"...the holy grail of information on Big Star and the late Chris Bell. An oral history spanning 400 pages, There Was A Light is exhaustive in its detail and entrancing in its storytelling." -Under the Radar Available for the first time as a traditional paperback, this revised and updated edition contains new and archival interviews with those closest to Chris Bell and the Big Star circle: their friends, family, former bandmates-even fans, exes, classmates, and coworkers. "Bell's and Big Star's existence was short, but the wealth of stories and quotes here provides a healthy sustenance for the truth seekers. A top-notch biography." -San Francisco Book Review The varied cast of voices-many from the band's hometown of Memphis-comprises all the members of Big Star, including Chris Bell, the iconic Alex Chilton, Andy Hummel, and Jody Stephens. In the following decades after its 1975 breakup, the obscure group somehow reached and inspired some of rock's most important bands, including R.E.M., the Replacements, Yo La Tengo, Teenage Fanclub, Beck, and Wilco. With Chris Bell at the center of the Big Star universe, this book carefully reveals the production of the band's masterful 1972 debut LP, #1 Record, for Ardent/Stax Records. Despite stellar reviews, the record suffered abysmal sales. Soon after, toxic personality conflicts and turmoil tore the band apart while Bell battled drug abuse and depression. There Was A Light then delves into Big Star's second and third albums, while recounting Bell's second act as a struggling solo musician and born-again Christian. During several trips to Europe, he produced ambitious recordings and pitched himself to record labels-even crossing paths with Paul McCartney. From this fertile era arose Bell's lone solo album, the posthumously released I Am the Cosmos-his swan song and masterpiece. There Was A Light details the pop culture phenomenon that made Big Star legendary and divulges how its staunch fanbase saved the band from obscurity. "... an encyclopedic compendium...illuminating Bell's life from a thousand angles." -Memphis Flyer

The birth of folk rock comes to life in Wounds to Bind: A Memoir of the Folk Rock Revolution, Jerry Burgan s unforgettable memoir of the pre-psychedelic 1960s. As a naive folksinger from Pomona, California, Burgan would find himself thrust in his teenage years to the forefront of the counterculture and its aftermath. The Rolling Stones, The Byrds, Bo Diddley, Otis Redding, The Righteous Brothers, The Ohio Players, Paul Revere & The Raiders, Herman s Hermits, Judy Henske, Barry McGuire, and the Kingston Trio all make appearances in this tale told by the cofounder of We Five, the San Francisco electro-folk ensemble that soared to the top of the charts with its recording of the million-selling "You Were On My Mind." In the vanguard of what came to be known as folk rock, Burgan and his lifelong friend Mike Stewart embarked on a road they thought well paved by the latter s older brother and Kingston Trio member, John Stewart. Little did Burgan realize that they would join the rest of their generation in an ecstatic, sometimes tortured journey of invention and disillusion. With a foreword by Canadian folk legend Sylvia Tyson, 24 pages of period photos, and index. Wounds to Bind will reward not only folk revival fans and aficionados of the counterculture music scene, but anyone who came of age musically between 1950 and 1975. Burgan s story bears witness to an eclectic and hopeful convergence in American history that missing link between the folk and rock eras when Bob Dylan and Sammy Davis, Jr., were played on the same radio station in the same hour. Chronicling the human realignments, triumphs and tragedies that followed, Burgan tracks down the demons that drove the genius of We Five cofounder Mike Stewart and sheds light on the forty-year enigma of what became of We Five's reclusive lead singer, Beverly Bivens, who anticipated Grace Slick, Linda Ronstadt and Stevie Nicks."

Argentine Queer Tango: Dance and Sexuality Politics in Buenos Aires investigates changes in tango dancing in Buenos Aires during the first decade of the twenty-first century and its relationship to contemporary social and cultural transformations. Mercedes Liska focuses on one of the proposed alternatives to conventional tango, queer tango, which proposes to rethink one of the alleged icons of a national culture from a feminist conception and to imagine social transformation processes from bodily experiences. Specifically, this book analyzes the value of bodily experiences, the redefinition of the mind-body relationship, and the transformation in the dynamics of the dance from the heteronormative movements of tango. In doing so, Liska addresses the ways in which bodily techniques and gender theories are involved in the denaturing and corporeality decoding of tango and its historical senses as well as the connections between different tango dance practices spread throughout the world.

