Showing titles in History & Criticism

This book offers a major reassessment of classical music in the 20th century. John Mauceri argues that the history of music during this span was shaped by three major wars of that century: World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. 

Grunge wasn’t a genre. It was a condition. Before flannel became fashion. Before MTV turned sadness into style. Before Nirvana knocked Michael Jackson off the charts. There was rain. There was cheap rent. There were broken amplifiers in basement clubs no one outside Seattle cared about. In Grunge: The Sound That Crawled Out of the Rain, Kevin L. Whitworth delivers a powerful investigative cultural history of the Seattle music scene that changed the 1990s—and then collapsed under its own success. This is not another Nirvana biography. This is not a nostalgia trip.

Imagine a world where Beatlemania was against the law - recordings scratched onto medical X-rays, merchant sailors bringing home contraband LPs, spotty broadcasts taped from western AM radio late in the night. This was no fantasy world populated by Blue Meanies, but by the USSR, where a vast nation of music fans risked repression to hear the defining band of the British Invasion. The music of John, Paul, George, and Ringo played a part in waking up an entire generation of Soviet youth, opening their eyes to seventy years of bland official culture and rigid authoritarianism.

Derided as one-hit wonders, estranged from their original producer and record label, and in self-imposed exile in Los Angeles, the Beastie Boys were written off by most observers before even beginning to record their second album—an embarrassing commercial flop that should have ruined the group's career. But not only did "Paul's Boutique" eventually transformed the Beasties from a fratboy novelty to hiphop giants, its sample-happy, retro aesthetic changed popular culture forever.

Run the Song is also the story of how a professional critic, frustrated with conventional modes of criticism, finds his way back to a deeper relationship with music. When stumped or preoccupied by a piece of music, Ratliff starts to think that perhaps running can tell him more about what he’s listening to—let’s run it, he’ll say. And with that, the listener in turn is invited to listen alongside one of the great listeners of our day in this wildly inventive and consistently thought-provoking chronicle of a profoundly unsettling time.

Memphis Boys chronicles the story of the rhythm section at Chips Moman's American Studios from 1964, when the group began working together, until 1972, when Moman shut down the studio and moved the entire operation to Atlanta. Utilizing extensive interviews with Moman and the group, as well as additional comments from the songwriters, sound engineers, and office staff, author Roben Jones creates a collective biography combined with a business history and a critical analysis of important recordings.

Since the late '70s, histories of rock music have either ignored or marginalized the progressive rock era. In part, this has occurred because rock music criticism has taken an almost completely sociological turn, with little or no interest in musical form itself. In Listening to the Future, Bill Martin argues that it is a musical and political mistake to ignore this period of tremendous creativity, a period that still finds resonance in rock music today.

In the New York Times bestseller From Pieces to Weight, rap mogul 50 Cent, a.k.a. Curtis Jackson, lifts the veil on his complicated life, from the murder of his mother when he was twelve, to hustling on the streets; from the assassination attempt that nearly finished him to his meteoric rise to...

A fascinating history that examines how real estate, gentrification, community and the highs and lows of New York City itself shaped the city’s music scenes from folk to house music. Take a walk through almost any neighborhood in Manhattan and you’ll likely pass some of the most significant...

This guide provides introductory and closing commentary for works from many famous classical composers, and includes time-stamped commentary to explain the technical aspects of what is being heard in the piece and the composer's intent in real time. This innovative audiobook enables you to hear both the music and the commentary in parallel.

Over one million copies sold! Have you ever wanted to learn more about hymns, but weren’t sure where to start? Bestselling author Robert J. Morgan shares the incredible stories behind the beloved traditional hymns of faith. Each week millions of Christians around the world use hymns composed...

Relive the Magic of the 80s: Discover the Untold Stories Behind the Decade's Biggest Chart-Toppers! Step into a time machine and relive the golden era of music with “Stories Behind the Songs: 1980-1989.” This captivating book takes you on a journey through the biggest hits of the 80s, unraveling the secrets, inspirations, and untold stories behind the top 100 chart-toppers that defined a generation.

Music plays such an important part in everyone’s life, but how much do we know about the history of music? How did music shape our civilization, and how was music itself shaped by the Catholic Church? Susan Treacy, an experienced professor of music, is an excellent guide to the history of music. Every Catholic should own at least one book on music.

Derived from a popular series of lecture-recitals presented by Carol Montparker over the past several years, The Composer's Landscape features eight insightful essays on the piano repertoire. Each chapter focuses on a single composer: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Chopin, and Mendelssohn. Montparker uses landscape as a metaphor for the score, whether it be a well-tended garden of Mozart or the thorny thickets on a Schumann page: the topographical peaks and valleys, the circuitous melodic lines, the thoroughfares where all the voices convene, and so on.

Millions of people know the name of the iconic country music artist, George Jones, but few people know that behind the man and his golden voice was a strong, feisty woman who not only saved his life from cocaine addiction, alcoholism, and other abusive and self-destructive behaviors, but also was instrumental in saving his soul. For the first time, in Playin' Possum, Nancy Jones reveals the true “insider” perspectives and little known poignant and as well as humorous stories about the country music icon.

When Dave Hickey was 12, he rode the surfer's dream: the perfect wave. And, like so many things in life we long for, it didn't quite turn out - he shot the pier and dashed himself against the rocks of Sunset Cliffs in Ocean Beach, which just about killed him. Fortunately, for Hickey and for us, he survived, and continues to battle, decades into a career as one of America's foremost critical iconoclasts, a trusted, even cherished no-nonsense voice commenting on the all-too-often nonsensical worlds of art and culture.

There may be no more joyous iteration in all of music than 1980s hard rock. It was an era where the musical and cultural ideals of rebellion and freedom of the great rock 'n' roll of the '50s, '60s, and '70s were taken to dizzying heights of neon excess. Attention to songcraft, showmanship, and musical virtuosity (especially in the realm of the electric guitar) were at an all-time high, and radio and MTV were delivering the goods en masse to the corn-fed children of America and beyond.

Equal parts music criticism, cultural and comedy history, autobiography, and comic meditation on nostalgia, television, consumerism, childhood, technology, and food, The Weird Accordion to Al does justice to a musical legend and comic genius, the extent of whose remarkable achievements are only now being fully understood and appreciated.

Can’t Stop Won’t Stop meets Girls to the Front in this essential and long overdue history of hip-hop’s female pioneers and its enduring stars. Every history of hip-hop previously published, from Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop Won’t Stop to Shea Serrano’s The Rap Yearbook, focuses...

How Black Music Took Over the World takes listeners inside the vibrant world that underlies Black musical creation, demonstrating the impact that the musical inheritance of Africa has had on music today. Beginning with two rhythmic building blocks he calls the cell and the frame, musician, composer and cultural theorist Melvin Gibbs reveals Black music as an organised system of knowledge. Blending cultural history and musical analysis, he explores how Black music has shaped nearly every music genre on the planet, from carnival music in Brazil to rap ciphers in New York and global pop.