Download or read book Van Dyke Parks Song Cycle written by Richard Henderson and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2010-06-03 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intelligent take on a classic left-field album from the late 1960s, including original interviews with all the key players including Van Dyke Parks. >

Download or read book Palm Desert written by Rudy VanderLans and published by Emigre Incorporated. This book was released on 1999 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book grew out of a simple packaging design for an audio CD. It is a tribute to a near mythical figure in the world of American music, Van Dyke Parks, whose prolific career produced six solo albums, numerous movie scores, children's books and uncounted credits as a session musician, lyricist, producer and arranger. In 1998 Rudy VanderLans took a trip to Palm Desert where Van Dyke Parks is said to have written most of the material for his legendary 1968 album, Song Cycle. The trip resulted in hundreds of photographs which Rudy VanderLans says were inspired as much by this remarkable musician's lyrics as by his own impressions. The 68 images published strive to echo Van Dyke's creative approach of blending classical, historical, vernacular, experimental, political and experiential themes.

Download or read book Sonic Boom written by Peter Ames Carlin and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From journalist Peter Ames Carlin, Sonic Boom captures the rollicking story of the most successful record label in the history of popular music, Warner Bros. Records, and the remarkable secret to its meteoric rise. The roster of Warner Brothers Records and its subsidiary labels reads like the roster of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, James Taylor, Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, Prince, Van Halen, Madonna, Tom Petty, R.E.M., Red Hot Chili Peppers, and dozens of others. But the most compelling figures in the Warner Bros. story are the sagacious Mo Ostin and the unlikely crew of hippies, eccentrics, and enlightened execs. Ostin and his staff transformed an out-of-touch company, revolutionized the industry, and, within just a few years, created the most successful record label in the history of the American music industry. How did they do it? One day in 1967, the newly tapped label president Mo Ostin called his team together to share his grand strategy: he told them to stop trying to make hit records/ "Let’s just make good records and turn those into hits.” With that, Ostin ushered in a counterintuitive model that matched the counterculture. His offbeat crew recruited outsider artists and gave them free rein, while rejecting out-of-date methods of advertising, promotion, and distribution. And even as they set new standards for in-house weirdness, the upstarts’ experiments and innovations paid off, to the tune of hundreds of legendary hit albums. Warner Bros Records conquered the music business by focusing on the music rather than the business. Their story is as raucous as it is inspiring—pure entertainment that also maps a route to that holy grail: love and money. Includes black-and-white photographs

Download or read book Reinventing Pink Floyd written by Bill Kopp and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-02-09 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In celebration of the 45th anniversary of The Dark Side of the Moon, Bill Kopp explores the ingenuity with which Pink Floyd rebranded itself following the 1968 departure of Syd Barrett. Not only did the band survive Barrett’s departure, but it went on to release landmark albums that continue to influence generations of musicians and fans. Reinventing Pink Floyd follows the path taken by the remaining band members to establish a musical identity, develop a songwriting style, and create a new template for the manner in which albums are made and even enjoyed by listeners. As veteran music journalist Bill Kopp illustrates, that path was filled with failed experiments, creative blind alleys, one-off musical excursions, abortive collaborations, general restlessness, and—most importantly—a dedicated search for a distinctive musical personality. This exciting guide to the works of 1968 through 1973 highlights key innovations and musical breakthroughs of lasting influence. Kopp places Pink Floyd in its historical, cultural, and musical contexts while celebrating the test of fire that took the band from the brink of demise to enduring superstardom.

Download or read book Harold and the Purple Crayon written by Crockett Johnson and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 69 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From beloved children’s book creator Crockett Johnson comes the timeless classic Harold and the Purple Crayon! This imagination-sparking picture book belongs on every child's digital bookshelf. One evening Harold decides to go for a walk in the moonlight. Armed only with an oversize purple crayon, young Harold draws himself a landscape full of wonder and excitement. Harold and his trusty crayon travel through woods and across seas and past dragons before returning to bed, safe and sound. Full of funny twists and surprises, this charming story shows just how far your imagination can take you. “A satisfying artistic triumph.” —Chris Van Allsburg, author-illustrator of The Polar Express Share this classic as a birthday, baby shower, or graduation gift!

