Traces "garage" and "psychedelic" rock from the 50's through the sixties, unfolds the history and the sonic structures of some of rock's core repertoire

The Sixties, Center Stage offers rich insights into the innovative and provocative political underpinnings of mainstream and popular performances in the 1960s. While much critical attention has been focused on experimental and radical theater of the period, the essays confirm that mainstream performances not only merit more scholarly attention than they have received, but through serious examination provide an important key to understanding the 1960s as a period. The introduction provides a broad overview of the social, political, and cultural contexts of artistic practices in mainstream theater from the mid-fifties to mid-seventies. Readers will find detailed examinations of the mainstream’s surprising attention to craft and innovation; to the rich exchange between European and American theatres; to the rise of regional theaters; and finally, to popular cultural performances that pushed the conceptual boundaries of mainstream institutions. The book looks afresh at productions of Hair, Cabaret, Raisin in the Sun, and Fiddler on the Roof, as well as German theater, and performances outside the Democratic National Convention of 1968.

Suddenly, popular music resembles an alien landscape. The great common ground of 45s, LPs, and even compact discs is rapidly falling by the wayside to be replaced by binary bits of sound. In the 21st century, radical advances in music technology threaten to overshadow the music itself. Indeed, today the generations divide over how they listen to the music, not what kinds of music they enjoy.Playback is the first book to place the staggering history of sound reproduction within its larger social and cultural context. Concisely told via a narrative arc that begins with Edison's cylinder and ends with digital music, this is a history that we have all directly experienced in one way or another. From the Victrola to the 78 to the 45 to the 33 1/3 to the 8track to the cassette to the compact disc to MP3 and beyond (not to mention everyone from Thomas Edison to Enrico Caruso to Dick Clark to Grandmaster Flash to Napster CEO Shawn Fanning), the story of Playback is also the story of music, and the music business, in the 20th century.