In this book, native popular musicologists focus on their own popular music cultures from Germany, Austria and Switzerland for the first time: from subcultural to mainstream phenomena; from the 1950s to contemporary acts. Starting with an introduction and two chapters on the histories of German popular music and its study, the volume then concentrates on focused, detailed and yet concise close readings from different perspectives (including particular historical East and West German perspectives), mostly focusing on the music and its protagonists. Moreover, these analyses deal with very original specific genres such as Schlager and Krautrock as well as transcultural genres such as Punk or Hip Hop. There are additional chapters on characteristically German developments within music media, journalism and the music industry. The book will contribute to a better understanding of German, Austrian and Swiss popular music, and will interconnect international and especially Anglo-American studies with German approaches. The book, as a consequence, will show close connections between global and local popular music cultures and diverse traditions of study.

'[An] astute reckoning with modern celebrity' - The Times 'A wild read' - The Guardian 'A well-researched, measured account' - The Sun Part biography, part social history, Being Britney pieces together a collage of stories, interviews, legends and fan experiences to construct a definitive portrait of one of the biggest stars in recent history. In her unique narrative, acclaimed music author Jennifer Otter Bickerdike provides a sympathetic yet objective re-examination of Britney's trajectory from girl next door to woman trapped by fame. Being Britney is the compelling account of a talented, troubled and talked-about modern icon, whose life, work and individual significance will be recognised for many decades to come. 'After years of being framed as a victim, Britney deserves to be celebrated as the fighter, inspiration and enigma she truly is.' - Jennifer Otter Bickerdike

An updated edition of this bestselling biography that features details of her second album Born This Way and her subsequent tour as well as the release of her long-awaited third album in spring 2013, ARTPOP. Includes her numerous controversies such as that meat dress, her many collaborations with everyone with Elton John to Cher and Tony Bennett, and her movie acting debut in Machete Kills in early 2013. This is the story of her high-speed rise in the fame game, told with a mix of admiration and sharp journalistic insight. Packed with full-colour photographs complete this portrait of one of the biggest names in modern music.

This book is a celebration and explication of the body in the world and the ways that our body situates our consciousness as a lived formation, one which is oriented by the experience of music listening. The book examines the relationship between bodies, technics, and music, using the theoretical tools of somatechnics. Somatechnics calls for a recognition of the body in the world as an artefact wrapped up, entangled and produced by the materialities of that world. It traverses discussions on materiality, live music, touchscreen media, the personal computer, and new modes of listening such as virtual reality technologies. Finally, the book looks at music itself as a kind of technology that generates new modes of bodily being.

Allan Jones launched Uncut magazine in 1997 and for 15 years wrote a popular monthly column called Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before, based on his experiences as a music journalist in the 70s and 80s, a gilded time for the music press.

By turns hilarious, cautionary, poignant and powerful, the Stop Me...stories collected here include encounters with some of rock's most iconic stars, including David Bowie, Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Elvis Costello, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Smiths, R.E.M. and Pearl Jam. From backstage brawls and drug blow-outs, to riots, superstar punch-ups, hotel room confessionals and tour bus lunacy, these are stories from the madness of a music scene now long gone.

In this book, Julian Hellaby presents a detailed study of English piano playing and career management as it was in the middle years of the twentieth century. Making regular comparisons with early twenty-first-century practice, the author examines career-launching mechanisms, such as auditions and competitions, and investigates available means of career sustenance, including artist management, publicity outlets, recital and concerto work, broadcasts, recordings and media reviews. Additionally, Hellaby considers whether a mid-twentieth-century school of English piano playing may be identified and, if so, whether it has lasted into the early decades of the twenty-first century. The author concludes with an appraisal of the state of English pianism in recent years and raises questions about its future. Drawing on extensive research from a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, this book is structured around case-studies of six pianists who were commencing and then developing their careers between approximately 1935 and 1970. The professional lives and playing styles of Malcolm Binns, Peter Katin, Moura Lympany, Denis Matthews, Valerie Tryon and David Wilde are examined, and telling comparisons are made between the state of affairs then and that of more recent times. Engagingly written, the book is likely to appeal to professional and amateur pianists, piano teachers, undergraduate and postgraduate music students, academics and anyone with an interest in the history of pianists, piano performance and music performance history in general.

