"The only available in-depth reference guide' to American popular music, this should be joyously welcomed by all students of the field. . . . Highly recommended for most reference collections." Library Journal

Finally A hip, fun and culturally relevant series of music appreciation books, perfect for modern music-loving families who want to take advantage of this era of exploding musical access Get a personal guided tour through an amazing historical back-catalog of music that was previously unavailable. "Music Lab: We Rock "" A Fun Family Guide for Exploring Rock Music History" is a guided tour through thrilling corners of the musical universe that should not be missed This book highlights great songs in rock history, shares insights and stories on the artists, details the social and historical influences at play, and offers fun activities for families to do together. Detailed listening guides help music fans understand song structure, lyrics, and instrumentation. Related listening lists introduce readers to other exciting artists in similar genres. Set into 52 "music labs," these stories can be explored at will by individuals and families or used as a curriculum for community groups and educators. There really are no other books out there like thisa that are music appreciation books for a general audience that focus on popular musica so pick up yours today and soon have your whole family singing "We Rock." Upcoming volumes on Blues & Jazz and DJs, Dance, and Electronica are forthcoming."

American composer George Gershwin, an icon of the American Jazz Age, indelibly marked 20th-century music, with many of his works becoming standards in the popular and jazz music repertory, not to mention his world-famous classical works such as Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and Porgy and Bess (1935). This major bibliography includes a brief biography, which examines Gershwin's influence and situates him within the cultural context of his time, a complete cross-reference list of all his compositions, a discography of more than 1,150 items, and a descriptive filmography. The extensive bibliography includes writings by both George and his brother Ira, and more than 2,100 entries about George's compositions.

As an exhaustive research tool, this up-to-date bibliographic reference compiles information on George Gershwin from numerous, disparate sources and should appeal to music and theater scholars, cultural historians, and Gershwin enthusiasts alike. The work is divided among seven sections that cross-reference one another. A separate appendix lists itineraries for the Paul Whiteman tours of 1924-1925, and the Leo Reisman tour of 1934, at which Gershwin's music figured prominently, and a comprehensive index completes the volume.

Prior to new editions of legendary Man musician Deke Leonard's previous books Rhinos, Winos & Lunatics and Maybe I Should've Stayed in Bed? planned for 2020, we are happy to bring back his 3rd and 4th books in their original editions. This volume picks up his epic journey in 1977. Prog-rock giants Man have imploded and Deke is fighting to resurrect his solo career. Follow his titanic struggle as he stalks the mean streets of LA, searching for the seedy underbelly of the American Dream. Thrill to his ruthless gang warfare with London's criminal underworld and rejoices he makes Smokey Robinson laugh and Phil Lynott cringe before painting the town red with Tina Turner. The inevitable reunion with Man sees the Welsh rock outfit criss-crossing Europe as hey battle to reclaim their status as one of the world's leading acid rock bands. While on tour, Deke gives guitar lessons to Alvin Lee, crosses swords with Wishbone Ash and lectures Eric Burdon on stagecraft - tales told in Deke's inimitable style with his customary dry wit.

'It's a hip-hop bible' Ghostface Killah, Wutang Clan In Hip Hop Raised Me. (R) , DJ Semtex examines the crucial role of hip-hop in society today, and reflects on the huge influence it has had on his own life, and the lives of many others, filling in the gaps of education that school left behind, providing inspiration and purpose to generation after generation of disaffected youths. Taking a thematic approach and featuring seminal interviews he has conducted with key hip-hop artists, Semtex traces the characteristics and influence of hip-hop from its origins in the early 1970s with DJ Kool Herc's Block parties in the South Bronx, through its breakthrough to the mainstream and advent of gangsta rap in the late 1980s, with artists such as Run DMC, Public Enemy and Ice T, to the impact of contemporary artists and the global industry that is hip-hop today. Hip-hop artists have gone from hustlers to successful entrepreneurs and businessmen. Hip-hop has come of age.

The field of popular music production is overwhelmingly male dominated. Here, Paula Wolfe discusses gendered notions of creativity and examines the significant under-representation of women in studio production. Wolfe brings an invaluable perspective as both a working artist-producer and as a scholar, thereby offering a new body of research based on interviews and first-hand observation. Wolfe demonstrates that patriarchal frameworks continue to form the backbone of the music industry establishment but that women's work in the creation and control of sound presents a potent challenge to gender stereotyping, marginalisation and containment of women's achievements that is still in evidence in music marketing practices and media representation in the digital era.

