1979. The dawn of Thatcher' s Britain. It' s a country crippled by strikes, joblessness and economic gloom, divided by race and class - and skanking to a new beat: 2-Tone. The unruly offspring of white boy punk and rude boy ska, the new music' s undeniable leaders were The Specials. Bursting out of Coventry' s concrete jungle, their lyrics spoke of failed marriages, petty violence, crowded dance floors, gangsters and race hate - but with a wit that outshone their angry punk forebears. On stage they were electric, and at the heart of this energy was the vocal chemistry of the ethereal Terry Hall and Jamaican rude boy Neville Staple. In 1961, aged only five, Neville was sent to England to live with his father - a man for whom discipline bordered on child abuse. Growing up black in the Midlands of the Sixties and Seventies wasn' t easy, but then Nev was hardly an angel. His youth was marked by scuffles with skins, compulsive womanising, and a life of crime that led from shoplifting to burglary and eventually borstal and Wormwood Scrubs. But throughout there was music, and now Nev tells how a very bad boy became part of the most important band of the Eighties. He remembers sound system battles; the legendary 2-Tone tour with The Selecter, Madness and Dexy' s - and their clashes with NF thugs. He recalls the band' s increasing tensions and eventual split; his subsequent foray into bubblegum pop with Fun Boy Three; and a new found fame in America, as godfather to bands like Gwen Stefani' s No Doubt. Finally he reflects on The Specials' reunion and how even now, thirty years on, they can' t help tearing themselves apart.Raucous and charming Original Rude Boy is the story of a man who done too much, much too young. Neville Staple was a frontman with The Specials, a member of the hugely successful pop trio Fun Boy Three and now tours the world with own his own ska act The Neville Staple Band. Visit him at: www.nevillestaple.co.uk Tony McMahon is a journalist and TV producer living in south London.

In this riveting inside account of his life in rock-and-roll band Aerosmith, Joe Perry opens up for the first time to tell the story of his wild, unbridled life as the band's lead guitarist. He delves deep into his volatile, profound, and enduring relationship with singer Steve Tyler, and reveals the real people behind the larger-than-life rock-gods on stage. It's an intimate account of nearly five decades of mega highs and heartbreaking lows. The story of Aerosmith is not your average rock-and-roll tale. It's an epic saga, at once a study in brotherhood and solitude that plays out on the killing fields of rock and roll. With record-making hits and colossal album sales that compete with legends such as U2 and Frank Sinatra, Aerosmith has earned their place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But with a sweeping comeback in the late 80s, one can see there is a bigger story here: to come back that high, you have to have plummeted pretty low. Aerosmith's game with fame is one of success, failure, rebirth, re-destruction, even the post-destructive rebirth, but here they are today, in their 60s and still on top. ROCKS is ultimately a story of endurance, and it starts almost half a century ago with young Perry, the misanthrope whose loving parents practically begged him to assimilate, but who quits school because he doesn't want to cut his hair. He meets Tyler in a restaurant in Boston, sways him from pop music to the darker side, rock-and-roll, and it doesn't take long for the "Toxic Twins" to skyrocket into a world of fame, drugs, and utter excess. Perry takes a personal look into the two stars behind Aerosmith, the people who enabled them, the ones who controlled them, and the ones who changed them.

In recent years, popular music museums have been established in high profile locations in many of the presumed "musical capitals" of the world, such as Los Angeles, Liverpool, Seattle, Memphis, and Nashville. Most of these are defined by expansive experiential infrastructures centered around spectacular, high-tech displays of varying sizes and types. Through over-the-top acts of display, these museums influence and reflect the values and priorities in the public life of popular music. This book examines the phenomenon of the popular music museum outside the typical and familiar frames of heritage and tourism. Instead, it looks at these institutions as markers of the broader entertainment industry in the era of its rise to global dominance. It highlights the multiple manifestations of power as read across a range of institutions and material forms and discusses how this contributes to shaping the experience of popular culture.