Download or read book Laurel Canyon written by Michael Walker and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2010-05-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “richly anecdotal” account of the secluded LA neighborhood’s legendary music scene, a tale of groupies, cocaine, and California dreaming (Salon). Finalist, SCBA Book Award for Nonfiction A Los Angeles Times Bestseller In the late sixties and early seventies, an impromptu collection of musicians colonized a eucalyptus-scented canyon deep in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles and melded folk, rock, and savvy American pop into a sound that conquered the world as thoroughly as the songs of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones had before them. Decades later, the music made in Laurel Canyon continues to pour from radios, earbuds, and concert stages around the world. In Laurel Canyon, veteran journalist Michael Walker draws on interviews with those who were there to tell the inside story of this unprecedented gathering of some of the era’s leading musical lights—including Joni Mitchell; Jim Morrison; Crosby, Stills, and Nash; John Mayall; the Mamas and the Papas; Carole King; the Eagles; and Frank Zappa, to name just a few—who turned Los Angeles into the music capital of the world and forever changed the way popular music is recorded, marketed, and consumed. “An exhaustively researched and richly anecdotal book that will fascinate both rock aficionados and cultural historians.” —Salon “Captures all the magic and lyricism of an almost mythological geographical spot in the history of pop music . . . the story of a more melodious time in rock and roll where the great talents of the ‘60s and ‘70s cloistered together in a sort of enchanted valley populated by an all-star cast of characters.” —Steven Gaines, author of Philistines at the Hedgerow

Download or read book Tori Amos s Boys for Pele written by Amy Gentry and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-11-01 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's hard to think of a solo female recording artist who has been as revered or as reviled over the course of her career as Tori Amos. Amy Gentry argues that these violent aesthetic responses to Amos's performance, both positive and negative, are organized around disgust-the disgust that women are taught to feel, not only for their own bodies, but for their taste in music. Released in 1996, Amos's third album, Boys for Pele, represents the height of Amos's willingness to explore the ugly qualities that make all of her music, even her more conventionally beautiful albums, so uncomfortably, and so wonderfully, strange. Using a blend of memoir, criticism, and aesthetic theory, Gentry argues that the aesthetics of disgust are useful for thinking in a broader way about women's experience of all art forms.

Download or read book The Seventh Stream written by Philip H. Ennis and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 1992-12 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cultural and social study of the origins and evolution of “rocknroll”.

Download or read book Arcade Fire s The Suburbs written by Eric Eidelstein and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-09-07 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Suburbs is an incredibly sentimental and nostalgic album, which generally moved critics but was jarring to others. But it also made a heavy impact on fans and – to the surprise of many – won Album of the Year at the 2011 Grammy Awards. This immensely visceral album triggers a sincere celebration of not formative years spent in a cookie-cutter development, but of feeling self-important, immortal, and desperate to escape. It examines youth and amplifies an innate sense of longing and remembrance. Eric Eidelstein's The Suburbs explores this weird, utopic recollection of youth by comparing the album to suburban scenes in film and television, such as Blue Velvet, Mad Men, The Americans, and Spike Jonze's Scenes from the Suburbs. Through the close examination of film and televised depictions of the suburbs, both past and present, Eidelstein delves into the societal factors and artistic depictions that make the suburbs such a fascinating cultural construct, and uncovers why the album creates such a relatable and universal sense of reminiscence.

Download or read book A Generation in Motion written by David R. Pichaske and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Farm Ballads written by Will Carleton and published by Applewood Books. This book was released on 2001-09 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic and charming book first published in 1873, this is a collection of poems written on the farm about families, love, death, money, nature and the out-of-doors with equally charming illustrations. The book was the number one bestseller in its publication year.

