The myth of Orpheus articulates what social theorists have known since Plato: music matters. It is uniquely able to move us, to guide the imagination, to evoke memories, and to create spaces within which meaning is made. Popular music occupies a place of particular social and cultural significance. Christopher Partridge explores this significance, analyzing its complex relationships with the values and norms, texts and discourses, rituals and symbols, and codes and narratives of modern Western cultures. He shows how popular musics power to move, to agitate, to control listeners, to shape their identities, and to structure their everyday lives is central to constructions of the sacred and the profane. In particular, he argues that popular music can be important edgework, challenging dominant constructions of the sacred in modern societies. Drawing on a wide range of musicians and musical genres, as well as a number of theoretical approaches from critical musicology, cultural theory, sociology, theology, and the study of religion, The Lyre of Orpheus reveals the significance and the progressive potential of popular music.

This book provides in-depth analysis of the words, music, and recordings of Elvis Costello, one of the most enigmatic, eclectic, and critically acclaimed singer-songwriters of the rock era. Elvis Costello is one of the greatest pop songwriters of his generation as well as one of the most significant songwriters of the 20th century. His career's length now approaching four decades, Costello continues to be vital part of pop culture through live performances, recordings, and the iconic nature of his work. The Words and Music of Elvis Costello provides in-depth analysis of this important artist's words, music, and recordings. Arranged chronologically, the book places Costello in the cultural context of his time and place; addresses the overlaps between rock, classical, torch song, and jazz in Costello's highly eclectic range of songs from 1975 to the present; provides a look at the uniquely British aspects of his work; and uniquely spotlights his compositional techniques and approaches to musical form. The book covers everything from Costello's first album My Aim Is True as well as his other albums in the 1970s to his body of work in the '80s and '90s to his continuing eclecticism in the 21st century as he successfully integrates what would appear to be mutually exclusive genres. The concluding chapter provides analysis of the critical commentary about Elvis Costello's work as a performer and songwriter over his long career. Provides expert analysis of the words and music of Elvis Costello within a cultural context that will benefit readers interested in popular music as well as popular music scholars and serious fans of Elvis Costello Explains the uniquely British aspects of Costello's work and illuminates the role that Costello's Irish-Catholic heritage plays in his work Places Costello's work within the context of postmodernism Provides in-depth analysis of Costello's approach to musical form-an approach that is highly unusual among rock musicians

(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.

Status Quo were one of the most successful, influential and innovative bands of the 1970s. During the first half of the decade, they wrote, recorded and performed a stream of inventive and highly complex rock compositions, developed 12 bar forms and techniques in new and fascinating ways, and affected important musical and cultural trends. But, despite global success on stage and in the charts, they were maligned by the UK music press, who often referred to them as lamebrained three-chord wonders, and shunned by the superstar Disk Jockeys of the era, who refused to promote their music. As a result, Status Quo remain one of the most misunderstood and underrated bands in the history of popular music. Cope redresses that misconception through a detailed study of the band's music and live performances, related musical and cultural subtopics and interviews with key band members. The band is reinstated as a serious, artistic and creative phenomenon of the 1970s scene and shown to be vital contributors to the evolution of rock.

The Explosive New York Times Bestseller A backstage pass to the wildest and loudest party in rock history--you'll feel like you were right there with us! --Bret Michaels of Poison Nothin' But a Good Time is the definitive, no-holds-barred oral history of 1980s hard rock and hair metal, told by the musicians and industry insiders who lived it. Hard rock in the 1980s was a hedonistic and often intensely creative wellspring of escapism that perfectly encapsulated--and maybe even helped to define--a spectacularly over-the-top decade. Indeed, fist-pumping hits like Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It," Moetley Crue's "Girls, Girls, Girls," and Guns N' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" are as inextricably linked to the era as Reaganomics, PAC-MAN, and E.T. From the do-or-die early days of self-financed recordings and D.I.Y. concert productions that were as flashy as they were foolhardy, to the multi-Platinum, MTV-powered glory years of stadium-shaking anthems and chart-topping power ballads, to the ultimate crash when grunge bands like Nirvana forever altered the entire climate of the business, Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock's Nothin' But a Good Time captures the energy and excess of the hair metal years in the words of the musicians, managers, producers, engineers, label executives, publicists, stylists, costume designers, photographers, journalists, magazine publishers, video directors, club bookers, roadies, groupies, and hangers-on who lived it. Featuring an impassioned foreword by Slipknot and Stone Sour vocalist and avowed glam metal fanatic Corey Taylor, and drawn from over two hundred author interviews with members of Van Halen, Moetley Crue, Poison, Guns N' Roses, Skid Row, Bon Jovi, Ratt, Twisted Sister, Winger, Warrant, Cinderella, Quiet Riot and others, as well as Ozzy Osbourne, Lita Ford, and many more, this is the ultimate, uncensored, and often unhinged, chronicle of a time where excess and success walked hand in hand, told by the men and women who created a sound and style that came to define a musical era--one in which the bands and their fans went looking for nothin' but a good time...and found it.