The outdoor music festival market has developed and commercialised significantly since the mid-1990s, and is now a mainstream part of the British summertime leisure experience. The overall number of outdoor music festivals staged in the UK doubled between 2005 and 2011 to reach a peak of over 500 events. UK Music (2016) estimates that the sector attracts over 3.7 million attendances each year, and that music tourism as a whole sustains nearly 40,000 full-time jobs. Music Festivals in the UK is the first extended investigation into this commercialised rock and pop festival sector, and examines events of all sizes: from mega-events such as Glastonbury Festival, V Festival and the Reading and Leeds Festivals to 'boutique' events with maximum attendances as small as 250. In the past, research into festivals has typically focused either on their carnivalesque heritage or on developing managerial tools for the field of Events Management. Anderton moves beyond such perspectives to propose new ways of understanding and theorising the cultural, social and geographic importance of outdoor music festivals. He argues that changes in the sector since the mid-1990s, such as professionalisation, corporatisation, mediatisation, regulatory control, and sponsorship/branding, should not necessarily be regarded as a process of transgressive 'alternative culture' being co-opted by commercial concerns; instead, such changes represent a reconfiguration of the sector in line with changes in society, and a broadening of the forms and meanings that may be associated with outdoor music events.

The year 2019 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of Kurt Cobain, an artist whose music, words, and images continue to move millions of fans worldwide. As the first academic study that provides a literary analysis of Cobain's creative writings, Arthur Flannigan Saint-Aubin's The Pleasures of Death: Kurt Cobain's Masochistic and Melancholic Persona approaches the journals and songs crafted by Nirvana's iconic front man from the perspective of cultural theory and psychoanalytic aesthetics. Drawing on critiques and reformulations of psychoanalytic theory by feminist, queer, and antiracist scholars, Saint-Aubin considers the literary means by which Cobain creates the persona of a young, white, heterosexual man who expresses masochistic and melancholic behaviors. On the one hand, this individual welcomes pain and humiliation as atonement for unpardonable sins; on the other, he experiences a profound sense of loss and grief, seeking death as the ultimate act of pleasure. The first-person narrators and characters that populate Cobain's texts underscore the political and aesthetic repercussions of his art. Cobain's distinctive version of grunge, understood as a subculture, a literary genre, and a cultural practice, represents a specific performance of race and gender, one that facilitates an understanding of the self as part of a larger social order. Saint-Aubin approaches Cobain's writings independently of the artist's biography, positioning these texts within the tradition of postmodern representations of masculinity in twentieth-century American fiction, while also suggesting connections to European Romantic traditions from the nineteenth century that postulate a relation between melancholy (or depression) and creativity. In turn, through Saint-Aubin's elegant analysis, Cobain's creative writings illuminate contradictions and inconsistencies within psychoanalytic theory itself concerning the intersection of masculinity, masochism, melancholy, and the death drive. By foregrounding Cobain's ability to challenge coextensive links between gender, sexuality, and race, The Pleasures of Death reveals how the cultural politics and aesthetics of this tragic icon's works align with feminist strategies, invite queer readings, and perform antiracist critiques of American culture.

The first, and only, inside story of one of the greatest bands in rock history--Dire Straits--as told by founding member and bassist John Illsley One of the most successful music acts of all time, Dire Straits filled stadiums around the world. Their albums sold hundreds of millions of copies and their music--classics like "Sultans of Swing," "Romeo and Juliet," "Money for Nothing," and "Brothers in Arms"--is still played on every continent today. There was, quite simply, no bigger band on the planet throughout the eighties. In this powerful and entertaining memoir, founding member John Illsley gives the inside track on the most successful rock band of their time. From playing gigs in the spit-and-sawdust pubs of south London, to hanging out with Bob Dylan in LA, Illsley tells the story of the band with searching honesty, soulful reflection, and wry humor. Starting with his own unlikely beginnings in Middle England, he recounts the band's rise from humble origins to the best-known venues in the world, the working man's clubs to Madison Square Garden, sharing gigs with wild punk bands to rocking the Live Aid stage at Wembley. And woven throughout is an intimate portrait and tribute to his great friend Mark Knopfler, the band's lead singer, songwriter, and remarkable guitarist. Tracing an idea that created a phenomenal musical legacy, an extraordinary journey of joy and pain, companionship and surprises, this is John Illsley's life in Dire Straits.

