Download or read book Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself Essays on Debut Albums written by George Plasketes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Debut albums are among the cultural artefacts that capture the popular imagination especially well. As a first impression, the debut album may take on a mythical status, whether the artist or group achieves enduring success or in rare cases when an initial record turns out to be an apogee for an artist. Whatever the subsequent career trajectory, the debut album is a meaningful text that can be scrutinized for its revelatory signs and the expectations that follow. Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself: Essays on Debut Albums tells the stories of 23 debut albums over a nearly fifty year span, ranging from Buddy Holly and the Crickets in 1957 to The Go! Team in 2004. In addition to biographical background and a wealth of historical information about the genesis of the album, each essay looks back at the album and places it within multiple contexts, particularly the artist’s career development. In this way, the book will be of as much interest to sociologists and historians as to culture critics and musicologists.
Download or read book Heavy Metal Music and the Communal Experience written by Nelson Varas-Díaz and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-08-03 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is common to hear heavy metal music fans and musicians talk about the “metal community”. This concept, which is widely used when referencing this musical genre, encompasses multiple complex aspects that are seldom addressed in traditional academic endeavors including shared aesthetics, musical practices, geographies, and narratives. The idea of a “metal community” recognizes that fans and musicians frequently identify as part of a collective group, larger than any particular individual. Still, when examined in detail, the idea raises more questions than answers. What criteria are used to define groups of people as part of the community? How are metal communities formed and maintained through time? How do metal communities interact with local cultures throughout the world? How will metal communities change over the lifespan of their members? Are metal communities even possible in light of the importance placed on individualism in this musical genre? These are just some of the questions that arise when the concept of “community” is used in relation to heavy metal music. And yet in the face of all these complexities, heavy metal fans continue to think of themselves as a unified collective entity. This book addresses this notion of “metal community” via the experiences of authors and fans through theoretical reflections and empirical research. Their contributions focus on how metal communities are conceptualized, created, shaped, maintained, interact with their context, and address internal tensions. The book provides scholars, and other interested in the field of metal music studies, with a state of the art reflection on how metal communities are constituted, while also addressing their limits and future challenges.
Download or read book Rock n America written by Deena Weinstein and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is rock? This book offers a new and systematic approach to understanding rock by applying sociological concepts in a historical context. Deena Weinstein, a rock critic, journalist, and academic, starts by outlining an original approach to understanding rock, explaining how the form has developed through a complex and ever-changing set of relations between artists, fans, and mediators. She then traces the history of rock in America through its distinctive eras, from rock's precursors to rock in the digital age. The book includes suggested listening lists to accompany each chapter, a detailed filmography of movies about rock, and a wide range of visuals and fascinating anecdotes. Never separating rock music from the social, political, economic, and cultural changes in America's history, Rock'n America provides a comprehensive overview of the genre and a new way of appreciating its place in American society.
Download or read book Dark Waves written by Neil O'Connor and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-02-13 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1977 and 1980, Britain was a country and culture in flux. The threat of nuclear war, mass unemployment, and strikes made it a particularly gloomy period historically. Within this, a growing number of electronic music acts were using technology and the synthesizer to soundtrack changing times. Dark Waves: The Synthesizer and the Dystopian Sound of Britain (1977- 80) is the first musicological collection of essays on acts that include Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, and The Human League, mapping how the synthesizer spurred toward a fundamental shift in the mechanisms of electronic musicmaking in late 1970s. The volume traces how, along with the musical aesthetics established by both the Punk and Post-Punk movements, the synthesizer led to new and innovative effects, ideas, processes, and musical genres. Dark Waves explores the background, influences, and use of technology and how such developments would result in the more commercial electronically produced sound of 1980s synth pop which, in turn, shaped the sound of electronic music today.