Interaction, Improvisation, and Interplay in Jazz Performance offers a new and exciting way to listen to and understand jazz. When describing a performance, most jazz writers focus on the improvised lines of the soloist and their underlying harmonic progressions. This approach overlooks the basic fact that when you listen to jazz, you almost never hear a single line, but rather a musical fabric woven by several musicians in real time. While it is often pragmatic to single out an individual solo line, it is important to remember that an improvised solo is but one thread in that fabric; and it is a thread supported by, responded to, and responsive of the parts being played by the other musicians in the group.

Interaction, Improvisation, and Interplay in Jazz Performance explores the process of player interaction in jazz, and the role this interaction plays in creating improvised music, including:

• jazz improvisation through theory and analysis
• musical roles, behaviours and relationships
• harmony, interaction and performance

Interaction, Improvisation, and Interplay in Jazz Performance will appeal to students of jazz history, composition, and performance, as well as to the general jazz audience.

The playback of recordings is the primary means of experiencing music in contemporary society, and in recent years 'classical' musicologists and popular music theorists have begun to examine the ways in which the production of recordings affects not just the sound of the final product but also musical aesthetics more generally. Record production can, indeed, be treated as part of the creative process of composition. At the same time, training in the use of these forms of technology has moved from an apprentice-based system into university education. Musical education and music research are thus intersecting to produce a new academic field: the history and analysis of the production of recorded music. This book is designed as a general introductory reader, a text book for undergraduate degree courses studying the creative processes involved in the production of recorded music. The aim is to introduce students to the variety of approaches and methodologies that are currently being employed by scholars in this field. The book is divided into three sections covering historical approaches, theoretical approaches and case studies and practice. There are also three interludes of commentary on the academic contributions from leading record producers and other industry professionals. This collection gives students and scholars a broad overview of the way in which academics from the analytical and practice-based areas of the university system can be brought together with industry professionals to explore the ways in which this new academic field should progress.

This book examines the birth of punk in the UK and its transformation, within a short period of time, into post-punk. Deploying innovative concepts of 'critical mass', 'social networks' and 'music worlds', and using sophisticated techniques of 'social network analysis', it teases out the events and mechanisms involved in punk's 'micro-mobilisation', its diffusion across the UK and its transformation in certain city-based strongholds into a variety of interlocking post-punk forms. Nick Crossley offers a detailed review of prior work in this area, a rich exploration of new empirical data and a highly innovative and robust approach to the study of 'music worlds'. Written in an accessible style, this book is essential reading for anybody with an interest in either UK punk and post-punk or the impact of social networks on cultural life and the potential of social network analysis to explore this impact. -- .

When singer Amy Winehouse was found dead at her London home in 2011, the press inducted her into what Kurt Cobain's mother named the 27 Club. Now he's gone and joined that stupid club, she said in 1994, after being told that her son, the front man of Nirvana, had committed suicide. I told him not to... Kurt's mom was referring to the extraordinary roll call of stars who died at the same young age, including Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison of the Doors. All were talented. All were dissipated. All were 27. In this haunting book, author Howard Sounes conducts the definitive forensic investigation into the lives and deaths of the six most iconic members of the Club, as well as some lesser known members, to discover what, apart from coincidence, this phenomenon signifies. In a grimly fascinating journey through the dark side of the music business, Sounes uncovers a common story of excess, madness, and self-destruction. The fantasies, half-truths, and mythologies that have become associated with the Club are debunked. Instead, a clear and compelling narrative emerges, one based on hard facts, that unites these lost souls in both life and death.

Today, country music enjoys a national fan base that transcends both economic and social boundaries. Sixty years ago, however, it was primarily the music of rural, working-class whites living in the South and was perceived by many Americans as hillbilly music. In Smile When You Call Me a Hillbilly, Jeffrey J. Lange examines the 1940s and early 1950s as the most crucial period in country music s transformation from a rural, southern folk art form to a national phenomenon. In his meticulous analysis of changing performance styles and alterations in the lifestyles of listeners, Lange illuminates the acculturation of country music and its audience into the American mainstream. Dividing country music into six subgenres (progressive country, western swing, postwar traditional, honky-tonk, country pop, and country blues), Lange discusses the music s expanding appeal. As he analyzes the recordings and comments of each of the subgenre s most significant artists, including Roy Acuff, Bob Wills, Bill Monroe, Hank Williams, and Red Foley, he traces the many paths the musical form took on its road to respectability. Lange shows how along the way the music and its audience became more sophisticated, how the subgenres blended with one another and with American popular music, and how Nashville emerged as the country music hub. By 1954, the transformation from hillbilly music to country music was complete, precipitated by the modernizing forces of World War II and realized by the efforts of promoters, producers, and performers.

