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Books > Music
Rome is where the heart is.
Amelia Rose is burned-out from years of maintaining her public image as
pop princess Rae Rose. Inspired by her favourite Audrey Hepburn film,
Roman Holiday, she drives off in the middle of the night for a break in
Rome . . . Rome, Kentucky, that is.
Running the pie shop his grandmother left him, Noah Walker is busy
enough as it is. But after finding Amelia on his front lawn in her
broken-down car, he decides to let her stay in his guest room - on a
very temporary basis, of course.
As the two of them grow closer, Noah starts to see a new side to Amelia
- kind-hearted and goofy, yet lonely from years in the public eye.
Amelia may have to go back to her other life someday, but for now she's
perfectly happy falling in love with the cozy small town she's found
herself in . . . and her grumpy tour guide isn't half-bad either.
In SCAR TISSUE Anthony Kiedis, charismatic and highly articulate
frontman of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, recounts his remarkable life
story, and the history of the band itself. Raised in the Midwest,
he moved to LA aged eleven to live with his father Blackie,
purveyor of pills, pot, and cocaine to the Hollywood elite. After a
brief child-acting career, Kiedis dropped out of U.C.L.A. and
plunged headfirst into the demimonde of the L.A. underground music
scene. He formed the band with three schoolfriends - and found his
life's purpose. Crisscrossing the country, the Chili Peppers were
musical innovators and influenced a whole generation of
musicians.;But there's a price to pay for both success and excess
and in SCAR TISSUE, Kiedis writes candidly of the overdose death of
his soul mate and band mate, Hillel Slovak, and his own ongoing
struggle with an addiction to drugs.;SCAR TISSUE far transcends the
typical rock biography, because Anthony Kiedis is anything but a
typical rock star. It is instead a compelling story of dedication
and debauchery, of intrigue and integrity, of recklessness and
redemption.
Becoming Noise Music tells the story of noise music in its first 50
years, using a focus on the music's sound and aesthetics to do so.
Part One focuses on the emergence and stabilization of noise music
across the 1980s and 1990s, whilst Part Two explores noise in the
twenty-first century. Each chapter contextualizes - tells the story
- of the music under discussion before describing and interpreting
its sound and aesthetic. Stephen Graham uses the idea of 'becoming'
to capture the unresolved 'dialectical' tension between 'noise'
disorder and 'musical' order in the music itself; the experiences
listeners often have in response; and the overarching 'story' or
'becoming' of the genre that has taken place in this first fifty or
so years. The book therefore doubles up on becoming: it is about
both the becoming it identifies in, and the larger, genre-making
process of the becoming of, noise music. On the latter count, it is
the first scholarly book to focus in such depth and breadth on the
sound and story of noise music, as opposed to contextual questions
of politics, history or sociology. Relevant to both musicology and
noise audiences, Becoming Noise Music investigates a vital but
analytically underexplored area of avant-garde musical practice.
The 1960s saw the nexus of the revolution in popular music by a
post-war generation amid demographic upheavals and seismic shifts
in technology. Over the past two decades, musicians associated with
this period have produced a large amount of important
autobiographical writing. This book situates these works -- in the
forms of formal autobiographies and memoirs, auto-fiction, songs,
and self-fashioned museum exhibitions -- within the context of the
recent expansion of interest in autobiography, disability, and
celebrity studies. It argues that these writings express anxiety
over musical originality and authenticity, and seeks to dispel
their writers' celebrity status and particularly the association
with a lack of seriousness. These works often constitute a
meditation on the nature of postmodern fame within a
celebrity-obsessed culture, and paradoxically they aim to regain
the private self in a public forum.
The present volume is a double edition in English and Arabic about
the art of ornamentations in the performance of the Arabic qanun
(psaltery), and a historical document spanning more than one
hundred years. It is based on George Sawa's experience as an artist
and performer, as well as the experience of his teachers and their
teachers. For the latter, Dr Sawa used his recollections of what
his teachers said about their teachers, as well as recordings made
by European companies that recorded their works on 78 rpm at the
beginning of the 20th century. .
Life in ancient Greece was musical life. Soloists competed onstage
for popular accolades, becoming centrepieces for cultural
conversation and even leading Plato to recommend that certain forms
of music be banned from his ideal society. And the music didn't
stop when the audience left the theatre: melody and rhythm were
woven into the whole fabric of daily existence for the Greeks.
Vocal and instrumental songs were part of religious rituals,
dramatic performances, dinner parties, and even military campaigns.
Like Detroit in the 1960s or Vienna in the 18th century, Athens in
the 400s BC was the hotspot where celebrated artists collaborated
and diverse strands of musical tradition converged. The
conversations and innovations that unfolded there would lay the
groundwork for musical theory and practice in Greece and Rome for
centuries to come. In this perfectly pitched introduction, Spencer
Klavan explores Greek music's origins, forms, and place in society.
In recent years, state-of-the-art research and digital technology
have enabled us to decipher and understand Greek music with
unprecedented precision. Yet many readers today cannot access the
resources that would enable them to grapple with this richly
rewarding subject. Arcane technical details and obscure jargon veil
the subject - it is rarely known, for instance, that authentic
melodies still survive from antiquity, helping us to imagine the
vivid soundscapes of the Classical and Hellenistic eras. Music in
Ancient Greece distills the latest discoveries into vivid prose so
readers can come to grips with the basics as never before. With the
tools in this book, beginners and specialists alike will learn to
hear the ancient world afresh and come away with a new, musical
perspective on their favourite classical texts.
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