Get inside the head of one of the most influential musicians of our time, a pop music phenomenon turned titan of industry and cultural icon: Taylor Swift. This collection of quotes has been carefully curated from Swift's numerous public statements-interviews, op-eds, social media posts, and more. It's a comprehensive picture of her meteoric rise to the top, her ever-savvy business sense, and her increasingly vocalized perspective on the music world and beyond. Swift's catchy, chart-topping songs have propelled her to become one of the bestselling musicians of all time. But in the 15 years she's been making music, she has also amassed enough power to buck the norms of an industry notorious for controlling the images of its often very young female artists. Her latest, unprecedented record deal gives her ownership of all her master records, the ability to dictate the terms of her albums' streaming releases in order to maximize her profits, and a requirement that her label share proceeds from sale of its stake in Spotify with its musicians. She has championed the rights of artists to earn fair royalties, and more recently, she has inspired tens of thousands of fans to register to vote. Swift's achievements have earned her spots on both Forbes's Most Powerful Women and Time's 100 Most Influential People lists. Now, for the first time, you can find her most inspirational, thought-provoking quotes in one place.

On June 27, 2012, the long-running, hard-touring, and world-renowned metal band lamb of god landed in Prague for their first concert there in two years. Vocalist D. Randall "Randy" Blythe was looking forward to a few hours off,a rare break from the touring grind,in which to explore the elegant old city. However, a surreal scenario began to play out at the airport as Blythe was detained, arrested for manslaughter, and taken to Pankrac Prison,a notorious 123-year-old institution where the Nazis' torture units had set up camp and where today hundreds of prisoners are housed in claustrophobic, sweltering, nightmare-inducing conditions.What transpired during Blythe's incarceration, trial, and eventual acquittal is a rock'n' roll road story unlike any other, one that runs the gamut from tragedy to despair to hope and finally to redemption. Blythe is a natural storyteller and his voice drips with cutting humour, endearing empathy, and soulful insight. Much more than a tour diary or a prison memoir, Dark Days is D. Randall Blythe's own story about what went down,before, during, and after,told as only he can.

In the late 1920s, Dmitry Shostakovich emerged as one of the first Soviet film composers. With his first score for the silent film the New Babylon (1929) and the many sound scores that followed, he was positioned to observe and participate in the changing politics of the film industry and negotiate the role of the film composer. In The Early Film Music of Dmitry Shostakovich, Joan Titus examines the scores of six of Shostakovich's films, from 1928 through 1936. Instead of investigating Shostakovich as a composer, a rebel, a communist, or a dissident, as innumerable studies do, Titus approaches him as a concept in itself-as an idea-and asks why and how listeners understand him as they do. Through Shostakovich's scores, Titus engages with the construct of Soviet intelligibility, the filmmaking and scoring processes, and the cultural politics of scoring Soviet film music, asking why and how listeners understand the composer the way they do. The discussions of the scores are enriched by the composer's own writing on film music, along with archival materials and recently discovered musical manuscripts that illuminate the collaborative processes of the film teams, studios, and composer. The Early Film Music of Dmitry Shostakovich commingles film studies, musicology, and Russian studies with original scholarship, and is sure to be of interest to a wide audience including musicologists, film scholars, historians of Russia and the Soviet Union, and Slavicists.

Despite the explosion of scholarly interest in the "global 1968" phenomenon, the seminal influence of the arts - in both their popular and avant-garde iterations - has too often been neglected. Student activism in the space of the university and the street made up only a part of the broad anti-authoritarian eruption of 1968, and not even necessarily the most important one. Arguably more fundamental was a broad democratization of cultural production in which avant-garde artists and youthful appropriators alike played a leading role. Cultural forms such as art, "happenings," fashion, comics, movies, and music were critically important to the new youth sensibility and its dissemination within society more broadly. Popular music and visual culture were among the most important of these categories, opening up new vistas of emancipatory possibility and fueling the development of new stylistic codes. This wide-ranging, interdisciplinary collection brings together scholars in history, film and media studies, cultural studies, art history, music and other disciplines to consider the symbiosis of the sonic and the visual that so powerfully shaped sixties counterculture.