Over the past four decades, the spectacular, "globalized" aspects of cultural circulation have received the majority of scholarly - and consumer - attention, particularly in the study of South Asian music. Ethnomusicologists increasingly cast their studies in transnational terms, in part to take account of these emerging, globally mediated forms and their localized counterparts. As a result, a broad range of community-based and other locally-focused performance traditions in the regions of South Asia have remained relatively unexplored. markets have fostered the development of an aesthetic based The authors of Theorizing the Local provide a challenging and compelling counter-perspective to the overwhelming attention paid to the "globalized," arguing for the sustained value of comparative microstudies which are not concerned primarily with the flow of capital and neoliberal politics. What does it mean, they ask, for musical activities to be local in an increasingly interconnected world? What are the motivations for theoretical thought, and how are theoretical formulations instigated by the needs of performers, agents promoting regional identity, efforts to sustain or counter gender conventions, or desires to compete? To what extent can theoretical activity be localized to the very acts of making music, interacting, and composing? intriguing-often music sharing common melodic, harmonic, or Theorizing the Local offers unusual glimpses into rich musical worlds of south and west Asia, worlds which have never before been presented in a single volume. The authors cross the traditional borders of scholarship and region, exploring in unmatched detail a vast array of musical practices and significant ethnographic discoveries extending from Nepal to India, India to Sri Lanka, Pakistan to Iran. Enriched by audio and video tracks on the extensive companion website, Theorizing the Local represents an important and necessary addition to the study of South Asian musical traditions and a broader understanding of 21st century music of the world.

Born into poverty--the entire family slept in a single room--Ozzy Osbourne endured a challenging childhood. It was a struggle from which he sought shelter in music, and his time as a member of Black Sabbath revolutionized heavy metal and catapulted him to worldwide fame. With the acclaim, however, came the excesses and heartbreaks; and in this engaging and revealing autobiography, Osbourne writes as candidly about his struggles with addictive substances and the loss of close friends as he does about his legendary stage performances and tours, and also discusses his more recent reinvention as a reality TV star. This is the definitive insider's account of the heavy metal scene from the 1970s through the 1990s and a more general cultural history of that same period. Heavy metal, rock and roll, and pop culture fans alike will find this essential reading. "Nacido en la pobreza--su familia entera dormia en una sola habitacion--Ozzy Osbourne tuvo una ninez dificil. Fue una lucha de la cual consiguio un refugio en la musica, y su tiempo como un miembro de Black Sabbath sirvio tanto para revolucionar al heavy metal como para catapultarlo a la fama. Con la aclamacion, sin embargo, vinieron tambien los excesos y desenganos; y en esta autobiografia simpatica y reveladora, Osbourne escribe tan francamente sobre su lucha con las substancias adictivas y la perdida de amigos cercanos asi como sobre sus interpretaciones y giras legendarias, y discute tambien su reinvencion reciente como una estrella de la telerrealidad. Este es el relato definitivo del mundo del heavy metal desde los 70 hasta los 90 y una historia cultural general del mismo periodo. Los fanaticos del heavy metal, el rock y la cultura popular consideraran esto lectura imprescindible."

Featuring fresh insights from Mick, Keith, Charlie and Ronnie, Unzipped digs deeper than ever before into the Stones' archives to present a comprehensive collection of Stones artworks, instruments, stage outfits and notebooks alongside key work by some of the legends of rock photography. For almost 60 years the Rolling Stones have helped shape popular culture around the globe. Unzipped captures the compelling character and dynamic spectacle of the band through distinctive photography and interviews with the Stones themselves, tracing their impact and influence on rock music, art, design, fashion, photography and filmmaking. Evocative archive photos, artworks, outtakes and memorabilia, together with dazzling images of the band's instruments and outfits, plunge you into the ever-changing world of the Stones. Many of the instruments and outfits are paired with pertinent archive photos, so you can examine the detail and see the objects in use. Peppered throughout with engrossing and insightful new commentary by Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood, the book also features a compelling introduction by Anthony DeCurtis, which chronicles their career, and perceptive articles by some of their most important creative collaborators, including Buddy Guy, Don Was, Anna Sui, John Varvatos, Martin Scorsese, Shepherd Fairey, Patrick Woodroffe and Willie Williams. Bold, glamorous and captivating - and beautifully bound and finished - Unzipped is the perfect showcase for 'the greatest rock 'n' roll band in the world'. With 400 illustrations, 370 in colour

Pink Floyd's sound and light shows in the 1960s defined psychedelia, but their later recordings combined rock, orchestral music, literature, and philosophy. "Dark Side of the Moon" and "The Wall" ignored pop music's usual strictures to focus on themes of madness, despair, brutality, and alienation. Here, 16 scholars set delve into the heart of Pink Floyd by examining ideas, concepts, and problems usually encountered not in a rock band's lyrics but in the pages of Heidegger, Foucault, and Sartre. These include the meaning of existence, the individual's place in society, the contradictions of art and commerce, and the blurry line between genius and madness. The band's dynamic history allows the writers to explore controversies about intellectual property, the nature of authorship, and whether wholes, especially in the case of rock bands, are more than the sum of their parts.

