The term jam band" is used to categorize a type of music that favours improvisation and musicianship over concise riffs, hooks, and traditional songwriting structure. The term also helps define the fiercely dedicated fans of the music as accurately as it does the bands. Much as with the Grateful Dead,the progenitors of the jam band scene,the survival of the scene depends upon a symbiotic relationship with fans. Jam bands nurture a close relationship with their fans, fostered through constant touring and the mutual belief that each performance is a unique, shared event. JAMerica tells the story of the roots, evolution, values, and passion of the jam band scene in the words of those who know it best. Modeling itself on such books as Edie: American Girl by George Plimpton and Jean Stein (an oral history of the life of Edie Sedgewick ) and Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, the book is an oral history of the jam band scene, integrating stories from such bands as the Grateful Dead, Phish, Widespread Panic, Dave Matthews Band, moe., Leftover Salmon, String Cheese Incident, Umphrey's McGee, and dozens more. Interviews focus on the history of individual bands and how they communally shaped the larger jam band community, along with songwriting, relationships with fans, business models, and the importance (including the joys and war stories) of touring, including early gigs and venues (e.g. the Wetlands in New York City and the landmark H.O.R.D.E. Festival) that supported the emergence of the jam band scene.

Electronic dance music was once the utopian frontier of pop culture. But three decades after the acid house 'summer of love', it has gone from subculture to the global mainstream. Does it still have the same power to inspire?

From the pleasure palaces of Ibiza and Las Vegas to 'new frontiers' like Shanghai and Dubai, raving is now a multi-million-dollar business. But there are still hardcore believers upholding its DIY ethos - the techno idealists of Berlin and Detroit and the queer subcults of New York, the post-apartheid party people of South Africa and the outlaw techno travellers of France.

In Rave On, Matthew Collin travels the world to experience these unique scenes first-hand, talk to the key players and hear the story of how dance culture went global - and find out if its maverick spirit can survive its own success.

They say there are no second acts in American lives, and third acts are almost unheard of. That's part of what makes Brian Wilson's story so astonishing. As a cofounding member of the Beach Boys in the 1960s, Wilson created some of the most groundbreaking and timeless popular music ever recorded. With intricate harmonies, symphonic structures, and wide-eyed lyrics that explored life's most transcendent joys and deepest sorrows, songs like In My Room, God Only Knows, and Good Vibrations forever expanded the possibilities of pop songwriting. Derailed in the 1970s by mental illness, drug use, and the shifting fortunes of the band, Wilson came back again and again over the next few decades, surviving and-finally-thriving. Now, for the first time, he weighs in on the sources of his creative inspiration and on his struggles, the exhilarating highs and the debilitating lows. I Am Brian Wilson reveals as never before the man who fought his way back to stability and creative relevance, who became a mesmerizing live artist, who forced himself to reckon with his own complex legacy, and who finally completed Smile, the legendary unfinished Beach Boys record that had become synonymous with both his genius and its destabilization. Today Brian Wilson is older, calmer, and filled with perspective and forgiveness. Whether he's talking about his childhood, his bandmates, or his own inner demons, Wilson's story, told in his own voice and in his own way, unforgettably illuminates the man behind the music, working through the turbulence and discord to achieve, at last, a new harmony.

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.

Composer Nakayama Shimpei (1887-1952) wrote more than 300 popular songs in his lifetime. Most are still well known and recorded regularly. An entrepreneur, he found ways to create popular songs that powered Japan's nascent recording industry in the 1920s and 1930s. An artist, his combination of Japanese and Western musical styles and tropes appealed to Japanese sentiments in a way that not only reflected the historical and social context, but anticipated and explained those historical changes to his listeners. This book seeks to apply contextual analysis of Nakayama's popular songs to the events that occurred in the context of Japan's development of a record industry and popular music market between 1887 and 1952. The book evaluates Nakayama's positions within the world of musicians, and as a bridge between intellectuals and pure artists, on the one hand, and the Japanese people on the other to understand how popular songs can enrich and deepen our understanding of the history of political and industrial development in modern Japan. The book concludes that Nakayama's uncanny ability to make listening to Western music a comfortable experience for Japanese by adding elements from Japanese musical styles allowed him to be successful financially, and to hold respect within the artistic community as well. His skill in creating songs that spoke to large groups of people, successfully marketing those songs through an understanding of how music would sound on record, and careful communication with his audiences to understand their interests and lives made him the most popular composer of his time, and a powerful asset for Japan Victor, Inc., his record company. The ultimate goal of the book is to show how popular songs can be utilized as primary sources to help deepen our understanding of historical contexts.