Musical Gentrification is an exploration of the role of popular music in processes of socio-cultural inclusion and exclusion in a variety of contexts. Twelve chapters by international scholars reveal how cultural objects of relatively lower status, in this case popular musics, are made objects of acquisition by subjects or institutions of higher social status, thereby playing an important role in social elevation, mobility and distinction. The phenomenon of musical gentrification is approached from a variety of angles: theoretically, methodologically and with reference to a number of key issues in popular music, from class, gender and ethnicity to cultural consumption, activism, hegemony and musical agency. Drawing on a wide range of case studies, empirical examples and ethnographic data, this is a valuable study for scholars and researchers of Music Education, Ethnomusicology, Cultural Studies and Cultural Sociology.

The music that would come to be known as hip-hop was born at a party in the Bronx in the summer of 1973. Now, fifty years later, it's the most popular music genre in America. Just as jazz did in the first half of the twentieth century, hip-hop and its groundbreaking DJs and artists-nearly all of them people of colour from some of America's most overlooked communities-pushed the boundaries of music to new frontiers, while transfixing the country's youth and reshaping fashion, art, and even language. And yet, the stories of many hip-hop pioneers and their individual contributions in the pre-Internet days of mixtapes and word of mouth are rarely heard-and some are at risk of being lost forever. Now, in The Come Up, the New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Abrams offers the most comprehensive account so far of hip-hop's rise, a multi-decade chronicle told in the voices of the people who made it happen. In more than three hundred interviews conducted over three years, Abrams has captured the stories of the DJs, executives, producers, and artists who both witnessed and themselves forged the history of hip-hop. Masterfully combining these voices into a seamless symphonic narrative, Abrams traces how the genre grew out of the resourcefulness of a neglected population in the South Bronx, and from there how it flowed into New York City's other boroughs, and beyond-from electrifying live gatherings, then on to radio and vinyl, below to the Mason-Dixon Line, west to Los Angeles through gangster rap and G-funk, and then across generations. Abrams has on record Grandmaster Caz detailing hip-hop's infancy, Edward "Duke Bootee" Fletcher describing the origins of "The Message," DMC narrating his role in introducing hip-hop to the mainstream, Ice Cube recounting N.W.A's breakthrough and breakup, Kool Moe Dee recalling his Grammys boycott, and countless more key players. Throughout, Abrams conveys with singular vividness the drive, the stakes, and the relentless creativity that ignited one of the greatest revolutions in modern music. The Come Up is an exhilarating behind-the-scenes account of how hip-hop came to rule the world-and an essential contribution to music history.

Selected and arranged by the author, How To Be Invisible presents the lyrics of Kate Bush in a beautiful new paperback edition featuring a new cover by illustrator Jim Kay. 'The greatest singer-songwriter of the past 40 years, whose work is complex, ethereal and filled with so many secrets that one can listen to the albums for decades and still discover new delights every time [. . .] There's not a spare word anywhere in Bush's work. Everything means something.' Irish Times

Our cultural darlings make music; we make them mythic. Every musical genre begets a community of listeners, performers, and critics, and quite often those categories are blurred. From the principled punk refusal of celebrity to hip-hop's celebration of its power, the music world is self-obsessed.

Stars Don't Stand Still in the Sky assembles scholars, music writers, industry workers, and musicians, who offer a range of opinions and experience of the nature of fame. The collection focuses on commerce, the crowd, performance and image, history and memory, and romance. Contributors discuss black women icons, love-songs, the legacy of the blues, the image of the tortured rock star, MTV, the politics of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the joy of line-dancing, and more.

The contributors are James Bernard, Anthony DeCurtis, Katherine Dieckmann, Chuck Eddy, Paul Gilroy, Daniel Glass, Lawrence Grossberg, Jessica Hagedorn, Kathleen Hanna, James Hannaham, Dave Hickey, Jon Langford, Greil Marcus, Angela McRobbie, Paul D. Miller (a.k.a. DJ Spooky), Barbara O'Dair, Ann Powers, Toshi Reagon, Simon Reynolds, Robert Santelli, Jon Savage, Danyel Smith, Arlene Stein, Deena Weinstein, and Ellen Willis.

