Showing titles in History & Criticism

Cowboys and Indies is the definitive record-business bible, chronicling the pioneers who set the stylus on the most important labelsand musical discoveries of the last century. The narrative follows all the musical trends and developments from the phonograph to the Internet age as it delves behind the big business of corporate hit machines and the diligent industry of small, curated labels.

Mark Clague brilliantly weaves together the stories of the song and the nation it represents. Examining the origins of both text and music, alternate lyrics and translations, and the song’s use in sports, at times of war, and for political protest, he argues that the anthem’s meaning reflects—and is reflected by—the nation’s quest to become a more perfect union. From victory song to hymn of sacrifice and vehicle for protest, the story of Key’s song is the story of America itself.

In this sweeping history of popular music in the United States, NPR's acclaimed music critic examines how popular music shapes fundamental American ideas and beliefs, allowing us to communicate difficult emotions and truths about our most fraught social issues, most notably sex and race.

The lives and music of the great composers of classical music unfold in this entertaining account, introduced by singer and presenter Aled Jones. In 1200 years, classical music grew from the chanting of medieval monks through the symphonies of Beethoven and the grand operas of Wagner to the huge orchestral sound-world of the 21st century, with its electronics and its film music.

Sex. Drugs. Loud music. Wild costumes. Dazzling light shows. These words can all describe a great rock concert or a hot dance club, but they were also part and parcel of the ancient cultural phenomenon known as the "Mystery religions". In this book, author Christopher Knowles shows how the long-dead Mystery religions got a secular reincarnation when a new musical form called rock 'n' roll burst onto the scene.

Drawn from NPR Music’s acclaimed, groundbreaking series Turning the Tables, the definitive book on the vital role of Women in Music—from Beyoncé to Odetta, Taylor Swift to Joan Baez, Joan Jett to Dolly Parton—featuring excerpts of archival interviews, essays, and best album and song shout-outs.

Russell Martin, author of Beethoven's Hair, and his wife, Lydia Nibley, tell the story of how a lock of Ludwig von Beethoven's hair, clipped from the composer's head on his deathbed in Germany in 1827, ended up in Nazi-occupied Denmark in 1943 and was later sold at auction in London in 1994. Learn about this incredible journey through history and the mysteries revealed about Beethoven's deafness and death. Correspondence, research, and forensics further inform this fascinating story.

Finally back in print - David Foster Wallace and Mark Costello's exuberant exploration of rap music and culture. Living together in Cambridge in 1989, David Foster Wallace and longtime friend Mark Costello discovered that they shared "an uncomfortable, somewhat furtive, and distinctively white enthusiasm for a certain music called rap/hip-hop." The book they wrote together, set against the legendary Boston music scene, mapped the bipolarities of rap and pop, rebellion and acceptance, glitz and gangsterdom.

Profiling a dozen pioneering twentieth-century composers, acclaimed journalist and BBC broadcaster Kate Molleson reexamines the canon while bringing to life largely forgotten sonic revolutionaries whose dramatic lives and bursts of creativity played out against a backdrop of seismic geopolitical and social change. These composers, working at a remove from London, Paris, Vienna, and New York, were sidelined and ignored for systemic, structural reasons. This is a landmark alternative history of twentieth-century composers; a radical, new, and truly global work of revisionist history.

Simon Critchley first encountered David Bowie in the early '70s, when the singer appeared on Britain's most-watched music show, Top of the Pops. His performance of "Starman" mesmerized Critchley: it was "so sexual, so knowing, so strange". Two days later Critchley's mum bought a copy of the single; she liked both the song and the performer's bright orange hair (she had previously been a hairdresser). The seed of a lifelong love affair was thus planted in the mind of her son, aged 12.

Have your tickets ready. Keep the aisles clear. And prepare yourself for the heavy-duty epic-ness that’s ahead. This is Lighters in the Sky. In this eight-episode Audible Original we’ll dive deep into the most mind-blowing concerts ever performed. And in each engrossing episode, you’ll feel transported to a time and place that changed the landscape of music forever. Listeners will hear from the people who actually lived the legend, and through the power of immersive sound – you may just feel like you were in attendance too.

Danny Goldberg's new book is a subjective history of 1967, the year he graduated from high school. It is, he writes, "an attempt at trying to remember the culture that mesmerized me, to visit the places and conversations I was not cool enough to have been a part of." It is also a refreshing and new analysis of the era; by looking at not only the political causes, but also the spiritual, musical, and psychedelic movements, Goldberg provides a unique perspective on how and why the legacy of 1967 lives on today.

Can't Slow Down is the definitive portrait of the exploding world of mid-80s pop and the time it defined, from Cold War anxiety to the home-computer revolution. The story of that thrilling, turbulent time, an era when Top 40 radio was both the leading edge of popular culture and a moral battleground, has never been told with the full detail it deserves - until now.

Howard Bloom - called “the greatest press agent that rock and roll has ever known” by Derek Sutton, the former manager of Styx, Ten Years After, and Jethro Tull - is a science nerd who knew nothing about popular music. But he founded the biggest PR firm in the music industry and helped build or sustain the careers of our biggest rock legends, including Michael Jackson, Prince, Bob Marley, Bette Midler, Billy Joel, Billy Idol, Chaka Khan, and 100 more. What was he after? He was on a hunt for the gods inside of you and me.

At the height of the ideological antagonism of the Cold War, the US State Department unleashed an unexpected tool in its battle against Communism: jazz. From 1956 through the late 1970s, America dispatched its finest jazz musicians to the far corners of the earth, from Iraq to India, from the Congo to the Soviet Union, in order to win the hearts and minds of the Third World and to counter perceptions of American racism.

It was supposed to be a car dealership. Instead, it became one of the most famous American music venues of all time... Only one place in the whole world can claim to be both the Carnegie Hall of western swing and the penultimate stop on the Sex Pistols’ infamous American tour. Now, for the first time ever, all the secrets of the hottest honky-tonk of the 20th Century—Cain’s Ballroom—are revealed, in the words of the people who made it happen. Spanning the famed venue’s first 75 years, from 1924 through 1999, Twentieth-Century Honky-Tonk tells it all, from Bob Wills and His Texas ...

Spanning three decades worth of astute, acerbic, and overall astounding music writing, Kick Out the Jams is the first large-scale anthology of the work of renowned critic Dave Marsh. Ranging from Elvis Presley to Kurt Cobain, from Nina Simone to Ani DiFranco, from the Beatles to Green Day, the book gives an opinionated, eye-opening overview of 20th century popular music—offering a portrait not just of an era but of a writer wrestling with the American empire.

In April 1998, legendary southern jam band Widespread Panic held a free open-air record release show in downtown Athens, Georgia, its home base. No one involved could have known that the predicted crowd of twenty thousand would prove to be nearly five times that size. The show, now known as "Panic in the Streets," went on to become a cult favorite of fans and a decisive moment in Athens music history. This event holds the record for the world's largest record release party, but the story of how the it came to be has not been told until now.

From Nelson George, supervising producer and writer of the hit Netflix series The Get Down, Hip Hop America is the definitive account of the society-altering collision between Black youth culture and the mass media.

Sympathy for the Drummer: Why Charlie Watts Matters is both a gonzo rush - capturing the bristling energy of the Rolling Stones and the times in which they lived - and a wide-eyed reflection on why the Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band in the World needed the world's greatest rock 'n' roll drummer. Across five decades, Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts has had the best seat in the house.