Download or read book It Still Moves written by Amanda Petrusich and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2008-08-19 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Where lies the boundary between meaning and sentiment? Between memory and nostalgia? America and Americana? What is and what was? Does it move?"--Donovon Hohn, A Romance of Rust Part travelogue, part cultural criticism, part music appreciation, It Still Moves does for today’s avant folk scene what Greil Marcus did for Dylan and The Basement Tapes. Amanda Petrusich outlines the sounds of the new, weird America—honoring the rich tradition of gospel, bluegrass, country, folk, and rock that feeds it, while simultaneously exploring the American character as personified in all of these genres historically. Through interviews, road stories, geographical and sociological interpretations, and detailed music criticism, Petrusich traces the rise of Americana music from its gospel origins through its new and compelling incarnations (as evidenced in bands and artists from Elvis to Iron and Wine, the Carter Family to Animal Collective, Johnny Cash to Will Oldham) and explores how the genre is adapting to the twenty-first century. Ultimately the book is an examination of all things American: guitars, cars, kids, motion, passion, enterprise, and change, in a fervent attempt to reconcile the American past with the American present, using only dusty records and highway maps as guides.

Download or read book Nilsson written by Alyn Shipton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-19 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul McCartney and John Lennon described him as the Beatles' "favorite group," he won Grammy awards, wrote and recorded hit songs, and yet no figure in popular music is as much of a paradox, or as underrated, as Harry Nilsson. In this first ever full-length biography, Alyn Shipton traces Nilsson's life from his Brooklyn childhood to his Los Angeles adolescence and his gradual emergence as a uniquely talented singer-songwriter. With interviews from friends, family, and associates, and material drawn from an unfinished autobiography, Shipton probes beneath the enigma to discover the real Harry Nilsson. A major celebrity at a time when huge concerts and festivals were becoming the norm, Nilsson shunned live performance. His venue was the studio, his stage the dubbing booth, his greatest triumphs masterful examples of studio craft. He was a gifted composer of songs for a wide variety of performers, including the Ronettes, the Yardbirds, and the Monkees, yet Nilsson's own biggest hits were almost all written by other songwriters. He won two Grammy awards, in 1969 for "Everybody's Talkin'" (the theme song for Midnight Cowboy), and in 1972 for "Without You," had two top ten singles, numerous album successes, and wrote a number of songs--"Coconut" and "Jump into the Fire," to name just two--that still sound remarkably fresh and original today. He was once described by his producer Richard Perry as "the finest white male singer on the planet," but near the end of his life, Nilsson's career was marked by voice-damaging substance abuse and the infamous deaths of both Keith Moon and Mama Cass in his London flat. Drawing on exclusive access to Nilsson's papers, Alyn Shipton's biography offers readers an intimate portrait of a man who has seemed both famous and unknowable--until now.

Download or read book The Dark Stuff written by Nick Kent and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2009-03-04 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rock journalism on: Brian Wilson, Guns' N' Roses, Roky Erickson, The New York Dolls, Sid Vicious, Roy Orbison, Elvis Costello, The Smiths, Neil Young, Jerry Lee Lewis, Miles Davis, The Pogues, Lou Reed, Syd Barrett, The Rolling Stones, Iggy Pop, Kurt Cobain

