conflicted than this denial allows for. In this altered light, the dimensions of Wagner's art are unexpectedly extended, and its enduring vitality is refreshingly reasserted. James Treadwell was lecturer and junior research fellow at the University of Oxford, and assistant professor of English at McGill University.

This comprehensive bibliography serves as a major reference guide to the serious study of American singer and songwriter Paul Simon, well known for his work as part of the musical duo Simon and Garfunkel as well as for his successful solo career. Following a brief biography, the bibliography includes 660 citations and detailed publication information on over forty musical scores of his songs. The discography details information on Simon's thirty-one albums and sixty-four singles. This work provides complete coverage of Paul Simon's career over the past thirty-five years from his late 1950's hit Hey, Schoolgirl, to his 1999 concert tour with Bob Dylan.

Popular music scholars, along with Paul Simon fans, will appreciate this detailed source of available research materials on Paul Simon. With a focus on Simon's work as performer, composer, and sometime actor, this reference is intended as a scholarly guide for further research. Discographical information is organized in three sections: albums, singles, and covers. A general bibliography and a discography bibliography are followed by a composition list and index and a general index. Other chapters provide information on musical scores and electronic resources.

The first biography of Richard D'Oyly Carte, this is a critical survey of the career of the impresario whose ambitions went beyond the famous partnership of Gilbert and Sullivan. Errors and misconceptions in current literature are challenged and corrected to give a truer portrayal of one of the most influential music theatre promoters in the nineteenth century.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER "Mark Lanegan-primitive, brutal, and apocalyptic. What's not to love?" NICK CAVE "A stoned cold classic" IAN RANKIN 'Mark Lanegan writes like he sings, from the pained heart of a damaged soul with brutal honesty' BOBBY GILLESPIE "Powerfully written and brutally, frighteningly honest" LUCINDA WILLIAMS A ROUGH TRADE AND MOJO BOOK OF THE YEAR From the back of the van to the front of the bar, from the hotel room to the emergency room, Mark Lanegan takes us back to the sinister, needle-ridden streets of Seattle, to an alternative music scene that was simultaneously bursting with creativity and saturated with drugs. He tracks the tumultuous rise and fall of Screaming Trees, from a brawling, acid-rock bar band to world-famous festival favourites with an enduring legacy, and tells of his own personal struggles with addiction, culminating in homelessness, petty crime, and the tragic deaths of his closest friends. Gritty, gripping and unflinchingly raw, SING BACKWARDS AND WEEP is about a man who learned how to drag himself from the wreckage, dust off the ashes, and keep living and creating. 'The most brutally honest rock memoir imaginable' DAILY TELEGRAPH

One of today's most widely acclaimed composers, Arvo Part broke into the soundscape of the Cold War West with Tabula Rasa in 1977, a work that introduced his signature tintinnabuli style to listeners throughout the world. In the first book dedicated to this pathbreaking composition, author Kevin C. Karnes tells the story of Tabula Rasa as one of Part and of Europe itself, traced over the course of a quarter-century that saw momentous transitions in European culture and politics, history and memory. Beginning at the site of the work's creation in the Estonian SSR, and drawing extensively upon a range of previously unexamined archival materials, Karnes recounts Part's discovery of tintinnabuli amidst his experiments with the music of the Western and Soviet avant-gardes. He examines Tabula Rasa in relation to modernist conceptions of musical structure, the ascetic practice of Orthodox Christianity, postwar experiences of electronic music, and the polystylistic approaches to composition that have become emblematic of the Soviet 1970s. Tracing the export of Tabula Rasa to the West and Part's emigration in 1980, the book reveals intersections of critical commentary with visions of the "end of history" that attended the collapse of European communism to suggest that it was in this confluence of listening, discovery, and geopolitical reordering that enduring lines of conversation about Part and his music took shape.

'This band has no past' was the first line of the farcical biography printed on the inner sleeve of Cheap Trick's first album, but the band, of course, did have a past--a past that straddles two very different decades: from the tumult of the sixties to the anticlimax of the seventies, from the British Invasion to the record industry renaissance, with the band's debut album arriving in 1977, the year vinyl sales peaked. This Band Has No Past tells the story of a bar band from the Midwest--the best and weirdest bar band in the Midwest-- and how they doggedly pursued a most unlikely career in rock'n'roll. It traces every gnarly limb of the family tree of bands that culminated in Cheap Trick, then details how this unlikely foursome paid their dues--with interest--night after night, slogging it out everywhere from high schools to bars to bowling alleys to fans' back yards, before signing to Epic Records and releasing two brilliant albums six months apart. Drawing on more than eighty original interviews, This Band Has No Past is packed full of new insights and information that fans of the band will devour. How was the Cheap Trick logo created? How did the checkerboard pattern come to be associated with the band? When did Rick Nielsen start wearing a ballcap 24/7? Who caught their mom and dad rolling on the couch? What kind of beer did David Bowie drink? And when might characters like Chuck Berry, Frank Zappa, Don Johnson, Otis Redding, Eddie Munster, Kim Fowley, John Belushi, Jim Belushi, Elvis Presley, Leslie West, Groucho Marx, Robert F. Kennedy, Patti Smith, Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, The Coneheads, Tom Petty, Harvey Weinstein, Michael Mann, Linda Blair, Eddie Van Halen, Elvis Costello, Matt Dillon, and Pam Grier turn up? Read on and find out.