Ronnie James Dio was a heavy metal icon and frontman of three of the best-selling, most influential and famous rock bands in history: Rainbow, Black Sabbath and his own multi-million selling band, Dio. Rainbow in the Dark is a rollercoaster ride through the extraordinary highs and lows of Dio's life, and takes us from his early days as a street gang leader and Doo-wop singer in '60s Vegas through to his breakout success with Rainbow and Black Sabbath in the '70s and the stadiums of US metal in the '80s - ending in Dio's dressing room at Madison Square Garden, in June 1986, at the peak of his worldwide fame with Dio. Tragically Dio passed away from cancer in 2010, but had already begun writing a memoir before his death. Edited by the world-renowned music biographer Mick Wall, with the involvement of Dio's wife of over 35 years and personal manager Wendy Dio, Rainbow in the Dark will honour and feature Dio's never-before-seen original manuscript, while drawing on the extraordinary collection of print and audio interviews with the man himself to produce a vivid, raw and faithful portrait of one of the world's greatest ever rock legends.

The Organic Globalizer is a collection of critical essays which takes the position that hip-hop holds political significance through an understanding of its ability to at once raise cultural awareness, expand civil society's focus on social and economic justice through institution building, and engage in political activism and participation. Collectively, the essays assert hip hop's importance as an "organic globalizer:" no matter its pervasiveness or reach around the world, hip-hop ultimately remains a grassroots phenomenon that is born of the community from which it permeates. Hip hop, then, holds promise through three separate but related avenues: (1) through cultural awareness and identification/recognition of voices of marginalized communities through music and art; (2) through social creation and the institutionalization of independent alternative institutions and non-profit organizations in civil society geared toward social and economic justice; and (3) through political activism and participation in which demands are articulated and made on the state. With editorial bridges between chapters and an emphasis on interdisciplinary and diverse perspectives, The Organic Globalizer is the natural scholarly evolution in the conversation about hip-hop and politics.

For the first time ever, Melanie C, aka Sporty Spice, tells her amazing life story in her own words and gives a full and honest account of what life was really like in The Spice Girls. THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ___________ 'What a woman and what a book!' Elizabeth Day 'Fabulous ... There is so much I really relate to, growing up as a young girl, the 90s, all the stuff you went through.' Zoe Ball 'Amazing ... Absolutely brilliant.' Chris Evans 'Sporty Spice telling it like it is.' Independent 'An amazing story ... An incredibly profound, vulnerable and honest look into the highs and lows of the Spice Girls.' Steven Bartlett 'Really lovely.' Chris Moyles ___________ For the first time ever, Melanie C, aka Sporty Spice, tells her amazing life story in her own words and gives a full and honest account of what life was really like in The Spice Girls. I never told my story before because I wasn't ready. Now, finally, I am. 25 years ago, The Spice Girls, a girlband that began after answering an advert in the paper, released our first single. 'Wannabe' became a hit and from that moment, my life changed for ever. I was suddenly part of one of the biggest music groups in history, releasing hit after hit, performing to our wonderful fans and spreading the message of Girl Power to the world. It was everything I'd dreamed of growing up, and I've had some incredible times... The BRITs! The movie! Travelling the world playing iconic venues like Madison Square Garden, The O2, Wembley Stadium and The London 2012 Olympics!!! When you're a woman, though, that power can be easily taken away by those around you, whether by pressure, exhaustion, shaming, bullying or a constant feeling like you aren't enough. I have been known as Sporty Spice, Mel C, Melanie C or just plain old Melanie Chisholm, but what you will read within the pages of this book is who I truly am, and how I found peace with that after all these years. I have really enjoyed reminiscing and getting everything down on the page, and, though revisiting some of my darkest times was hard, I hope this book can be inspiring and empowering as well as entertaining and give you a bit of a laugh.