Drawing on interviews with stars and musicians, producers and photographers, stylists, writers and celebrity fans, this book chronicles the glam era from its origins in 1970, through its 1972/73 heyday to its mid-seventies collapse and the death of Marc Bolan in September 1977. Fully illustrated throughout, the book includes a wealth of visual material, be it band shots, record sleeves and pin-up posters, or the era's best clobber, magazines and assorted memorabilia.

This highly original and accessible book draws on the author's personal experience as a musician, producer and teacher of popular music to discuss the ways in which audio technology and musical creativity in pop music are inextricably bound together. This relationship, the book argues, is exemplified by the work of Trevor Horn, who is widely acknowledged as the most important, innovative and successful British pop record producer of the early 1980s. In the first part of the book, Timothy Warner presents a definition of pop as distinct from rock music, and goes on to consider the ways technological developments, such as the transition from analogue to digital, transform working practices and, as a result, impact on the creative process of producing pop. Part two analyses seven influential recordings produced by Trevor Horn between 1979 and 1985: 'Video Killed the Radio Star' (The Buggles), 'Buffalo Gals' (Malcolm McClaren),'Owner of a Lonely Heart' (Yes), 'Relax' (Frankie Goes to Hollywood), 'Slave to the Rhythm' (Grace Jones), and albums by The Art of Noise and Propaganda. These records reveal how the creative use of technology in the modern pop recording studio has informed Horn's work, a theme that is then explored in an extensive interview with Horn himself.

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.

Music has always been central to the cultures that young people create, follow, and embrace. In the 1960s, young hippie kids sang along about peace with the likes of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and tried to change the world. In the 1970s, many young people ended up coming home in body bags from Vietnam, and the music scene changed, embracing punk and bands like The Sex Pistols. In Sells Like Teen Spirit, Ryan Moore tells the story of how music and youth culture have changed along with the economic, political, and cultural transformations of American society in the last four decades. By attending concerts, hanging out in dance clubs and after-hour bars, and examining the do-it-yourself music scene, Moore gives a riveting, first-hand account of the sights, sounds, and smells of "teen spirit."

Moore traces the histories of punk, hardcore, heavy metal, glam, thrash, alternative rock, grunge, and riot grrrl music, and relates them to wider social changes that have taken place. Alongside the thirty images of concert photos, zines, flyers, and album covers in the book, Moore offers original interpretations of the music of a wide range of bands including Black Sabbath, Black Flag, Metallica, Nirvana, and Sleater-Kinney. Written in a lively, engaging, and witty style, Sells Like Teen Spirit suggests a more hopeful attitude about the ways that music can be used as a counter to an overly commercialized culture, showcasing recent musical innovations by youth that emphasize democratic participation and creative self-expression--even at the cost of potential copyright infringement.

This book presents the days of live music production in the UK spanning the late '60s to the mid-'80s, when rock music was enjoying a meteoric rise in popularity. The author, Richard Ames, will take you on a true behind-the-scenes journey of discovery. You'll learn who the people were, where they came from and how they went on to pioneer the first companies that would become the lifeblood of a unique industry. The interviews contained in this book record and present the raw stories of a few of the original innovators who set the stage for their performers but also for the hundreds of technicians who would tour the world following in their footsteps. The pioneers presented in these interviews share with the reader countless candid anecdotes that convey how their curious enthusiasm, energy, dedication, and general can-do attitude was the driving force behind the creation of the many companies we know of as common place today. The book presents interviews that span varied aspects of live music production including lighting, sound, rigging, staging, trucking, bussing and catering. Live Music Production captures a piece of social history that promises to inform, entertain and delight.