Reissued for the 40th Anniversary of the Oscar-winning, Sissy Spacek-starring film of the same name, COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER recounts Loretta Lynn's astonishing journey to become one of the original queens of country music. Loretta grew up dirt poor in the mountains of Kentucky, she was married at fifteen years old, and became a mother soon after. At the age of twenty-four, her husband, Doo, gave her a guitar as an anniversary present. Soon, she began penning songs and singing in front of honky-tonk audiences, and, through years of hard work, talent, and true grit, eventually made her way to Nashville, the Grand Ole Opry, eventually securing her place in country music history. Loretta's prolific and influential songwriting made her the first woman to receive a gold record in country music, and got her named the first female Entertainer of the Year by the Country Music Association. This riveting memoir introduces readers to all the highs and lows on her road to success and the tough, smart, funny, and fascinating woman behind the legend.

"This is an excellent and authoritative book -- one that will no doubt become the standard biography of Richard Rodgers". -- Allen Forte, Yale University

Richard Rodgers, a musical genius whose Broadway career spanned six successful decades, composed more than a thousand songs for the American stage. Although he reaped wealth, success, and recognition that included two shared Pulitzer Prizes, Rodgers found happiness elusive. In this first comprehensive biography of Rodgers, William G. Hyland tells the full story of the complex man and his incomparable music.

Hyland's portrait of Rodgers (1902-79) begins with his childhood in an affluent Jewish family living in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan. During college years at Columbia University and early work on the amateur circuit and Broadway, Rodgers entered into a historic collaboration with the lyricist Lorenz Hart. The team produced a dozen popular shows and such enduring songs as "The Lady Is a Tramp". Rodgers' next partnership, with Oscar Hammerstein II, led to the creation of the musical play, a new and distinctively American art form. Beginning with Oklahoma in 1943, this pair dominated Broadway for almost twenty years with a string of hits that remain beloved favorites: Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music. When Hammerstein died in 1960, Rodgers began a new phase in his career, writing the lyrics to his own music, then joining lyricists Stephen Sondheim, Sheldon Harnick, and Martin Charnin. Despite periods of depression, excessive drinking, hypochondria, and devastating illness at different points in his life, Rodgers' outpouring of music seemed little affected, and he continued to compose untilhis death at age seventy-seven. An icon of the musical theater, Rodgers left a legacy of timeless songs that audiences return to hear over and again.

Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the release of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon, this highly desirable album-sized package features rare and unseen backstage and onstage photography and reveals the visual conception of the original iconic album artwork. March 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the release of The Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd. Designed by Pentagram to high specifications, this official book commemorating the band and the album will be a covetable package for the legions of Floyd fans out there - new and old. This date will also see the launch of a luxury box set containing a re-release of the album together with numerous related music items. This luxurious book presents rare and unseen backstage and onstage photography of the band during the album tours of 1972 to 1975. 129 candid black-and-white photographs by Storm Thorgerson, Jill Furmanovsky, Aubrey Powell, Storm Thorgerson and Peter Christopherson document the soundchecks, the shows and the after shows. A review of the October 1972 Wembley gig, originally published in Melody Maker, provides insight into one of the Floyd's most celebrated performances, and there is a complete listing of the tour dates. This beautiful book also reveals the visual conception of the iconic album artwork.

Explores Wagner's lengthy stays in Venice, his death there, and the meaning of his works -- and his death -- for that great city and its mystique. Richard Wagner had a longstanding love affair with the city of Venice. His sudden death there in 1883 also initiated a process through which Wagner and his reputation were integrated into Venice's own cumulative cultural image. In Wagner and Venice, John Barker examines the connections between the great composer and the great city. The author traces patterns of Wagner's visits to Venice during his lifetime, considers what the city came to meanto Wagner, and investigates the details surrounding his death. Barker also examines how Venice viewed Wagner, by analyzing the landmark presentation of Wagner's Ring cycle two months after the composer's death, and by consideringVenice's subsequent extensive Wagner celebrations and commemorations. Throughout the volume, biographical detail from new and previously unavailable sources provides readers with a fresh interpretation of this seminal figure.Those already familiar with Wagner's life will find new information about, and insights into, the man and his career, while simultaneously discovering a neglected corner of Italian and Venetian cultural history. John W. Barker is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, specializing in Medieval (including Venetian) History. He is also a passionate music lover and record collector, and an active music critic and journalist.