Download or read book Acts of Desperation written by Megan Nolan and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-03-04 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Crushing...intensely vital' Observer 'It's impossible to tear yourself away' The Times 'Such brilliant writing about female desire...honest and visceral' Marian Keyes She's twenty-three and in love with love. He's older, and the most beautiful man she's ever seen. The affair is quickly consuming. But this relationship is unpredictable, and behind his perfect looks is a mean streak. She's intent on winning him over, but neither is living up to the other's ideals. He keeps emailing his thin, glamorous ex, and she's starting to give in to secret, shameful cravings of her own. The search for a fix is frantic, and taking a dangerous turn... We're all looking to get what we want - but do we know what we need?
Download or read book Man V Nature written by Diane Cook and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A refreshingly imaginative, daring debut collection of stories that illuminates with audacious wit the complexity of human behavior, and the veneer of civilization over our darkest urges. Told with perfect rhythm and unyielding brutality, these stories expose unsuspecting men and women to the realities of nature, the primal instincts of man, and the dark humor and heartbreak of our struggle to not only thrive, but survive. In "Girl on Girl," a high school freshman goes to disturbing lengths to help an old friend. An insatiable temptress pursues the one man she can't have in "Meteorologist Dave Santana." And in the title story, a long-fraught friendship comes undone when three buddies get impossibly lost on a lake it is impossible to get lost on. Below the quotidian surface of Diane Cook's worlds lurks an unexpected surreality that reveals our most curious, troubling, and bewildering behavior. Other stories explore situations pulled directly from the wild, imposing on human lives the danger, tension, and precariousness of the natural world: a pack of "not-needed" boys takes refuge in a murky forest where they compete against one another for their next meal; an alpha male is pursued through city streets by murderous rivals and desirous women; helpless newborns are snatched from their suburban yards by a man who stalks them. Through these characters Cook asks: What is at the root of our most heartless, selfish impulses? Why are people drawn together in such messy, needful ways? When the unexpected intrudes upon the routine, what do we discover about ourselves? As entertaining as it is dangerous, this accomplished collection explores the boundary between the wild and the civilized, where nature acts as a catalyst for human drama and lays bare our vulnerabilities, fears, and desires.
Download or read book We Got the Neutron Bomb written by Marc Spitz and published by Crown. This book was released on 2001-11-13 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking us back to late ’70s and early ’80s Hollywood—pre-crack, pre-AIDS, pre-Reagan—We Got the Neutron Bomb re-creates word for word the rage, intensity, and anarchic glory of the Los Angeles punk scene, straight from the mouths of the scenesters, zinesters, groupies, filmmakers, and musicians who were there. “California was wide-open sex—no condoms, no birth control, no morality, no guilt.” —Kim Fowley “The Runaways were rebels, all of us were. And a lot of people looked up to us. It helped a lot of kids who had very mediocre, uneventful, unhappy lives. It gave them something to hold on to.” —Cherie Currie “The objective was to create something for our own personal satisfaction, because everything in our youthful and limited opinion sucked, and we knew better.” —John Doe “The Masque was like Heaven and Hell all rolled into one. It was a bomb shelter, a basement. It was so amazing, such a dive ... but it was our dive.” —Hellin Killer “At least fifty punks were living at the Canterbury. You’d walk into the courtyard and there’d be a dozen different punk songs all playing at the same time. It was an incredible environment.” —Belinda Carlisle Assembled from exhaustive interviews, We Got the Neutron Bomb tells the authentically gritty stories of bands like the Runaways, the Germs, X, the Screamers, Black Flag, and the Circle Jerks—their rise, their fall, and their undeniable influence on the rock ’n’ roll of today.
