Download or read book Make Believe Ballrooms written by Peter J. Smith and published by Atlantic Monthly Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dark days for Hal Andrews, New York artist and scion of an eccentric New England family. His cat has just died in a plunge from his apartment window. His brother Beck, manic-depressive and hopelessly nostalgic, is about to marry Lisa Lyman, heiress to the Family Wipes fortune and certifiably the world's most abominable girl. Their sister Fishie, an Olympic swimming champion who uses her television appearances to berate Hal, has recently shaved her head bald. And their father is withholding Hal's inheritance until he becomes more responsible, or at least until he's sixty-five. Hal's artwork clutters the floors of his girlfriend's apartment and does about as much for his putative gallery. Hoping for a genius grant and settling for a decrepit dog and a derisive girlfriend, Hal's optimism begins to wane as he descends into a moody twilit world of obscure urban horror. Therefore, when a wrong number from out of town walks into his life, the situation is grim. Mary-Ann Beavers and her hostile brother arrive in New York via Greyhound, in search of celebrities and success, both rare commodities back home in Patent, Texas. She snaps her chewing gum and writes wretched poetry; her brother has bad teeth and a temper to match. While Mary-Ann stalks Liza Minnelli in the supermarket and treasures the autograph of Dustin Hoffman's agent's sister, a darkness that lasts for days falls over Hal's new but awful apartment. There is light, however, at the end of the tunnel, and Hal, in spite of himself, will bask in it. Make-Believe Ballrooms captures the true contemporary dilemma in this tale of Hal's decline and rehabilitation in much-too-postmodern New York.

Download or read book Make believe Ballroom written by Catherine H. Jervey and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 662 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Make believe Ballroom written by Naomi K. Bembridge and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-08-31 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everybody likes Eddy, but that changes when he gets his 16 year old dance partner pregnant, or did he? And he's old enough to be her grand father! Dance teachers Alex and Simon agonise about what to do and ask Chris and his dance partner Shari for help. They find Eddy has a secret life and the more they find out the less they like; good old Eddy seems to have a lot to hide. He believes he is a great dancer and has huge ambition; he lives in a dream world where he's admired for his dancing and wins every dance competition. He says he's rich, but where does his money come from? Or is that too part of his fantasy world? And what about sweet and innocent Frances? She is Eddy's 16 year old dance partner, and is now his fiancée, does she honestly want to marry Eddy? Are her straight laced parents really happy about the marriage? Rumour says they are; Shari thinks not. Everyone in the dance school is worried about Frances, but they realise how little they know about her too. Frances also dreams of being a great dancer, but knows being part of Eddy's dance ambition is only a pipe dream - the baby is due in a few months and her dancing career will only exist in Eddy's make-believe ballroom. Does she love Eddy? Her answer is always yes! Her friends in the dancing school don't believe her. Chris is engaged to Cath, but do they still love each other? Shari hopes not as she loves Chris. Cath seems more in love with her dancing than with Chris. How can everything work out well when Chris and Cath are 150 miles apart and they dance with other people? Simon's wife, Virginia, faces family pressure to come home to Australia, but she is happy and wants to stay in the UK. How can she convince her mother and stop her blaming Simon, or is he really keeping her here against her will? What is real, what is fact and what is fiction in this make-believe ballroom? And how dangerous is it to look into the world of lies, fantasy and dark secrets that have created Eddy's make-believe world where what is real and what is false are so very hard to recognise?

Download or read book New York Magazine written by and published by . This book was released on 1992-12-07 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York magazine was born in 1968 after a run as an insert of the New York Herald Tribune and quickly made a place for itself as the trusted resource for readers across the country. With award-winning writing and photography covering everything from politics and food to theater and fashion, the magazine's consistent mission has been to reflect back to its audience the energy and excitement of the city itself, while celebrating New York as both a place and an idea.

Download or read book Popular Pictures of the Hollywood 1940s written by John Reid and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2004-11-01 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A detailed review of 120 popular films, mostly from the 1940s. Includes comprehensive cast and technical credits, plus background and release information.