The astonishing run of albums unleashed upon an unsuspecting public within the span of five years created the legend of Alice Cooper that lives on to this day. But we're talking about the original Alice Cooper group here, a band called that with a lead singer also going by that name. In other words, the legend was built by Vincent "Alice Cooper" Furnier, Michael Bruce, Glen Buxton, Dennis Dunaway and "platinum god" Neal Smith. It is all of them working together - along with producer Bob Ezrin - that created the mystique of songs like "I'm Eighteen," "Is It My Body," "Desperado," "Under My Wheels," "Be My Lover," "Elected" and "No More Mr. Nice Guy." And it is all of them working together - along with crack management in Shep Gordon and Joe Greenberg-that created the shock rock buzz that kept the newspapers full of indignation about this band set out to destroy human civilization. Easy Action: The Original Alice Cooper Group tells the story in meticulous chronological detail, from the band's early days in Phoenix as The Spiders, through being broke on the Sunset Strip, followed by a career-reviving relocation to a notorious party house on the outskirts of Pontiac, Michigan. Corroborating the improbable sequence of events is a plethora of stories from the band themselves, who explain how the original Alice Cooper group went from politely ignored pariahs in Los Angeles to international Public Enemies No. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Listen to the guys and their good-natured explanations behind the mayhem, and it soon becomes apparent that the ghoulish makeup around the singer's eyes and the boa constrictor around his neck - not to mention the head-choppings, the hangings and the hard rock - were all served up in good fun. Now it's time for you, dear reader, to join in the fun and see why Alice Cooper was, for a golden moment in time fully 50 years ago now, the most feared and revered act in all of rock 'n' roll.

- Long considered the last word on Hank Williams, this biography has remained continuously in print since its first publication in 1994.- This new edition has been completely updated and includes many previously unpublished photographs, as well as a complete catalog detailing all the songs Hank Williams ever wrote, even those he never recorded.- Colin Escott is codirector and cowriter of the forth-coming two-hour PBS/BBC television documentary on Hank Williams, set to broadcast in spring 2004, and coauthor of "Hank Williams: Snapshots from the Lost Highway.- HANK WILLIAMS was the third-prize winner of the prestigious Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award.

One of the pioneers of popular music studies, Richard Middleton has made an important contribution not only to this particular field but also to the critical and cultural theory of music more generally. Sixteen of his essays, dating from the late 1970s to the present day, have been selected for this collection, most of them previously published but some of which are new. The musical topics vary widely, from Mozart and Gershwin to rock and rap, from music hall to blues and jazz, from Elvis Presley and John Lennon to Patti Smith and Mariah Carey. But throughout, the author is concerned to locate appropriate ways of understanding 'the popular', and suggests that this task is crucial to any critical musicology worth the name. In a substantial introduction, he places his own intellectual development in the context of the development of the discipline, offering his latest thoughts on the past, present and future of critical musicology and its place in the critique of modernity. The overall theme, 'musical belongings', is revealed as a key not only to the relationship between music and the politics of possession, but also, by extension, to the investments made by musicology, critical and other, in those politics.

"Duxbury attempts to document the connections between the rock and classical music genres by listing recorded examples of rock instrumentals and songs that borrow from the classics, and orchestral versions of songs originally composed and/or recorded by rock musicians. . . . There are appendices of selective' lists: big-band versions of the classics, etc. The general index includes the names of classical composers, rock groups and artists, orchestras, choruses, conductors, producers, and song titles. . . . The selective nature of the work might make it less appropriate for scholars, but it will interest and amuse fans and general readers. Recommended for collections specializing in popular music." Choice

In 1980, Led Zeppelin formally disbanded following the death of drummer John Bonham. Yet over three decade, the music, the mystique, and the legacy of this legendary rock act lives on. Reissues of their music sell in the millions, while rumors of reunion tours continue to electrify fans across the globe. The various solo projects pursued by the three surviving members-Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, and John Paul Jones-will forever live the shadow of the blinding light they generated as Led Zeppelin. In Experiencing Led Zeppelin: A Listener's Companion, musician and writer Gregg Akkerman looks behind the curtain of "rock gods" sensationalism at this performing act's musical legacy through their studio and live recordings. Drawing on his many years as a rock musician and music scholar, Akkerman peeks under the hood to explain not just the when and the where of Led Zeppelin's music, but the why. Putting readers right there, in the times and places where the band was recording and performing its iconic numbers, Akkerman is the voice whispering in the ear of anyone interested in understanding how Led Zeppelin's music works. Experiencing Led Zeppelin: A Listener's Companion is for the die-hard Led Zeppelin fan and the first-timer just discovering the brilliance of this super band.