Download or read book Don t Know Tough written by Eli Cranor and published by Headline. This book was released on 2022-08-04 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A searing and stunningly poignant study in what makes us and what breaks us' S. A. Cosby, New York Times bestselling author of Razorblade Tears and Blacktop Wasteland 'A gripping novel about rage and trauma, redemption and damnation, football and family' Steph Cha Friday Night Lights with a Southern Gothic twist - a powerful debut noir for fans of S. A. Cosby and Megan Abbott. In Denton, Arkansas, the fate of the high school football team rests on the shoulders of Billy Lowe, a volatile but talented running back. Billy comes from an extremely troubled home: a trailer park where he is terrorized by his unstable mother's abusive boyfriend. Billy takes out his anger on the field, but when his savagery crosses a line, he faces suspension. Without Billy Lowe, the Denton Pirates can kiss their playoff bid goodbye. But the head coach, Trent Powers, who just moved from California with his wife and two children for this job, has more than just his paycheck riding on Billy's bad behavior. As a born-again Christian, Trent feels a divine calling to save Billy-save him from his circumstances, and save his soul. Then Billy's abuser is found murdered in the Lowe family trailer, and all evidence points toward Billy. Now nothing can stop an explosive chain of violence that could tear the whole town apart on the eve of the playoffs. WINNER OF THE PETER LOVESEY FIRST CRIME NOVEL CONTEST A USA Today Best Book of the Year (So Far) An Amazon Editor's Pick CrimeReads Most Anticipated Books of 2022 New York Post Top Reads for the Week 'Southern noir at its finest, a cauldron of terrible choices and even more terrible outcomes' The New York Times Book Review
Download or read book B Sides Undercurrents and Overtones Peripheries to Popular in Music 1960 to the Present written by Professor George Plasketes and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-01-28 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are undercurrents and peripheral taste preferences that are a defining part of our individual and collective cultural experience. Music is no exception. George Plasketes adapts the iconic "A-side/B-side" dichotomy from the 45 r.p.m. for use as a unique conceptual, critical, historical, and cultural framework for exploring and threading together a variety of popular music and media texts. The profiles and perspectives focus on the peripheries; on texts which might be considered "B-sides"—overlooked, underappreciated, and unsung cases, creators, patterns and productions that have unassumingly, but significantly, marked popular culture, music and media during the past 40 years. The underappreciated yet enduring contributions of a variety of creative individuals in music, television and film are a centerpiece of this volume: actress Doris Day's son, Terry Melcher, a 1960s music producer whose imprint is on the surf, country blues, garage pop and most importantly the folk rock genre; Hans Fenger's kid chorus cover project, a musical variation of "outsider art" that became representative of the tribute wave that began in the 1990s and continues today; versatile guitarist virtuoso Ry Cooder's extensive film soundtrack work; World Music "missionary efforts" of American artists beyond Paul Simon's Graceland, including Neil Diamond's precursor with Tap Root Manuscript in the 1970s and the exotic adventures of Henry Kaiser and David Lindley in Madagascar and Norway—to name just a few examples. These B-sides represent undercurrents, but they resonate as overtones in the mainstream of music and culture, many as historical hinges. Collectively, these B-sides are an A-side antidote of outskirt observations, individual snapshots of artists, artifacts and rituals, genres and generations, producers and musical productions in television, film and video. They constitute an important connect-the-dots cultural chronicle with a multi-layered context—social, legal, historic, economic, technological, generational, aesthetic—for interpreting the interrelations between creators and institutions, the music market place, the production of culture and important connections between the peripheral and the popular.
Download or read book Heartbroke written by Chelsea Bieker and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2023-04-04 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the California Book Award From the acclaimed author of Godshot and “a pitch-perfect ventriloquist of extraordinary talent and ferocity” (T Kira Madden) comes a defining book of Californian stories where everyone is seeking or sabotaging love United by the stark and sprawling landscapes of California’s Central Valley, the characters of Heartbroke boil with reckless desire. A woman steals a baby from a shelter in an attempt to recoup her own lost motherhood. A phone-sex operator sees divine opportunity when a lavender-eyed cowboy walks into her life. A mother and a son selling dream catchers along a highway that leads to a toxic beach manifest two young documentary filmmakers into their realm. And two teenage girls play a dangerous online game with destiny. Heartbroke brims over with each character’s attempt to salvage grace where they can find it. Told in bright, snapping prose that reveals a world of loss and love underneath, Chelsea Bieker brilliantly illuminates a golden yet gothic world of longing and abandonment under an unrelenting California sun.