Download or read book Big Bands and Great Ballrooms written by Jack Behrens and published by Author House. This book was released on 2006 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where did big bands and swing music go? They didn't leave. . . but many Americans actually believe they disappeared along with ballrooms, jukeboxes, bobby sox and zoot suits decades ago. Band leader Brooks Tegler, who has recreated the great music of World War II with his Army Air Corps Review Big Band, offers a good response. "In order for something to come back, it needs to have gone away. Big bands have wrongly been put in that category. They never went away." And that's the essence of the chapters of my book about America's big bands, ballrooms and dancing's past and present. And there's a good look at the future through the eyes of a number of young bandleaders from the east to west coast who carry on in the tradition of Guy Lombardo, Glenn Miller, Harry James, Woody Herman, Duke Ellington and a host of other music legends in their own distinctive way. The struggle to survive in the music business hasn't been without losses and a need for life support. It did when Miller, Benny Goodman, James and Ellington were in their heyday. It's a financially precarious business regardless of your talent. Inevitably, music and dancing evolved and matured. The reasons are numerous and linked to our heritage. But like marching bands on the 4th of July, imagine a country club new year's eve without live dance music and a big band. Think about the many community social events and high school and college proms let alone wedding receptions that still insist on having live bands to play the foxtrots and swing numbers people enjoy. My research shows that while there were approximately 800 big bands on the road during the swing era of the 1940s, today there are nearly 1,300 big bands, according to a Google search and a review of hundreds of territory bands. Consequently, neither the bands nor the music vanished. . . they scattered throughout the American countryside.

Download or read book The Complete Lyrics of Johnny Mercer written by Johnny Mercer and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2009-10-20 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The seventh volume in Knopf’s critically acclaimed Complete Lyrics series, published in Johnny Mercer’s centennial year, contains the texts to more than 1,200 of his lyrics, several hundred of them published here for the first time. Johnny Mercer’s early songs became staples of the big band era and were regularly featured in the musicals of early Hollywood. With his collaborators, who included Richard A. Whiting, Harry Warren, Hoagy Carmichael, Jerome Kern, and Harold Arlen, he wrote the lyrics to some of the most famous standards, among them, “Too Marvelous for Words,” “Jeepers Creepers,” “Skylark,” “I’m Old-Fashioned,” and “That Old Black Magic.” During a career of more than four decades, Mercer was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song an astonishing eighteen times, and won four: for his lyrics to “On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe” (music by Warren), “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening” (music by Carmichael), and “Moon River” and “Days of Wine and Roses” (music for both by Henry Mancini). You’ve probably fallen in love with more than a few of Mercer’s songs–his words have never gone out of fashion–and with this superb collection, it’s easy to see that his lyrics elevated popular song into art.

Download or read book Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams written by Andrew S. Berish and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-04-15 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Any listener knows the power of music to define a place, but few can describe the how or why of this phenomenon. In Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams: Place, Mobility, and Race in Jazz of the 1930s and ’40s, Andrew Berish attempts to right this wrong, showcasing how American jazz defined a culture particularly preoccupied with place. By analyzing both the performances and cultural context of leading jazz figures, including the many famous venues where they played, Berish bridges two dominant scholarly approaches to the genre, offering not only a new reading of swing era jazz but an entirely new framework for musical analysis in general, one that examines how the geographical realities of daily life can be transformed into musical sound. Focusing on white bandleader Jan Garber, black bandleader Duke Ellington, white saxophonist Charlie Barnet, and black guitarist Charlie Christian, as well as traveling from Catalina Island to Manhattan to Oklahoma City, Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams depicts not only a geography of race but how this geography was disrupted, how these musicians crossed physical and racial boundaries—from black to white, South to North, and rural to urban—and how they found expression for these movements in the insistent music they were creating.