In 1986, when Bon Jovi's third studio album, Slippery When Wet, was released, America had found its next superband. In Bon Jovi: America's Ultimate Band, Margaret Olson chronicles the history and music of the band from its inception to present day. She closely examines Bon Jovi's musical and social relevance to listeners past and present, exploring the remarkable ways the band has emerged as the expression and product of deep cultural needs and how, within a few years of commercial success, it has made a lasting impact on Generation X, the music business, and American culture. Through opportunities offered by cable television (particularly MTV), Hollywood, and corporate brands, Bon Jovi has been able to influence not only the music, film, and television industries but also the worlds of fashion, musical theater, art, philanthropy, and politics. Like any megaband, its members have struggled with addiction, the demands of fame, and a lack of critical respect. They have persevered, however, to become one of the United States' world's best-selling touring bands. Bon Jovi is a testament to the way modern culture and entertainment can become intertwined, and its success underscores the length of the band's career, the professionalism of its management, the recognition of what audiences want, and the unique way the music-more than anything else-both reflects and shapes the social and musical American landscape it inhabits. Titles in the Tempo series are ideal introductions to major pop and rock artists, the music they produce, and their cultural and musical impact on society. Bon Jovi: America's Ultimate Band should interest fans, students, and scholars alike.

This work illuminates, identifies, and characterizes the influences and expressions of Bob Dylan's Political World throughout his life and career. An approach nearly as unique as the singer himself, the authors attempt to remove Dylan from the typical Left/Right paradigm and place him into a broader and deeper context.

In the 1960s rock 'n' roll music began crossing the Atlantic Ocean--with The Beatles and The Who leading the British Invasion of the United States--and the Pacific Ocean, as American and European rock slowly began to take hold in Japan. This insightful study from visionary rock musician Julian Cope explores what really happened when Western music met Eastern shores. The clash between traditional Japanese values and the wild renegades of 1960s and 1970s rock 'n' roll is examined, and the seminal artists in Japanese post-World War II culture are all covered. From itinerate art-house poets to violent refusenik bands with penchants for plane hijacking, this is the story of the Japanese youths and musicians who simultaneously revolutionized a musical genre and the culture of a nation.

Following their first tour to Japan in 1966, the Beatles would become an important part of Japan's postwar cultural development and its deepening relationship with the West. By the 1960s Japan's dramatic rise in prosperity and the self-confidence of the country's 'economic miracle' period were yet to come; it was not, at this stage, considered a fully-fledged partner of the West. All these potential developments were consolidating around the time of the 1966 tour. The Beatles' concerts in Tokyo contributed to the construction of a new Japanese national identity and introduced Japan as a new potential market to UK and US music producers, broadening the country's transnational cultural links. This book explores the Beatles' engagement with Japan within the larger context of the country's increased global connection and large-scale economic, social and cultural change. It describes the great impact of the Beatles' contentious 1966 tour, which took place amid public displays of both euphoric 'Beatlemania' and angry protests, and discusses the lasting impression of this tour on Japanese culture and identity to the present day. The Beatles' relationship with Japan did not end after their departure; this book also examines the Beatles' subsequent contacts with Japan, including John Lennon's marriage and artistic partnership with Yoko Ono, and Paul McCartney's later Japanese tours and the warm reception the ex Beatles and their musical legacy have received over the years.

An updated edition of the bestselling biography to include details of her sixth studio album The Truth About Love which was a worldwide number one hit and the birth of her first child in 2011. Paul Lester traces the extraordinary career of Alicia Beth Moore from Pennsylvania through her stint in the girl group Choice to her present incarnation as global superstar Pink. Split Personality reveals the two sides of this complex artist: the feisty fun-filled performer who at thirty continues to conquer in a teen-dominated industry and the conflicted woman whose dark urges have fuelled her deceptively upbeat glossy brand of hi-tech pop. This is a pop biography that makes for a truly exciting read that's worthy of it's electrifying subject!

This book examines do-it-yourself (DIY) approaches to the collection, preservation, and display of popular music heritage being undertaken by volunteers in community archives, museums and halls of fame globally. DIY institutions of popular music heritage are much more than 'unofficial' versions of 'official' institutions; rather, they invoke a complex network of affect and sociality, and are sites where interested people - often enthusiasts - are able to assemble around shared goals related to the preservation of and ownership over the material histories of popular music culture. Drawing on interviews and observations with founders, volunteers and heritage workers in 23 DIY institutions in Australasia, Europe and North America, the book highlights the potentialities of bottom-up, community-based interventions into the archiving and preservation of popular music's material history. It reveals the kinds of collections being housed in these archives, how they are managed and maintained, and explores their relationship to mainstream heritage institutions. The study also considers the cultural labor of volunteers in the DIY institution, arguing that while these are places concerned with heritage management and the preservation of artefacts, they are also extensions of musical communities in the present in which activities around popular music preservation have personal, cultural, community and heritage benefits. By looking at volunteers' everyday interventions in the archiving and curating of popular music's material past, the book highlights how DIY institutions build upon national heritage strategies at the community level and have the capacity to contribute to the democratization of popular music heritage. This book will have a broad appeal to a range of scholars in the fields of popular music studies, musicology, ethnomusicology, archive studies and archival science, museum studies, critical heritage studies, cultural studies, cultural sociology and media studies.