Download or read book Images of Elvis Presley in American Culture 1977 1997 written by George Plasketes and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was Al Gore only half-kidding at the 1992 Democratic Convention when he compared Bill Clinton to "the King?" Why does Elvis's name and image still pop up in so many movies, television shows, and songs? From black velvet paintings, comic books, and postage stamps to impersonators, movie characters, and sports stars, Images of Elvis Presley in American Culture, 1977--1997 provides a surprisingly broad vista from which to view American popular culture. An insightful exploration of America's overwhelming and enduring cultural fascination with the expanding and elusive Elvis myth, this book combines historical, textual, and sociocultural analysis with a wide range of resource materials to examine the many images of Elvis in American culture. Focusing on the period following his death in 1977 up to the present, Elvis Presley in American Culture, 1977--1997 informs and entertains popular readers and academicians in American studies, popular culture, radio/television/film, sociology, music, and 20th-century American history. Elvis fans ("Elfans") and collectors of Elvis Presley materials and memorabilia also need to add this perspective-enhancing book to your personal libraries. Author George Plasketes shows us how representations, reflections, responses, and references to Elvis in art, artifacts, film, video, television, music, performance, literature, memorabilia, and alleged sightings, continue to make American culture a "mystery terrain" of endless "Elvistas." The repetition of these images is a link to our cultural identity. Elvis Presley in American Culture, 1977--1997 provides the necessary critical analysis and the resource guide to the various representations of Elvis during the past 20 years, to give readers an engaging and informative way to pursue and interpret the expansive and ever-evolving Elvis myth and its importance to American popular culture.
Download or read book From the Velvets to the Voidoids written by Clinton Heylin and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2005-05-01 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exhaustively researched and packed with unique insights, this history journeys from the punk scene's roots in the mid-1960s to the arrival of "new wave" in the early 1980s. With a cast that includes Patti Smith, Pere Ubu, Television, Blondie, the Ramones, the MC5, the Stooges, Talking Heads, and the Dead Boys, this account is the definitive story of early American punk rock. Extraordinarily balanced, it tells the story of the music's development largely through the artists' own words, while thoroughly analyzing and evaluating the music in a lucid and cogent manner. First published in 1993, this was the first book to tell the stories of these then-little-known bands; now, this edition has been updated with a new discography, including imports and bootlegs, and an afterword detailing the post-1970s history of these bands. Filled with insights from interviews with artists such as Lou Reed, Debbie Harry, David Byrne, Patti Smith, and Richard Hell, this book has long been considered one of the essential reads on rock rebellion.
Download or read book The River Within written by Karen Powell and published by . This book was released on 2021-11 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A poignant novel about infatuation, class, and obligation.
Download or read book Very Funny Ladies written by Liza Donnelly and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It’s no secret that most New Yorker readers flip through the magazine to look at the cartoons before they ever lay eyes on a word of the text. But what isn’t generally known is that over the decades a growing cadre of women artists have contributed to the witty, memorable cartoons that readers look forward to each week. Now Liza Donnelly, herself a renowned cartoonist with the New Yorker for more than twenty years, has written this wonderful, in-depth celebration of women cartoonists who have graced the pages of the famous magazine from the Roaring Twenties to the present day. An anthology of funny, poignant, and entertaining cartoons, biographical sketches, and social history all in one, VeryFunny Ladies offers a unique slant on 20th-century and early 21st-century America through the humorous perspectives of the talented women who have captured in pictures and captions many of the key social issues of their time. As someone who understands firsthand the cartoonist’s art, Donnelly is in a position to offer distinctive insights on the creative process, the relationships between artists and editors, what it means to be a female cartoonist, and the personalities of the other New Yorker women cartoonists, whom she has known over the years. Very Funny Ladies reveals never-before-published material from The New Yorker archives, including correspondence from Harold Ross, Katharine White, and many others. This book is history of the women of the past who drew cartoons and a celebration of the recent explosion of new talent from cartoonists who are women. Donnelly interviewed many of the living female cartoonists and some of their male counterparts: Roz Chast, Liana Finck, Amy Hwang, Victoria Roberts, Sam Gross, Lee Lorenz, Michael Maslin, Frank Modell, Bob Weber, as well as editors and writers such as David Remnick, Roger Angell, Lee Lorenz, Harriet Walden (legendary editor Harold Ross’s secretary). The New Yorker Senior Editor David Remnick and Cartoon Editor Emma Allen contributed an insightful foreword. Combining a wealth of information with an engaging and charming narrative, plus more than seventy cartoons, along with photographs and self-portraits of the cartoonists, Very Funny Ladies beautifully portrays the art and contributions of the brilliant female cartoonists in America’s greatest magazine.