Experiencing Music Composition in Grades 3-5 is a practical guide to new, innovative, and natural composition techniques for young composers. Music Educators Michele Kaschub and Janice Smith bring a wealth of experience to bear a unique and thoughtfully curated series of materials that help teachers connect music education to young composers' everyday emotions and activities . Divided into four sections, Kaschub and Smith's book illustrates a creative roadmap for instilling a sense of creative independence in students ages 8-11. The first section introduces readers to three distinct compositional ideals that are as educationally significant as the music they help create: feelingful intention, musical expressivity, and artistic craftsmanship. These capacities help springboard children's work from sounds and brief musical gestures to thoughtfully created, expressive musical pieces. Section 2 includes fun and imaginative lessons that are accompanied by Sketchpages-graphic worksheets that support deep consideration of a project's purpose during the compositional process. Lessons also include invaluable suggestions for productive sharing in a variety of formats. Section 3 offers guidance and strategies for sharing work, providing feedback, and encouraging future growth in a manner that fosters a positive learning experience and acknowledges each composer's musical autonomy. Section 4 contains additional teacher guides focused on creating original music in different genres. These guides outline multiple approaches to corresponding lessons and jumpstart activity while serving as developmental models. Experiencing Music Composition: Grades 3-5 offers new ways to promote not only creative intuition in children but also independent thought, preparing students for a fulfilling relationship with music.

More than 400 books have been published on the American musical icon, Elvis Presley. This critical, annotated guide contains reviews of the varied literature on Elvis, from his career and its social and political aspects to biographies and discographies. The annotated literature not only includes works by family, friends, and musical peers but also references and guides to Elvis collectibles. Each entry details, in addition to pertinent publishing and author information, the specific perspectives and information unique to the literature. The author provides assessments made by Elvis' peers and an introductory essay discusses the surrounding contradictions and the enduring fascination with Elvis.

By covering the vast and different Elvis literature available, this guide will appeal to scholars and fans alike. Organized by type of literature, the guide is easy to reference. Informative addenda include a guide to collecting Elvis books and a chronological listing of Elvis books. In addition to a general index, the guide is indexed by author, by songs, films, and album titles, and by books, magazines, and publications. This compilation offers valuable assistance and critical information to anyone researching some aspect of Elvis and his career.

The success of the Hip-Hop album The Calling (2003) by the Hilltop Hoods was a major event on the timeline of Hip-Hop in Australia. It launched a formerly ‘underground’ scene into the spotlight, radically transforming the group members’ lives and creating new opportunities for other Hip-Hop artists. This book analyses the impact of the album by drawing on original interviews with fifteen Hip-Hop practitioners from across Australia, including artists who contributed to the album. These primary interviews are interwoven with material from media sources and close readings of song lyrics and album imagery. An exploration of the early histories of Hip-Hop in Australia with a focus on the formation of Obese Records and the Hilltop Hoods’ biography gives way to analysis of specific tracks from the album and the Hoods’ prowess as live performers. The book uses The Calling as a lens to examine the beliefs and practices of Hip-Hop enthusiasts in Australia, including changes since the album was released. Published in 2023 to coincide with the album’s twenty-year anniversary, the book is an engaging evaluation of a musical release that was so significant that people now use it explain two distinct periods in Australian Hip-Hop (pre or post The Calling).

Prince, Pink Floyd, Metallica, Toto, James Taylor, Keith Richards—these stars and thousands of others all owe a debt of gratitude to Rob Turner who revolutionized the electric guitar and bass. Chasing Tone tells Rob Turner’s story from humble beginnings rewiring his father’s transistor radio components to founding EMG and, finally, to the world’s largest concert stages. Jim Reilly provides a wealth of fascinating insights by weaving together many exclusive interviews with top artists and colleagues, including James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, and Robert Trujillo of Metallica; legendary session musician Leland Sklar; Vernon Reid of Living Colour; Victor Wooten; Béla Fleck; Nili Brosh; Jim Root of Slipknot; and guitar builders Mike McGuire and John Carruthers. Along the way, Reilly not only sheds light on the history of the electric guitar and bass and how EMG pickups forever altered their course but also explores the elusive relationship between builder and creator, showing how these artists found their sound. This book takes a deep dive into the creative process while providing a history of popular music told from a side of the stage previously underexplored.

This book introduces every important aspect of the Elizabethan music world. In ten scrupulously researched yet accessible chapters, Lord examines the lives of composers, the evolution of musical instruments, the Elizabethan system of musical notation, and the many textures and traditions of Elizabethan music. Biographical entries introduce the most significant and prolific composers as well as the members of royal society who influenced Elizabethan musical culture. Both familiar and obscure instruments of the era are described with focus on their musical and social contexts. Various types of music are defined and illustrated, along with an explanation of the musical notation used during this era. Chapter bibliographies, glossaries, and an index provide additional tools for both the novice and the experienced student of music and music history. When Elizabeth ascended to the throne in 1558, England was undergoing tremendous upheaval. Power struggles between Protestants and Catholics shaped the English music world as musicians' livelihoods were directly linked to their religious allegiances. Music became a form of strategy within court politics, and secular music evolved through the musical and poetic influences of the Italian Renaissance. Events of the day were told and retold through music, class and social differences were sung with relish, and rituals of love and life were set to story and song. When England defeated the vaunted Spanish Armada in 1588, a victorious nation expressed its jubilance through music.