ROCK CRITIC CONFIDENTIAL is the profusely illustrated anthology of rock 'n' roll writing and photography by veteran CREEM Magazine editor Jeffrey Morgan, who is also the authorized biographer of both Alice Cooper and Iggy Pop & The Stooges. This full colour hard cover coffee table size book draws from an extraordinary wealth of Jeffrey Morgan's innovative CREEM Magazine pieces. Discovered in 1974 by influential journalist Lester Bangs, Morgan ended up being CREEM's longest-serving rock critic. Morgan's writing appeared in every single issue of America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine from October 1975 to November 1988, for a grand total of 158 consecutive monthly issues lasting more than thirteen years, plus another seven years writing for the magazine's original website, resulting in a CREEM rock writing reign of over twenty years. ROCK CRITIC CONFIDENTIAL'S centerpiece is Jeffrey Morgan's extensive and definitive interviews, many of which have never been published before in their complete uncensored form. Morgan is well known for taking command of an interview and getting his subjects to open up in a way that they never would for anyone else, as evidenced by his close encounters with heavyweight sparring partners, further enhanced by the added inclusion of dozens of rare, never before seen rock photographs taken by Morgan during the '70s and '80s, including previously unpublished portraits of The Who, Bob Dylan, Elton John, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Jeff Beck, Freddie Mercury, KISS, Miles Davis, Paul McCartney, and many others-all captured in their youthful prime. ROCK CRITIC CONFIDENTIAL regenerates the genre by being the first book by a rock critic published in a copiously illuminated paradigm-defining hardcover coffee table edition that sets new nonpareil standards of excellence against which all other rock writing books will forever be gauged. That's not hyperbole, that's a fact because it ain't bragging if you can back it up. Compromising Photos. Third Degree Interrogations. If there's a safe space for rock stars... This isn't it. "Jeffrey, you're a smartass-watch it!" - Iggy Pop, embittered Godfather of Punk "Lies! Lies! Lies!" - Alice Cooper, embittered living legend "Tell Jeffrey from me if he comes to see me personally some time, I'll return the compliment." - Pete Townshend, embittered founding guitarist of The Who "I cordially invite Jeffrey to join us at our Tae Kwan-Do class any day of the week just to say hello to all the guys up here." - Bob Ezrin, embittered record producer of Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, Lou Reed, KISS "One of the finest music writers on Earth." - RocksBackpages.com, embittered online library of rock 'n' roll

"The Funk Era and Beyond" is the first scholarly collection to discuss funk music in America and delve into the intricate and complex nature of the word and its accompanying genre. While pleasure and performance are often presumed to be mutually exclusive of intellectuality, funk offers immense possibilities for a new critical rubric. As these writings demonstrate, funk is reflected in myriad forms and context and has been the catalyst for stylistic innovation. Contributors employ a multitude of methodologies to examine this unique musical field's relationship to African American culture and to music, literature, and visual art as a whole.

In Pop Music and Hip Ennui: A Sonic Fiction of Capitalist Realism, Macon Holt provides the imaginative and analytical resources to think with contemporary pop music to investigate the ambivalences of contemporary culture and the potentials in it for change. Drawing on Kodwo Eshun's practice of Sonic Fiction and Mark Fisher's analytical framework of capitalist realism, Holt explores the multiplicities contained in contemporary pop from sensation to abstraction and from the personal to the political. Pop Music and Hip Ennui unravels the assumptions embedded in the cultural and critical analysis of popular music. In doing so, it provides new ways to understand the experience of listening to pop music and living in the sonic atmosphere it produces. This book neither excuses pop's oppressive tendencies nor dismisses the pleasures of its sensations.

Fela Anikulapo Kuti was the Afrobeat music maestro whose life and time provide the lens through which we can outline the postcolonial trajectory of the Nigerian state as well as the dynamics of most other African states. Through the Afrobeat music, Fela did not only challenge consecutive governments in Nigeria, but his rebellious Afrobeat lyrics facilitate a philosophical subtext that enriches the more intellectual Afrocentric discourses. Afrobeat and the philosophy of blackism that Fela enunciated place him right beside Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Marcus Garvey, and all the others who champion a black and African mode of being in the world. This book traces the emergence of Fela on the music scene, the cultural and political backgrounds that made Afrobeat possible, and the philosophical elements that not only contributed to the formation of Fela's blackism, but what constitutes Fela's philosophical sensibility too.

This volume analyses the work of Nick Cave, a singular, idiosyncratic and brilliant musician, specifically through his engagements with theology and the Bible. It does so not merely in terms of his written work, the novels and plays and poetry and lyrics that he continues to produce, but also the music itself. Covering more than three decades of extraordinarily diverse creativity, the book has seven chapters focusing on: the modes in which Cave engages with the Bible; the total depravity of the worlds invoked in his novels and other written work; the consistent invocation of apocalyptic themes; his restoration of death as a valid dimension of life; the twists of the love song; the role of a sensual and heretical Christ; and then a detailed, dialectical analysis of his musical forms. The book draws upon a select number of theorists who provide the methodological possibilities of digging deep into the theological nature of Cave's work, namely Ernst Bloch, who is the methodological foundation stone, as well as Theodor Adorno, Theodore Gracyk and Jacques Attali.