Download or read book Chick Bassist written by Ross E. Lockhart and published by Lazy Fascist Press. This book was released on 2012-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Chick Bassist is utterly savage. Lockhart's style waxes poetic as a modern Beat giving us a glimpse into Rock & Roll hell." - Laird Barron, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of Occultation and The Croning Erin Locke, the Queen of Rock, wakes up at the crack of noon. "La Cucaracha" has infested her dream, and now echoes through her hotel room. "What the fuck is that?" Erin's voice is muffled by the thick blankets that completely cover her. Beside the lump that is Erin lies a black Ibanez bass guitar. A Heroes for Goats sticker adorns its reflective surface. Erin thrusts one arm out from beneath the blankets and fumbles for the nonexistent alarm clock. She's still slogging off fragments of her dream, that goddamn recurrent creep-out where she's a praying mantis, translucent green, perched on the crest of a burning city, devouring her still-copulating preymate. This time her meal had worn her father's face. Those dreams were the worst. Chick Bassist welcomes you into punk rock hell, the friendless disillusionment of waking up in a shitty motel room in California with half a joint and an empty six-pack, radio blaring Lou Reed, concrete ocean on all sides and a blazing inferno within.
Download or read book Please Put Them On Takamine san Vol 1 written by Yuichi Hiiragi and published by Yen Press LLC. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Takane Takamine is the goddess of her high school. With perfect grades, athletic prowess, and unrivaled beauty, this student council president is the apple of everyone's eye-including Koushi Shirota, a below-average student with no friends or social prospects whatsoever. But he'll soon find out the secret behind Takamine's unbelievable success-her underwear! When she strips, she can undo any of her past actions, and now that Koushi knows, Takamine won't let him off so easy...
Download or read book Mad World written by Lori Majewski and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “hugely entertaining” history of the 1980s New Wave music scene told through new interviews with its biggest artists (Rolling Stone). Mad World is a compelling oral history that celebrates the New Wave music phenomenon of the 1980s via new interviews with 35 of the most notable artists of the period. Each chapter begins with a discussion of their most popular song and leads to stories of their history and place in the scene, ultimately painting a vivid picture of this colorful, idiosyncratic time. Mixtape suggestions, fashion sidebars, and quotes from famous contemporary admirers help fill out the fun. Participants include members of Duran Duran, New Order, The Smiths, Tears for Fears, Adam Ant, Echo, and the Bunnymen, Devo, ABC, Spandau Ballet, A Flock of Seagulls, Thompson Twins, INXS, and more. “One addictive chapter after another.” —Rob Sheffield, author of Talking to Girls About Duran Duran “Tells the tale of some of the decade’s most unforgettable songs . . . in fascinating detail, letting the architects of these memorable records shine a light on how the sound of a generation came to be.” —The Hollywood Reporter “The new wave era is often dismissed for its one-hit wonders and silly haircuts, but [Mad World] examines the period with a great deal of love and reverence.” —Buzzfeed “A really informative and insightful read.” —People