Download or read book Ballroom written by Hilary French and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2022-08-04 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tune-filled, light-footed people’s history of ballroom dancing, from Vernon and Irene Castle and Arthur Murray to Dancing with the Stars. In the early twentieth century, American ragtime and the Parisian Tango fueled a dancing craze in Britain. Public ballrooms—which had never been seen before—were built throughout the country, providing a glamorous setting for all classes to dance. The new styles of dance being defined and taught in the 1920s, as well as the films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the 1930s, ensured that ballroom dancing continued to be the most popular pastime until the 1960s, rivaled only by the cinema. This book explores the vibrant history of Ballroom and Latin: the dances, the lavish venues, competitions, and influential instructors. It also traces the decline of competitive dancing and its resurgence in recent years with the hugely popular TV shows Strictly Come Dancing and Dancing with the Stars.

Download or read book Billboard written by and published by . This book was released on 1947-08-09 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.

Download or read book The Hits Just Keep on Coming written by Ben Fong-Torres and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2001 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Book). This lively blast from the past peels back the many layers of the Top 40 phenomenon: the DJs, fans, singles, jingles, dedications, contests, requests and more. The book features interviews with such renowned radio personalities and programmers as Casey Kasem, Dick Clark, Wolfman Jack, "Cousin Brucie" Morrow, Gary Owens and many others, and includes an exclusive CD with "airchecks" rare recordings from 16 legendary DJs on actual Top 40 broadcasts so that readers can hear the crazed, creative and compelling voices that made Top 40 so memorable. Also includes lots of fantastic black-and-white photos to help readers put faces to the voices they know so well, a bibliography and index, and a special Top of the Pops section featuring the Number One records of Top 40 radio from 1957 through 1997 as calculated by the staff of Gavin.

Download or read book From Radio to the Big Screen written by Hal Erickson and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-06-11 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There was a time when "American popular entertainment" referred only to radio and motion pictures. With the coming of talking pictures, Hollywood cashed in on the success of big-time network radio by bringing several of the public's favorite broadcast personalities and programs to the screen. The results, though occasionally successful, often proved conclusively that some things are better heard than seen. Concentrating primarily on radio's Golden Age (1926-1962), this lively history discusses the cinematic efforts of airwave stars Rudy Vallee, Amos 'n' Andy, Fred Allen, Joe Penner, Fibber McGee & Molly, Edgar Bergen, Lum & Abner, and many more. Also analyzed are the movie versions of such radio series as The Shadow, Dr. Christian and The Life of Riley. In addition, two recent films starring contemporary radio headliners Howard Stern and Garrison Keillor are given their due.

Download or read book Chattanooga Choo Choo written by Richard Grudens and published by celebrity profiles publilshing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A must read for the countless Glenn Miller Orchestra fans who still cherish his music. Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of Glen Miller's life and the 60th anniversary of his disappearance over the English Channel in late 1944, this is the tribute book which Glenn Miller fans all over the world have been waiting for, a compendium of authentic stories, interviews, over 150 photographs and features illustrating the life and times of the most popular musical organisation in American show business history, spread out under a shower of stars tracing the career of legendary bandleader, arranger and slide trombonist, Alton Glenn Miller, and placing to rest, once and for all, the truth about his mysterious loss during World War II.

Download or read book DJ Culture in the Mix written by Bernardo Attias and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-10-24 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The DJ stands at a juncture of technology, performance and culture in the increasingly uncertain climate of the popular music industry, functioning both as pioneer of musical taste and gatekeeper of the music industry. Together with promoters, producers, video jockeys (VJs) and other professionals in dance music scenes, DJs have pushed forward music techniques and technological developments in last few decades, from mashups and remixes to digital systems for emulating vinyl performance modes. This book is the outcome of international collaboration among academics in the study of electronic dance music. Mixing established and upcoming researchers from the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Australia and Brazil, the collection offers critical insights into DJ activities in a range of global dance music contexts. In particular, chapters address digitization and performativity, as well as issues surrounding the gender dynamics and political economies of DJ cultures and practices.

Download or read book City Songs and American Life 1900 1950 written by Michael Lasser and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An insightful look at the urban sensibility that gives the Great American Songbook its pizzazz.

Download or read book Billboard written by and published by . This book was released on 1959-02-09 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.

Download or read book Billboard written by and published by . This book was released on 1979-10-06 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.