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE The celebrated first memoir from arguably the most influential singer-songwriter in the country, Bob Dylan. 'I'd come from a long ways off and had started a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else.' So writes Bob Dylan in Chronicles: Volume One, his remarkable book exploring critical junctures in his life and career. Through Dylan's eyes and open mind, we see Greenwich Village, circa 1961, when he first arrives in Manhattan. Dylan's New York is a magical city of possibilities - smoky, nightlong parties; literary awakenings; transient loves and unbreakable friendships. Elegiac observations are punctuated by jabs of memories, penetrating and tough. With the book's side trips to New Orleans, Woodstock, Minnesota, and points west, Chronicles: Volume One is an intimate and intensely personal recollection of extraordinary times. By turns revealing, poetical, passionate, and witty, Chronicles: Volume One is a mesmerizing window on Bob Dylan's thoughts and influences. Dylan's voice is distinctively American: generous of spirit, engaged, fanciful, and rhythmic. Utilizing his unparalleled gifts of storytelling and the exquisite expressiveness that are the hallmarks of his music, Bob Dylan turns Chronicles: Volume One into a poignant reflection on life, and the people and places that helped shape the man and the art. 'Chronicles stunned everyone . . . [it's] clear, apparently frank, unremittingly serious about his musical influences and exquisitely written. It is, in fact, a masterpiece' Sunday Times 'Entertaining and surprisingly deprecating... The book's structure is elegant . . . Chronicles is tautly written, vividly cinematic, and funny . . . a courageous little book' Financial Times 'There is something on every page, in every paragraph, that demands attention . . . In rock and roll terms, this book is like discovering the lost diaries of Shakespeare. It may be the most extraordinarily intimate autobiography by a 20th-century legend' Daily Telegraph

This book explores the two major reasons for hip-hop culture's proliferation throughout the world: 1) the global centrality of African American popular culture and the transnational pop culture industry of record companies and entertainment conglomerates; and 2) "connective marginalities" that are extant social inequalities forming the foundation for an "underground" network of hip-hop communities. Both of these levels of hip-hop's global circulation are based in the youth culture's Africanist aesthetic, which is an extension of previous black artistic expressions such as verbal word play, polyrhythmic dance improvisations, radical juxtapositions of musical structures, and the folkloric trickster figure. Additionally, the text explores computer technology and the internet in this age of information that also serves hip-hop culture's globalization.

From Cliff Richard to The Rolling Stones, and from The Beatles to Plan B, pop music has been inseparable from its cinematic exploitation. This book constitutes the first delivered examination of the place of the pop music film in British cinematic and musical history. It explores the way music and film have exerted a mutual influence at an economic, social and artistic level. From The Tommy Steele Story, a cheap and cheerful 'cash in' on what was considered a passing fad, through Richard Lester's innovative and globally successful Beatles vehicles and on to the Jungian artistic maze of Mick Jagger's Performance, the 1950s and 1960s saw pop acts and directors create an entire life-cycle for a new film genre. Thereafter, its intermittent revivals, be it Slade in Flame or the Spice Girls in Spice World, have kept sound and vision inseparable in the public consciousness, revisiting and reshaping our pop and film heritage.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music and Youth Culture provides a comprehensive and fully up-to-date overview of key themes and debates relating to the academic study of popular music and youth culture. While this is a highly popular and rapidly expanding field of research, there currently exists no single-source reference book for those interested in this topic. The handbook is comprised of 32 original chapters written by leading authors in the field of popular music and youth culture and covers a range of topics including: theory; method; historical perspectives; genre; audience; media; globalization; ageing and generation.

SUNDAY TIMES MUSIC BOOK OF THE YEAR ROUGH TRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR MOJO BOOK OF THE YEAR In 1975, Viv Albertine was obsessed with music but it never occurred to her she could be in a band as she couldn't play an instrument and she'd never seen a girl play electric guitar. A year later, she was the guitarist in the hugely influential all-girl band the Slits, who fearlessly took on the male-dominated music scene and became part of a movement that changed music. A raw, thrilling story of life on the frontiers and a candid account of Viv's life post-punk - taking in a career in film, the pain of IVF, illness and divorce and the triumph of making music again - Clothes Music Boys is a remarkable memoir.

Tulisa Contostavlos has one of the most fascinating and shocking life-stories in show business. Her childhood included harrowing episodes of self-harm, bullying, witchcraft, drug abuse and suicide attempts. Then there has been the ever-present challenge of her mother's mental disorder which Tulisa--as the only child in a single-parent family--had to face alone. How did she rise from such a troubled and dangerous childhood to become first an edgy urban artist and then the much-loved people's princess of Saturday night television? And how authentic is the "street girl" image that is such a key narrative of her official story? This book, written by leading celebrity biographer Chas Newkey-Burden, tells her eventful and inspirational story for the first time. It uncovers the rich show business heritage of her ancestors and then follows her through her childhood, unflinchingly examining the horrors she faced. It then traces how music became her salvation, thanks to the loving mentorship of Uncle B - the man who formed N-Dubz. The book then follows this never satisfied, always ambitious young woman as she moved into the mainstream and became the nation's sweetheart on The X Factor. The reader is taken behind the scenes to discover the reality of her successful first series on the show, as she guided Little Mix to victory.

