Showing titles in History & Criticism

Rockin' in the Ivory Tower takes a close look at two smaller universities, Drew in New Jersey and Stony Brook on Long Island, to see how the culture of rock music played an integral role in student life in the late 1960s.

Huey Morgan - Fun Lovin' Criminals' frontman and award-winning BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 6 Music broadcaster - celebrates the unpredictable personalities and talents of popular music's rebel heroes and explains why we need them more than ever before. The defining sounds of popular music - blues, rock 'n' roll, punk, hip-hop - were shaped and driven by rebel voices: whether that was Robert Johnson and Billie Holiday in the 1920s-40s or the likes of Jimi Hendrix.

Dividing the sum total of human musical achievement, from Beethoven to The Beatles, Busta Rhymes to Bach, into just six fundamental forms, Levitin illuminates, through songs of friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion and love, how music has been instrumental in the evolution of language, thought and culture. And how, far from being a bit of a song and dance, music is at the core of what it means to be human.

The author begins: I will let you in on a little secret. The classical world is prejudiced. If it’s not Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, (or maybe Bartók), some, most? classical listeners think it’s inferior by definition, and not worthy of attention. Virtually each of us has had some degree of symptoms, even if sub-clinical. Yes, even your author. So, to ameliorate the situation, I set off for musical parts unknown, seeking out obscure composers, those rarely or never heard, and lo and behold, got a set of music to enjoy perhaps 10 times larger than before. From some names I had never heard ...

From his school days in Stoke -on-Trent to his years in Take That, his battle with drink and drugs and the song that 'saved his life', this is the most intimate and well balanced portrait of this excitingly unpredictable showman to date. This Sunday Times bestseller has become the definitive account of Robbie Williams life.

A small-town Florida teenager discovers punk rock through a loaned mix tape, and punk music and culture slowly takes over all aspects of his life. His new passion causes him to form a band, track down out-of-print records he loves and reissue them, open a record store, start a record distribution operation as a public service, mentor a host of young musicians, and befriend all manner of punk luminaries along the way. Slowly his life's pursuit pushes him to the point of personal ruination and, ultimately, redemption.

In this major BBC Radio 4 series, James Naughtie uncovers the roots of our music and reveals the soundtrack to our own history. The history of classical music is inextricably linked with the places it was written, its purpose and its patrons as well as with politics, war and social change. From the earliest music of the monasteries to the court and church music of the Renaissance and Reformation and beyond, composers have always changed with the times.

Inside the chapters of Behind the Boards: Nashville by award-winning music biographer Jake Brown, country music fans for the first time ever are given a front-row seat inside Music Row's most famous recording studios on tours narrated by the town's biggest record producers.

The story of two outsiders and obsessives whose collision prompted an evangelistic alliance on the furthest frontiers of underground music. Steve Davis first met Kavus Torabi - guitarist with Gong, Guapo, Cardiacs and Knifeworld - in the mid-2000s at a gig by French underground rock legends Magma. Over the next few years, this unlikely duo's shared affinity for visionary psychedelic music would become the foundation of not only a firm friendship, but also the most infectiously inclusive broadcasting style since the much-mourned death of John Peel.

It was a time when music fans copied and traded recordings without permission. An outraged music industry pushed Congress to pass anti-piracy legislation. Yes, that time is now; it was also the era of Napster in the 1990s, of cassette tapes in the 1970s, of reel-to-reel tapes in the 1950s, even the phonograph epoch of the 1930s. Piracy, it turns out, is as old as recorded music itself. In Democracy of Sound, Alex Sayf Cummings uncovers the little-known history of music piracy and its sweeping effects on the definition of copyright in the United States.

The revealing backstory of the album with no name that spawned 'When the Levee Breaks', 'Black Dog,' 'Stairway to Heaven', and 'Rock 'n' Roll'. Four tracks each side; eight killers, no fillers. This is how they did it.

Beatleness explains how the band became a source of emotional, intellectual, aesthetic, and spiritual nurturance in fans’ lives, creating a relationship that was historically unique. Looking at that relationship against the backdrop of the sexual revolution, the Vietnam War, political assassinations, and other events of those tumultuous years, the audiobook critically examines the often-heard assertion that the Beatles changed everything.

In 2009 musician Franz Nicolay left his job in the Hold Steady, aka the world's greatest bar band. Over the next five years, he crossed the world with a guitar in one hand, a banjo in the other, and an accordion on his back, playing the anarcho-leftist squats and DIY spaces of the punk rock diaspora. He met Polish artists nostalgic for their revolutionary days, Mongolian neo-Nazis in full SS regalia, and a gay expat in Ulaanbaatar who needed an armed escort between his home and his job.

To many of us, Bowie was so much more than a pop idol. But why? In Why Bowie Matters, Professor Will Brooker answers that question persuasively, as both a fan and an academic. A Bowie obsessive since childhood, he hit the headlines over the course of a year-long immersive research project that took him from London to Berlin and New York, following in Bowie’s footsteps, only listening to music and reading books he loved, and even at times adopting his fashion.

Amid a background of wars and revolution, the 19th century produced many of the world's best-loved composers, including Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, and Tchaikovsky. Discover: Music of the Romantic Era charts the course of music through those turbulent but exhilarating times with 40 music excerpts. Light-hearted but authoritative, it tells the fascinating, often scandalous life stories of the 19th century's greatest composers and describes how they created musical history.

It's a big question, and one that has been written about endlessly in an attempt to reveal the "formula" for creating a worldwide, smash hit record. First of all a good song speaks to you. You remember it, even if it's just one really good line.... It fills you with emotions, whether those be sad or happy ones. Then there is something else...it's the way the music was produced and its techniques which hook you in and enhance the listening experience. Inside this book, you will find a timeless blueprint for making smash hit songs.

Born in Mississippi, a young kid named Elvis Presley came to Memphis as a teenager and changed music forever. Fusing country and rhythm and blues with rock, Elvis brought traditional African-American sounds to the forefront of music in the 1950s, but he did so as a handsome white man before the height of the Civil Rights Movement. On top of that, his famous stage fright led to the hip gyrations that would make him the envy of young girls and the scorn of their parents.

Released in 1974, Sweet Home Alabama has become synonymous with Southern rock. From its opening guitar riff, it is instantly recognizable, a raucous, irreverent defense of a Deep South state and its segregationist governor against the jabs of Neil Young. But the roots of Lynyrd Skynyrd's best-selling anthem go much deeper than regional pride or resentment of a fellow rocker.

One of the most celebrated artists of her generation, Joni Mitchell has inspired countless musicians and authors, while never stopping still herself. In Traveling, Ann Powers seeks to understand the paradox of Mitchell – at once both elusive and inviting – through her myriad journeys. Drawing on extensive interviews with Mitchell’s peers and deep archival research, Powers takes readers to rural Canada, charts the course of Mitchell's musical evolution, follows the winding road of Mitchell's collaborations with other greats and explores her loves along the way.

Long before the United States had presidents from the world of movies and reality TV, we had scores of politicians with connections to country music. In I'd Fight the World, Peter La Chapelle traces the deep bonds between country music and politics. These performers and politicians both rode and resisted cultural waves: some advocated for the poor and dispossessed, and others voiced religious and racial anger, but they all walked the line between exploiting their celebrity and righteously taking on the world.