Download or read book Warhol written by Blake Gopnik and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 1156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive biography of a fascinating and paradoxical figure, one of the most influential artists of his—or any—age To this day, mention the name “Andy Warhol” to almost anyone and you’ll hear about his famous images of soup cans and Marilyn Monroe. But though Pop Art became synonymous with Warhol’s name and dominated the public’s image of him, his life and work are infinitely more complex and multi-faceted than that. In Warhol, esteemed art critic Blake Gopnik takes on Andy Warhol in all his depth and dimensions. “The meanings of his art depend on the way he lived and who he was,” as Gopnik writes. “That’s why the details of his biography matter more than for almost any cultural figure,” from his working-class Pittsburgh upbringing as the child of immigrants to his early career in commercial art to his total immersion in the “performance” of being an artist, accompanied by global fame and stardom—and his attempted assassination. The extent and range of Warhol’s success, and his deliberate attempts to thwart his biographers, means that it hasn’t been easy to put together an accurate or complete image of him. But in this biography, unprecedented in its scope and detail as well as in its access to Warhol’s archives, Gopnik brings to life a figure who continues to fascinate because of his contradictions—he was known as sweet and caring to his loved ones but also a coldhearted manipulator; a deep-thinking avant-gardist but also a true lover of schlock and kitsch; a faithful churchgoer but also an eager sinner, skeptic, and cynic. Wide-ranging and immersive, Warhol gives us the most robust and intricate picture to date of a man and an artist who consistently defied easy categorization and whose life and work continue to profoundly affect our culture and society today.

Download or read book Farce of Nature written by Jessie Jones and published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.. This book was released on 2015-05-15 with total page 57 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The non-stop hilarity of this Southern-fried farce highlights one day in the life of the Wilburn family of Mayhew, Arkansas. Meet D. Gene Wilburn, the owner and proprietor of the Reel 'Em Inn, the finest little fishing lodge in the Ozarks. Well, it used to be, but lately business is down, tourists are few, and the lone guest who's just checked in—an extremely jittery Carmine DeLuca from Chicago—is only there due to a location shift in the Witness Protection Program. Doesn't anybody just want to fish anymore? Certainly not D. Gene's frustrated wife, Wanelle, who's fed up with their lackluster romantic life. She's taken drastic steps to improve it through hypnotic suggestion and, for the life of him, D. Gene cannot understand why his pants keep falling down. D. Gene's feisty sister Maxie has her own problems, chief among them battling ageism to resume her career in law enforcement. She's determined to prove her worth by keeping Carmine DeLuca alive through the weekend—a task that's going to prove to be much harder than she bargained for since she keeps losing both her gun and the bullets. And she never anticipated the gangster Camine's been dodging for the last five years, Sonny Barbosa, is about to walk through the door, in hot pursuit of his sexy wife, Lola. Seems the headstong Lola has driven hundreds of miles to the lodge to follow her boytoy, D. Gene and Wanelle's son Ty. But Lola meets her match in Ty's seemingly innocent girlfriend, Jenna, whose patience has reached the breaking point after months of waiting for Ty to come home. In the deliciously funny romp that ensues, they all hide, lie, disguise themselves, cross-dress, and slam doors chasing one another, while trying to figure out the source of an increasingly awful stench. By then it's too late and the lodge is surrounded by vicious critters and hungry varmints that have followed the odor down from the hills. Yet by the delightfully chaotic climax of this one outrageous day, love blossoms, truths are revealed, and the lives of all—family, guests and gangsters alike—change in incredible and surprising ways. This side-splittingly funny Jones Hope Wooten comedy is guaranteed to win your audiences over—hook, line, and sinker!

Download or read book Artie Shaw King of the Clarinet His Life and Times written by Tom Nolan and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-05-16 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The two sides of Shaw…are at the center of…[this] compulsively readable biography." —Daniel Akst, Wall Street Journal During America’s Swing Era, no musician was more successful or controversial than Artie Shaw: the charismatic and opinionated clarinetist-bandleader whose dozens of hits became anthems for “the greatest generation.” But some of his most beautiful recordings were not issued until decades after he’d left the scene. He broke racial barriers by hiring African American musicians. His frequent “retirements” earned him a reputation as the Hamlet of jazz. And he quit playing for good at the height of his powers. The handsome Shaw had seven wives (including Lana Turner and Ava Gardner). Inveterate reader and author of three books, he befriended the best-known writers of his time. Tom Nolan, who interviewed Shaw between 1990 and his death in 2004 and spoke with one hundred of his colleagues and contemporaries, captures Shaw and his era with candor and sympathy, bringing the master to vivid life and restoring him to his rightful place in jazz history. Originally published in hardcover under the title Three Chords for Beauty's Sake.