Actor performer musician entrepreneur winemaker athlete writer curious adventurer a Maynard James Keenan is the embodiment of the archetypal artist. Best known as the vocalist in award-winning groups Tool A Perfect Circle and Puscifer he has trusted the path he's followed and heeded his inner voice ever open to synchronicities and unexpected turnings along the way.THUntil now fans of Maynard James Keenan a or MJK as he is often called a have had access to only an abridged version of his story. In EA Perfect Union of Contrary ThingsE Keenan partners with his friend of 30 years Sarah Jensen to present a full account of his life and career. From his Midwest childhood to his years in the army to his time in art school a and from his stint at a Boston pet shop to his place in the international spotlight and his influence on contemporary music and regional winemaking a the book chronicles the events that led MJK to take one step after the next to change direction to explore sometimes surprising opportunities.THIncluded are sidebars in his own words often humorous anecdotes that illuminate the narrative as well as commentary by his family members friends instructors and industry colleagues. It also features a foreword by Alex Grey an American visionary artist and longtime friend of Keenan along with a bounty photos of Keenan from childhood to the present.THA comprehensive portrayal of a versatile and dedicated artist EA Perfect Union of Contrary ThingsE pays homage to the people and places that shaped the man and his art. A ENew York TimesE Bestseller in hardcover it is presented here for the first time in paperback.

This book launches a proposal: to fill some empirical and theoretical gaps that presently exists in populism studies by looking at the potential nexus between populist phenomena and popular culture. It provides a detailed account of the multiple mechanisms linking the production of pop music (as a form of popular culture) to the rise and reproduction of populism. The authors use a case study of Italy to interrogate these mechanisms because of its long-lasting populist phenomena and the contextual importance of pop music. The book's mixed-methods strategy assesses three different aspects of the potential relationship between pop music and populist politics: the cultural opportunity structure generated and reproduced by the production of music, the strategies political actors use to exploit music for political purposes, and, crucially, the ways fans and ordinary citizens understand the relationship between pop music and politics, and subsequent debates and identities. Moving from the case study, the book in its last chapter offers a more general understanding of the associations between pop music and populism.

Full of information about living without a permanent residence, this complete collection of the "Dwelling Portably" zines from 1980 through 2012 contains helpful and informative tips for living far outside of cities and bereft of technology. All of the tips and advice have been edited down to what remains relevant in a technologically changing world, and it is crammed full of informative tips for biking, tents, showering, cooking, and living. Whether camping on the edges, living simply, or getting by on the road and loving it, this book is for modern nomads choosing alternative lifestyles to working 9-5 in the same place.

Independent rock, known as "indie rock" (rock independent of the major label corporations), is music dedicated to the art of rock: it's adventurous, eclectic, defiant, inventive, and restlessly creative. For over 40 years, indie bands have prided themselves on the back-breaking efforts of self-promotion, self-produced albums, homemade album cover art, and even, for the stalwart artist, self-run record labels. Encyclopedia of Indie Rock chronicles the history and development indie rock, providing students, scholars, and music fans with an extensive overview of the musical and cultural phenomenon. Inside this engaging volume readers will find over 150 entries on the singers and songwriters, producers, labels, and icons who have shaped the genre from the humble beginnings of lo-fi homemade records in the 1960s through the history of seasoned veterans who mastered the fine art of staying afloat despite every obstacle that the cutthroat industry threw at them. Among the featured: BLArcade BLFire BLBlack Flag BLDIY (Do It Yourself) BLgrunge BLJesus and Mary Chain BLlo-fi BLMelvins BLPavement BLPerforming Songwriter BLThe Ramones Righteous Babe Records BLriot grrl BLThe Smiths BLSonic Youth BLSST Records BLSub-Pop Records BLSXSW BLWomen in Indie Rock BLFrank Zappa volume also includes a timeline; a resource guide, which includes recommended books and articles, Web sites, and festivals; and indices in both the front and back of the book to make navigation very user-friendly. Necessary and entertaining reading for any indie rock fan who has ever adorned their locker, backpack, or car with a band's logo, Smith captures the history and evolution of the movement in this thorough, illuminatingencyclopedia.