Showing titles in History & Criticism

Guthrie kept moving throughout his life, making friends, soaking up influences, and writing about his experiences. Along the way, he produced more than 3,000 songs, as well as fiction, journalism, poetry, and visual art, that gave voice to the distressed and dispossessed. In this insightful audiobook, Will Kaufman examines the artist’s career through a unique perspective: the role of time and place in Guthrie’s artistic evolution.

Have you ever had a dream? Something you wanted so bad you just couldn’t let it go? For a group of kids in Harlem in the Eighties, their dreams would change pop music forever. Teddy Riley, Timmy Gatling, and Aaron Hall form a group called Guy that would fuse hip-hop and R&B and launch a new sound.

"Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life." When Prince spoke those words over celestial organ sounds in the opening moments of "Let's Go Crazy," he wasn't just inaugurating yet another Billboard Hot 100 hit—one of forty-seven in his career; he was also giving voice to the deep-seated and richly complex spiritual underpinning of his art. 

Moby, the biggest selling electronica artist in history, ponders the question: why did so many people hate my guts? His surreal new documentary Moby Doc documents his brutal childhood, his rise and fall from pop stardom, and the drugs and booze that nearly did him in. Andrew Goldman interviews “Master of Chaos” music manager Allen Kovac, who shares all the grisly details of managing Mötley Crüe, Meatloaf, Duran Duran … and Richard Marx.

Jonathan Lethem treats Fear of Music (the third album by the Talking Heads, and the first produced by Brian Eno) as a masterpiece—edgy, paranoid, funky, addictive, rhythmic, repetitive, spooky, and fun. He scratches obsessively at the album's songs, guitars, rhythms, lyrics, packaging, downtown origins, and legacy, showing how Fear of Music hints at the directions (positive and negative) the band would take in the future.

Martin Schleske, einer der großen Geigenbauer der Gegenwart, liest die besten Passagen aus seinem Buch und gewährt einen akustischen Einblick in seine international renommierte Werkstatt. Dabei zeigt er, wie für ihn die Kunst des Geigenbaus ein Gleichnis für persönliche Entwicklung und für das Streben nach dem richtigen Platz im Leben ist. Und wer schon immer wissen wollte, wie eine Schleske-Geige tönt: Der Geiger Alban Beikircher, Solist u. a. bei den Münchner Symphonikern, bringt sie in diesem Hörbuch zum Klingen.

In November 1923, Max Ehrmann, the poet of the classic Desiderata, interviewed Theodore Dreiser, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. For two days, they discussed the life of Paul Dresser (Dreiser’s brother), the composer of "On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away". When Dresser died, in 1906, he was a penniless alcoholic. Ehrmann was determined to rehabilitate his image. Dalgleish explores the background to Ehrmann’s quest, his relationship with Dreiser, and the consequences of their meeting in Washington, DC.

Trip-hop described some of the 1990s’ best music, and it was one of the decade’s most revealing bad ideas. This book chronicles the music and its leading artists, packed with recommended listening, essential tracks, great remixes, and under-recognized albums. But the music at its best still sounds experimental and dramatic; and its influence lingers through artists like FKA twigs, Sevdaliza, James Blake, Billie Eilish, and Lana Del Rey. This short book is a guide to ’trip-hop’ in its context of the weird 1990s.

Bob Dylan is the prince of self-reinvention and deflection. Whether it's the folkies of Greenwich Village, the student movement of the 1960s and 1970s, born-again Christians, the Chabad Lubavitch community, or English department postmodernists, specific intellectual and sociopolitical groups have repeatedly claimed Bob Dylan as their spokesperson. But in the words of filmmaker Todd Haynes, "The minute you try to grab hold of Dylan, he's no longer where he was."

This book celebrates Madvillainy as a representation of two genius musical minds melding to form one revered supervillain. A product of circumstance, the album came together soon after MF DOOM's resurgence and Madlib's reluctant return from avant-garde jazz to hip-hop.

The Indiana Jones of rock history and founding curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum narrates the Hall's wild history and his quest to build its collection from scratch—from Ozzy Osbourne's country manor to Keith Moon’s childhood bedroom and Art Garfunkel’s personal archives—including stories about Debbie Harry, Mick Jagger, Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and more.

At the height of the ideological antagonism of the Cold War, the US State Department unleashed an unexpected tool in its battle against Communism: jazz. From 1956 through the late 1970s, America dispatched its finest jazz musicians to the far corners of the earth, from Iraq to India, from the Congo to the Soviet Union, in order to win the hearts and minds of the Third World and to counter perceptions of American racism.

From music journalist and cochief content officer at Billboard Jason Lipshutz, a captivating cultural history of the boy band sensation One Direction, featuring exclusive new interviews with their key collaborators. Over 70 million records sold worldwide. Multiple sold-out tours played to...

On September 19, 1985, a US Senate hearing was instigated by the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC)—founded by Tipper Gore, wife of Senator and later Vice President Al Gore; and Susan Baker, wife of Treasury Secretary James Baker—who wanted to introduce a parental warning system that would label all music albums containing alleged offensive material.

By 1976, Elton John was the best-selling recording artist and the highest-grossing touring act in the world. With seven #1 albums in a row and a reputation as a riveting piano-pounding performer, the former Reggie Dwight had gone with dazzling speed from the London suburbs to the pinnacles of rock stardom, his songs never leaving the charts, his sold-out shows packed with adoring fans. Then he released Blue Moves, and it all came crashing down.

Rock 'n' roll appeared in the 1950s as the high-energy, electrically amplified music of young dancers and listeners, first in the United States and then around the globe, and from the beginning it symbolized more than music. First popularized as a marketing rubric to sell African-American rhythm...

Based on decades of work as a professor of literature and as a musician, Jesse Kavadlo analyzes the ways in which 1980s heavy metal aligns with and develops many of the themes prevalent in the canon of literature. In doing so, the book examines some of the contexts of 1980s heavy metal, including Cold War, the rise of MTV, and the formation of the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) and subsequent congressional hearings.

Taking listeners inside the songwriting mecca of Nashville’s Music Row for the real stories behind country’s most influential songs—and featuring exclusive interviews with songwriters like Vince Gill, Clint Black, Buddy Cannon, Jelly Roll, and Taylor Swift co-writer Liz Rose—Songs of Nashville gives you a front-row seat to the lives and work of the artists who’ve shaped country music.

Jimi Hendrix road manager and confidante Eric Barrett breaks fifty-five years of silence, revealing what it was like to live inside the rock legend’s orbit—at Woodstock, on the Isle of Wight, at a Toronto drug bust, and in the private moments when Hendrix let his guard down—set against the...

From the award-winning filmmaker and graphic novelist, comes the untold origin story of the multi-million-dollar AFROPUNK festival—beginning not with big stages or brand sponsorship, but with one mixed-race teenager’s search for belonging in the nineties New York City punk scene. In 1991...