Along with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones were the key group of the sixties; headline makers, style icons, trend setters - but most of all the force behind a string of brilliant singles and albums that have come to define the era. If The Cavern in Liverpool was the birthplace of the Mersey beat, then the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, where the Stones played their first gigs, was at the heart of British rhythm and blues. Formed in 1962 this tells their incredible story including profiles of the past and present members Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, and Ronnie Wood, together with Brian Jones, Bill Wyman, and Mick Taylor.

Originally published in 1973. Folk-life and folk-culture, usually the preserve of the scholar, have been brought vividly and entertainingly to life in these recollections and stories of one man's life in the Irish countryside. This book tells the life story of John Maguire, who died in 1975, including over 50 of the songs he sang, with full musical transcriptions. He was a fine singer, firmly within the Irish tradition, and his songs are the record of a people, their history and traditions, their joys and sufferings, their comedies and tragedies. John Maguire's fascinating story, skilfully and unobtrusively collated by Robin Morton, is full of material that will interest singers and students of folksongs. His songs and music will be of value to all those interested in traditional music and song.

This is the first history of the harp in Scotland to be published. It sets out to trace the development of the instrument from its earliest appearance on the Pictish stones of the 8th century, to the present day. Describing the different harps played in the Highlands and the Lowlands of Scotland, the authors examine the literary and physical evidence for their use within the Royal Courts and "big houses" by professional harpers and aristocratic amateurs. They vividly follow the decline of the wire-strung clarsach from its links with the hereditary bards of the Highland chieftains to its disappearance in the 18th century, and the subsequent attempts at the revival of the small harp during the 19th and 20th centuries. The music played on the harp, and its links with the great families of Scotland are described. The authors present, in this book, material which has never before been brought to light, from unpublished documents, family papers and original manuscripts. They also make suggestions, based on their research, about the development and dissemination of the early Celtic harps and their music. This book, therefore, should be of great interest, not only to harp players but to historians, to all musicians in the fields of traditional and early music, and to any reader who recognises the importance of these beautiful instruments, and their music, throughout a thousand years of Scottish culture.

ABBA blasted their way onto the global pop scene with a Eurovision Song Contest win in 1974. The song, 'Waterloo', the band's tenth single, was a top 10 hit around the world and spurred them on to enormous chart success with singles, then albums, then compilations selling in the millions. They truly conquered the world, recording, touring, performing and entertaining huge crowds everywhere they went, but after less than a decade, the dream was fading and they went their separate ways, seemingly never to record together again. The superstardom was over, but their music continued to be popular and in every decade that passed the question was asked: will ABBA ever re-form? The answer was always no - they even allegedly turned down a billion-dollar tour - until the late 2010s, when rumours and announcements abounded and finally, to enormous global fanfare, the band revealed that a new 10-track album would be released in November 2021, and a virtual avatar tour would take place in from May 2022; fans went wild. The Little Guide to ABBA celebrates everything the super Scandinavian pop group represents: brilliant pop music, 70s style, influence on hundreds of subsequent acts and an enduring legacy. SAMPLE QUOTE: 'I had a dream, and it was fulfilled by meeting with Benny, Bjorn and Agnetha.' - Anni-Frid Lyngstad SAMPLE FACT: ABBA Gold is the #2 bestselling album of all time.

The approach of this book, first published in 1982, is multi-disciplinary. Popular music, it is argued, is not only a musical but also a social phenomenon; the criteria needed to assess it are different from those used in the appreciation of 'classical' music. The first section of this guide is devoted to setting out just what those criteria should be. A second section puts forward bases for course construction that are detailed and flexible. A final section provides a list of further resources.

In this lively examination of youth and their relationship to music, first published in 1994, contributors cover issues ranging from the place of music in urban subculture and what music tells us about adolescent views on love and sex, to the political status of youth and youth culture.