Popular music, today, has supposedly collapsed into a 'retromania' which, according to leading critic Simon Reynolds, has brought a 'slow and steady fading of the artistic imperative to be original.' Meanwhile, in the estimation of philosopher Alain Badiou, a significant political event will always require 'the dictatorial power of a creation ex nihilo'. Everywhere, it seems, at least amongst commentators of a certain age and type, pessimism prevails with regards to the predominant aesthetic preferences of the twenty first century: popular music, supposedly, is in a rut. Yet when, if ever, did the political engagement kindled by popular music amount to more than it does today? The sixties? The punk explosion of the late 1970s? Despite an on-going fixation upon these periods in much rock journalism and academic writing, this book demonstrates that the utilisation of popular music to promote political causes, on the one hand, and the expression of dissent through the medium of 'popular song', on the other hand, remain widely in practice today. This is not to argue, however, for complacency with regards to the need for expressions of political dissent through popular culture. Rather, the book looks carefully at actual usages of popular music in political processes, as well as expressions of political feeling through song, and argues that there is much to encourage us to think that the demand for radical change remains in circulation. The question is, though, how necessary is it for politically-motivated popular music to offer aesthetic novelty?

Born To Kwaito considers the meaning of kwaito music now. ‘Now’ not only as in ‘after 1994’ or the Truth Commission but as a place in the psyche of black people in post-apartheid South Africa.

This collection of essays tackles the changing meaning of the genre after its decline and its ever-contested relevance. Through rigorous historical analysis as well as threads of narrative journalism Born To Kwaito interrogates issues of artistic autonomy, the politics of language in the music, and whether the music is part of a strand within the larger feminist movement in South Africa. Candid and insightful interviews from the genre’s foremost innovators and torchbearers, such as Mandla Spikiri, Arthur Mafokate, Robbie Malinga and Lance Stehr, provide unique historical context to kwaito music’s greatest highs, most captivating hits and most devastating lows. Born To Kwaito offers up a history of the genre from below by having conversations not only with musicians but with fans, engineers, photographers and filmmakers who bore witness to a revolution.

Living in a place between criticism and biography, Born To Kwaito merges academic theories and rigorous journalism to offer a new understanding into how the genre influenced other art forms such as fashion, TV and film. The book also reflects on how some of the music’s best hits have found new life through the mouths of local hip-hop’s current kingmakers and opened kwaito up to a new generation.

The book does not pretend to be an exhaustive history of the genre but rather a present-active analysis of that history as it settles and finds its meaning.

Since rock's beginnings, there have been groupies. These chosen few women who bed, but not often wed, the musicians of their dreams are almost as much a part of music history as the musicians themselves. Pamela Des Barres, the world's foremost supergroupie, here offers an all-access backstage pass to the world of rock stars and the women who love them. Having had her own affairs with legends such as Keith Moon and Jimmy Page--as documented in her bestselling memoir "I'm with the Band"--Pamela now turns the spotlight onto other women who have found their way into the hearts and bedrooms of some of the world's greatest musicians. In "Let's Spend the Night Together, "she tells, in their own words, the stories of these amazing women who went way beyond the one-night stand. Here you'll get to know 24 outrageous groupies, including - Tura Satana, Miss Japan Beautiful, who taught Elvis how to dance and gave him lessons in lovemaking - Cassandra Peterson, aka Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, who tangled with Tom Jones in Sin City - Soulful Miss Mercy, who discovered that not only does the rest of the world listen to Al Green while making love--so does Al Green - Cynthia Plaster Caster, who redefined art and made history when Jimi Hendrix plunged his member into her plaster mold - The mysterious Miss B, who reveals Kurt Cobain's penchant for lip gloss and pantyhose - and over a dozen more

This book bridges a gap in existing scholarship by foregrounding the contribution of women to the nineteenth-century Lied. Building on the pioneering work of scholars in recent years, it consolidates recent research on women's achievements in the genre, and develops an alternative narrative of the Lied that embraces an understanding of the contributions of women, and of the contexts of their engagement with German song and related genres. Lieder composers including Fanny Hensel, Clara Schumann, Pauline Viardot-Garcia and Josephine Lang are considered with a stimulating variety of analytical approaches. In addition to the focus on composers associated with history and theory of the Lied, the various chapters explore the cultural and sociological background to the Lied's musical environment, as well as engaging with gender studies and discussing performance and pedagogical contexts. The range of subject matter reflects the interdisciplinary nature of current research in the field, and the energy it generates among scholars and performers. Women and the Nineteenth-Century Lied aims to widen readers' perception of the genre and help promote awareness of women's contribution to nineteenth-century musical life through critical appraisal of the cultural context of the Lied, encouraging acquaintance with the voices of women composers, and the variety of their contributions to the repertoire.