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.

ONE OF BILLBOARD'S "100 GREATEST MUSIC BOOKS OF ALL TIME" The provocative transgender advocate and lead singer of the punk rock band Against Me! provides a searing account of her search for identity and her true self. It began in a bedroom in Naples, Florida, when a misbehaving punk teenager named Tom Gabel, armed with nothing but an acoustic guitar and a headful of anarchist politics, landed on a riff. Gabel formed Against Me! and rocketed the band from its scrappy beginnings-banging on a drum kit made of pickle buckets-to a major-label powerhouse that critics have called this generation's The Clash. Since its inception in 1997, Against Me! has been one of punk's most influential modern bands, but also one of its most divisive. With every notch the four-piece climbed in their career, they gained new fans while infuriating their old ones. They suffered legal woes, a revolving door of drummers, and a horde of angry, militant punks who called them "sellouts" and tried to sabotage their shows at every turn. But underneath the public turmoil, something much greater occupied Gabel-a secret kept for 30 years, only acknowledged in the scrawled-out pages of personal journals and hidden in lyrics. Through a troubled childhood, delinquency, and struggles with drugs, Gabel was on a punishing search for identity. Not until May of 2012 did a Rolling Stone profile finally reveal it: Gabel is a transsexual, and would from then on be living as a woman under the name Laura Jane Grace. Tranny is the intimate story of Against Me!'s enigmatic founder, weaving the narrative of the band's history, as well as Grace's, with dozens of never-before-seen entries from the piles of journals Grace kept. More than a typical music memoir about sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll-although it certainly has plenty of that-Tranny is an inside look at one of the most remarkable stories in the history of rock.

George Harrison was one of the most prolific popular music composers of the late 20th century. During his tenure with the Beatles, he caught the wave of 1960s pop culture and began channeling its pervasive influence through his music. Often described as "The Invisible Singer," his solo recordings reveal him to be an elusive, yet essential, element in the Beatles' sound. The discussion of George Harrison's Beatle tracks featured in the text employs a Songscape approach that blends accessible music analysis with an exploration of the virtual space created on the sound recording. This approach is then used to explore Harrison's extensive catalog of solo works, which, due to their varied cultural sources, seem increasingly like early examples of Global Pop. In that sense, the music of George Harrison may ultimately be viewed as an important locus for pan-cultural influence in the 20th century, making this book essential reading for those interested in the history of songwriting and recording as well as the cultural study of popular music.

World Music Pedagogy, Volume VI: School-Community Intersections provides students with a resource for delving into the meaning of "world music" across a broad array of community contexts and develops the multiple meanings of community relative to teaching and learning music of global and local cultures. It clarifies the critical need for teachers to work in tandem with community musicians and artists in order to bridge the unnecessary gulf that often separates school music from the music of the world beyond school and to consider the potential for genuine collaborations across this gulf. The five-layered features of World Music Pedagogy are specifically addressed in various school-community intersections, with attention to the collaboration of teachers with local community artist-musicians and with community musicians-at-a-distance who are available virtually. The authors acknowledge the multiple routes teachers are taking to enable and encourage music learning in community contexts, such as their work in after-school academies, museums and libraries, eldercare centers, places of worship, parks and recreation centers, and other venues in which adults and children gather to learn music, make music, and become convivial through music This volume suggests that the world's musical cultures may be found locally, can be tapped virtually, and are important in considerations of music teaching and learning in schools and community contexts. Authors describe working artists and teachers, scenarios, vignettes, and teaching and learning experiences that happen in communities and that embrace the role of community musicians in schools, all of which will be presented with supporting theoretical frameworks.