Disaster Songs as Intangible Memorials in Atlantic Canada draws on a collection of over 600 songs relating to Atlantic Canadian disasters from 1891 up until the present and describes the characteristics that define them as intangible memorials. The book demonstrates the relationship between vernacular memorials - informal memorials collectively and spontaneously created from a variety of objects by the general public - and disaster songs. The author identifies the features that define vernacular memorials and applies them to disaster songs: spontaneity, ephemerality, importance of place, motivations and meaning-making, content, as well as the role of media in inspiring and disseminating memorials and songs. Visit the companion website: www.disastersongs.ca.

This book examines how popular music is able to approach subjects of bio-politics, climate change, solastalgia, and anthropomorphisation, alongside its more common diet of songs about love, dancing, and break-ups - all while satisfying its primary remit of being entertaining and listenable. Nearly a thousand books have been published on bioethics since Van Rensselaer Potter's Bioethics Bridge to the Future (1971), with a marked increase in the past 20 years. However, not one of these books has focused itself on popular music, something Christopher Partridge describes as 'central to the construction of [our] identities, central to [our] sense of self, central to [our] well-being and, therefore, central to [our] social relations'. This edited collection examines popular music through a range of topics, from romance to climate change. Coastal Environments in Popular Song is perfect for students, scholars, and researchers alike interested in bioethics, social history, and the history of music.

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.

Albion's Secret History compiles snapshots of English pop culture's rebels and outsiders, from Evelyn Waugh to PJ Harvey via The Long Blondes and The Libertines. By focusing on cultural figures who served to define England, Guy Mankowski looks at those who have really shaped Albion's secret history, not just its oft-quoted official cultural history. He departs from the narrative that dutifully follows the Beatles, The Sex Pistols and Oasis, and, by instead penetrating the surface of England's pop history (including the venues it was shaped in), throws new light on ideas of Englishness. As well as music, Mankowski draws from art, film, architecture and politics, showing the moments at which artists like Tricky and Goldfrapp altered our sense of a sometimes green but sometimes unpleasant land. 'The most illuminating odyssey through lost, hidden or forgotten English pop culture since Michael Bracewell's England Is Mine.' Rhian E. Jones, author of Clampdown: Pop-Cultural Wars on Class and Gender

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.

From Cleveland to Cincinnati and everywhere in between, Ohio rocks. Rebels and Underdogs: The Story of Ohio Rock and Roll takes readers behind the scenes to the birth and rise of musical legends like the Black Keys, Nine Inch Nails, Devo, the Breeders, Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, and many others who started in garages and bars across Ohio. Through candid first-hand interviews, Garin Pirnia captures new, unheard stories from national legends like the Black Keys and slow-burn local bands like Wussy from Cincinnati. Discover why Greenhornes' members Patrick Keeler and Brian Olive almost killed each other on stage one night, what happened to the pink guitar Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails gave to band member Richard Patrick, why Devo loved the dissonance when they were booed by 400,000 music lovers in England, and so much more! Entertaining, inspiring, and revolutionary, Rebels and Underdogs is the untold story of the bands, the state, and rock itself.

Grunge, also known as the 'Seattle Sound', emerged from the Pacific north-west in the early part of the 1980s. With the unexpected success of Nirvana's single 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' in 1991, grunge became a household word overnight and launched an American music movement on a par with punk and hip-hop. In Everybody Loves Our Town , Mark Yarm draws from exclusive interviews to tell the whole story: the founding of originators like Soundgarden and the Melvins, the early successes of the Sub Pop record label, the rise of powerhouses Nirvana and Pearl Jam, the media hype, the suicide of Kurt Cobain, and finally, the genre's mid-to-late-nineties decline.

In the 1960s, The Beatles would address like no other musical act a radical shift in the cultural mindset of the late twentieth century. Through tools of "electric technology," this shift encompassed the decline of visual modes of perception and the emergence of a "way-of-knowing" based increasingly on sound. In this respect, the musical works of The Beatles would come to resonate with and ultimately reflect Marshall McLuhan's ideas on the transition into a culture of "all-at-once-ness": a simultaneous world in which immersion in vibrant global community increasingly trumps the fixed viewpoint of the individual. By engaging with recording technologies in a way that no popular act had before, The Beatles opened up for exploration the acoustical space precipitated by this shift. In The Beatles and McLuhan: Understanding the Electric Age, scholar and musician Thomas MacFarlane examines how the incorporation of electric technology in The Beatles' art would enhance their musical impact. MacFarlane surveys the relationship between McLuhan's ideas on the nature and effects of electric technology and The Beatles own engagement of that technology; offers analyses of key works from The Beatles' studio years, with particular attention paid to the presence of cultural metaphors embedded in the medium of multi-track recording; and collates these data to offer stunning conclusions about The Beatles' creative process in the recording studio and its cultural implications. This work also features the first published transcriptions ever of the complete filmed conversation between John Lennon and Marshall McLuhan on their respective ideas, as well as an interview between MacFarlane and McLuhan's son and executor, Michael McLuhan, on his father's and the Beatles' legacy. The Beatles and McLuhan will interest scholars and students of music and music history, recording technology, media studies, communications, and popular culture.

Recognized for its distinctive musical features and its connection to periods of social innovation and ferment, the genre of psychedelia has exerted long-term influence in many areas of cultural production, including music, visual art, graphic design, film, and literature. William Echard explores the historical development of psychedelic music and its various stylistic incarnations as a genre unique for its fusion of rock, soul, funk, folk, and electronic music. Through the theory of musical topics-highly conventional musical figures that signify broad cultural concepts-and musical meaning, Echard traces the stylistic evolution of psychedelia from its inception in the early 1960s, with the Beatles' Rubber Soul and Revolver and the Kinks and Pink Floyd, to the German experimental bands and psychedelic funk of the 1970s, with a special emphasis on Parliament/Funkadelic. He concludes with a look at the 1980s and early 1990s, touching on the free festival scene, rave culture, and neo-jam bands. Set against the cultural backdrop of these decades, Echard's study of psychedelia lays the groundwork and offers lessons for analyzing the topic of popular music in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

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.

As recommended by USA Today and excerpted on Rolling Stone.com! More than forty years after breaking up, The Beatles remain the biggest-selling and most influential group in the history of popular music. Fans endlessly replay their songs, craving more, while thousands of cover versions of their songs have been recorded and performed. Band biographies, pop music histories, song books, and academic titles on the Fab Four clutter shelves. But never has there been a definitive guide to the finest songs of The Beatles after they called it quits. Still the Greatest is a love song to the songwriting and recording achievements of Paul, John, George, and Ringo after each struck out on his own. In this creative history, Jackson selects the best songs in each solo career and organizes them into fantasy albums they might have formed had the legendary group stayed together. This romp through the post-Beatles history of each artist delves into the circumstances behind the composition, recording, and reception of each work, offering a refreshing take on how spectacular much of The Beatles' second act truly is. Jackson assesses the more than seventy albums and nine hundred songs the four collectively released, selecting the creme de la creme of their output. Still the Greatest brims with facts (release dates, writing and performing credits, and information about production techniques) and insightful analyses of the music and lyrics. In telling the stories behind the songs, Jackson recounts the remarkable influence the Post Fab Four continued to have long after the big split. Both a handy reference and an engrossing cover-to-cover read, Still the Greatest is an invaluable companion for those who thought it all ended with the 1970 album Let It Be.

(The Little Black Songbook). A pocket sized collection of Dire Straits and Mark Knopfler songs presented in chord songbook format, with chord symbols, guitar chord boxes and complete lyrics. Includes over 70 classics, including: All the Roadrunning * Boom, Like That * Brothers in Arms * Calling Elvis * Expresso Love * Get Lucky * Money for Nothing * Romeo and Juliet * Sailing to Philadelphia * So Far Away * Sultans of Swing * Telegraph Road * Walk of Life * and more.

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 title was first published in 1983.