In Mavericks of Sound: Conversations with the Artists Who Shaped Indie and Roots Music, music scholar David Ensminger offers a collection of vivid and compelling interviews with legendary roots rock and indie artists who bucked mainstream trends and have remained resilient in the face of enormous shifts in the music world. As the success of the concerts at Austin City Limits have revealed, the fan bases and crowds for indie and roots music often blur and overlap. In Mavericks of Sound, Ensminger brings to light the highways and byways trod by these music icons over the course of their careers and the ways in which their music-making has been affected by, and influenced, the burgeoning indie and roots music movements. Ranging from seminal modern singer-songwriters to rockabilly renegades and indie rockers, Mavericks of Sound features a set of broad, penetrating, and insightful conversations imbued with a sense of musical history and heritage. Ensminger captures firsthand accounts from singer songwriters like Texas Country musician Tom Russell and first wave indie artist and folk rocker Peter Case; rockabilly artists Junior Brown and the Reverend Horton Heat; American indie rock icons such as 11th Dream Day's Janet Bean, Pere Ubu's Dave Thomas, Apples in Stereo's Robert Schneider, and Swans members Michael Gira and Jarboe; English and New Zealand figures such as folk legend Richard Thompson, The Clean's David Kilgour and The Waterboys' Mike Scott; and folk, country and rock legends such as Merle Haggard, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Ralph Stanley, Neko Case, and Yo La Tengo. Mavericks of Sound is the perfect work for contemporary indie, roots, Americana, country, and folk music fans who want to understand the unique artistry and unbound passion behind America's musical innovators that readily broke and remolded rules.

Boy Bands and the Performance of Pop Masculinity provides a history of the boy band from the Beatles to One Direction, placing the modern male pop group within the wider context of twentieth- and twenty-first-century popular music and culture. Offering the first extended look at pop masculinity as exhibited by boy bands, this volume links the evolving expressions of gender and sexuality in the boy band to wider economic and social changes that have resulted in new ways of representing what it is to be a man. The popularity of boy bands is unquestionable, and their contributions to popular music are significant, yet they have attracted relatively little study. This book fills that gap with chapters exploring the challenges of defining the boy band phenomenon, its origins and history from the 1940s to the present, the role of management and marketing, the performance of gender and sexuality, and the nature of fandom and fan agency. Throughout, the author illuminates the ways in which identity politics influence the production and consumption of pop music and shows how the mainstream pop of boy bands can both reinforce and subvert gender and class hierarchies.

The Sound State of Uzbekistan: Popular Music and Politics in the Karimov Era is a pioneering study of the intersection between popular music and state politics in Central Asia. Based on 20 months of fieldwork and archival research in Tashkent, this book explores a remarkable era in Uzbekistan's politics (2001-2016), when the Uzbek government promoted a rather unlikely candidate to the prominent position of state sound: estrada, a genre of popular music and a musical relic of socialism. The political importance it attached to estrada was matched by the establishment of an elaborate bureaucratic apparatus for state oversight. The Sound State of Uzbekistan shows the continuing legacy of Soviet concepts to frame the nexus between music, artists and the state, and explains the extraordinary potency ascribed to estrada. At the same time, it challenges classical readings of transition and also questions common binary models for researching culture in totalitarian or authoritarian states. Proposing to approach lives in music under authoritarianism as a form of normality instead, the author promotes a post-Cold War paradigm in music studies.

In today's culture, popular music is a vital site where ideas about gender and sexuality are imagined and disseminated. Popular Music and the Politics of Hope: Queer and Feminist Interventions explores what that means with a wide-ranging collection of chapters that consider the many ways in which contemporary pop music performances of gender and sexuality are politically engaged and even radical. With analyses rooted in feminist and queer thought, contributors explore music from different genres and locations, including Beyonce's Lemonade, A Tribe Called Red's We Are the Halluci Nation, and celebrations of Vera Lynn's 100th Birthday. At a bleak moment in global politics, this collection focuses on the concept of critical hope: the chapters consider making and consuming popular music as activities that encourage individuals to imagine and work toward a better, more just world. Addressing race, class, aging, disability, and colonialism along with gender and sexuality, the authors articulate the diverse ways popular music can contribute to the collective political projects of queerness and feminism. With voices from senior and emerging scholars, this volume offers a snapshot of today's queer and feminist scholarship on popular music that is an essential read for students and scholars of music and cultural studies.

The only in-depth biographical account of the legendary lead singer of Joy Division, written by his widow. Includes a foreword by Jon Savage and an introduction by Joy Division drummer, Steven Morris. Revered by his peers and idolized by his fans, Ian Curtis left behind a legacy rich in artistic genius. Mesmerizing on stage but introverted and prone to desperate mood swings in his private life, Curtis died by his own hand on 18 May 1980. Touching from a Distance documents how, with a wife, child and impending international fame, Curtis was seduced by the glory of an early grave. Regarded as the essential book on the essential icon of the post-punk era, Touching from a Distance includes a full set of Curtis's lyrics and a discography and gig list.