NPR Great Read of 2016 From the acclaimed author of Rip It Upand Start Again and Retromania—“the foremost popular music critic of this era (Times Literary Supplement)—comes the definitive cultural history of glam and glitter rock, celebrating its outlandish fashion and outrageous stars, including David Bowie and Alice Cooper, and tracking its vibrant legacy in contemporary pop. Spearheaded by David Bowie, Alice Cooper, T. Rex, and Roxy Music, glam rock reveled in artifice and spectacle. Reacting against the hairy, denim-clad rock bands of the late Sixties, glam was the first true teenage rampage of the new decade. In Shock and Awe, Simon Reynolds takes you on a wild cultural tour through the early Seventies, a period packed with glitzy costumes and alien make-up, thrilling music and larger-than-life personas. Shock and Awe offers a fresh, in-depth look at the glam and glitter phenomenon, placing it the wider Seventies context of social upheaval and political disillusion. It explores how artists like Lou Reed, New York Dolls, and Queen broke with the hippie generation, celebrating illusion and artifice over truth and authenticity. Probing the genre’s major themes—stardom, androgyny, image, decadence, fandom, apocalypse—Reynolds tracks glam’s legacy as it unfolded in subsequent decades, from Eighties art-pop icons like Kate Bush through to twenty-first century idols of outrage such as Lady Gaga. Shock and Awe shows how the original glam artists’ obsessions with fame, extreme fashion, and theatrical excess continue to reverberate through contemporary pop culture.

In a remarkable memoir written with insight and humor, Glenn Kurtz takes us from his first lessons at the age of eight to his acceptance at the elite New England Conservatory of Music. After graduation, he attempts a solo career in Vienna but soon realizes that he has neither the ego nor the talent required to succeed and gives up the instrument, and his dream, entirely. But not forever: Returning to the guitar, Kurtz weaves into the narrative the rich experience of a single practice session. Practicing takes us on a revelatory, inspiring journey: a love affair with music.

Tom Cliffe is who many young people in the 1960s want to be: not just a lover of music, a player of music. But more than an interest, more than a passion, music and a commitment to becoming an accomplished player and recognized for it will become the driving force in Tom's life. He will give up everything, all the accommodations of the conventional life he was brought up in and educated for. Even when he is nearly destitute, even through years of itinerancy on the road, despite self-interested booking agents and uncommitted fellow musicians, even for the woman he loves, he cannot, will not, abandon Music.The Musician captures the character and circumstance of life as shared by musicians everywhere, from immersion in their craft, to the joy of playing music well, and with others who play it as well or better, to the frustrations associated with committing a lifetime to such an unstructured and unrewarded career."True, endearing, joyful, and at times disheartening, The Musician is an unvarnished look at what most musicians encounter when they choose to follow their dreams. It is an important as well as entertaining book reflecting the reality of how rare it is to achieve celebrity in any profession." Ralph Miriello - Huffington Post columnist, Notes on Jazz blogger, voting member of the Jazz Journalists Association "Some of the best writing about music and musicians. Like all good fiction, The Musician is rooted in fact - often enough, hard, cold facts." Kevin Bales - Internationally renowned jazz pianist and teacher

Kronologisk gennemgang af George Harrisons sange med hovedvægt på tiden efter 1968

Musician's Record It takes many years to excel at recording (whether at home or in a commercial facility), and if you desire to become a professional recordist then that's what's required. But if you're a musician who wants to garner a reaction to your song, then you don't have time for that. You need to make a Killer Record right now. But how? First, stop thinking like a recordist. If you're a musician, and you record, this book will prove an invaluable resource (I encourage you to read the reviews. People love this book). I explain all the things that I've learned as a high-level professional recordist, mixer, and producer over the course of decades, but as they relate to you as a musician, your songs, and the long view of your recording career. The Goal The stated goal of this book is to convert recording decisions into musical ones, and technical decisions into practical ones. Not only do I explain the musical strategies for making a Killer Record, I also break the technical information down to its core so that you can strategize based on your recording reality. So long as you have what you need to make a record, I can help you make it a Killer Record. This is the only additional gear you'll require to greatly improve the quality of your records. Who am I? I'm Mixerman, a gold and multi-platinum award winning producer, mixer, and recordist. I was in precisely your position at the early stages of my career. I was a musician, frustrated that I could write a good song, only to feel the record itself fell short of it's potential. Over the course of my decades recording, I noticed that the performance and arrangement had a far greater impact on the sound than anything I did on the engineering side. The more musical my decisions, the better my results. What You Can Expect This Studio Field Manual is chock full of recording, mixing, and producing strategies designed to keep recording a fun and focused process. You will return to this manual time and time again to help you overcome any impediment--technical or musical--that might prevent you from achieving the results you seek, regardless of your recording environment, regardless of what equipment you're using, and regardless of your current skillset. You can make a Killer Record under nearly any circumstance. It just requires the right mindset.

A vivid portrait of the English singer-songwriter and musician Nick Drake Nicholas Rodney "Nick" Drake was an English singer-songwriter and musician, known for his acoustic guitar-based songs. Drake released only three complete albums -- Five Leaves Left (1969), Bryter Layter (1970), Pink Moon (1972) -- and was not well known before his death in 1974. Yet he gained a massive posthumous following, inspiring leading musicians such as R.E.M.'s Peter Buck and Robert Smith of The Cure and bands such as Coldplay and The Black Crowes. Forty years after Nick's death, Remembered for a While peels back some of the mystery surrounding his life. The book will feature gorgeous color photographs, as well as original letters and interviews with family and friends. As Nick's sister writes in the introduction, Remembered for a While will reveal "the poet, the musician, the friend, the son, the brother, who was also more than all of these together, and as indefinable as the morning mist." At long last, Remembered for a While paints a portrait of a visionary musician who inspired a fanatical following and whose legacy continues to inspire future generations of musicians -- and the lives of his fans.

“The last novel where I rooted for every character, and the last to make me cry.” - Marlon James, Elle From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Overstory and the Oprah's Book Club selection Bewilderment comes Richard Powers's magnificent, multifaceted novel about a supremely gifted—and divided—family, set against the backdrop of postwar America. On Easter day, 1939, at Marian Anderson’s epochal concert on the Washington Mall, David Strom, a German Jewish émigré scientist, meets Delia Daley, a young Black Philadelphian studying to be a singer. Their mutual love of music draws them together, and—against all odds and their better judgment—they marry. They vow to raise their children beyond time, beyond identity, steeped only in song. Jonah, Joseph, and Ruth grow up, however, during the civil rights era, coming of age in the violent 1960s, and living out adulthood in the racially retrenched late century. Jonah, the eldest, “whose voice could make heads of state repent,” follows a life in his parents’ beloved classical music. Ruth, the youngest, devotes herself to community activism and repudiates the white culture her brother represents. Joseph, the middle child and the narrator of this generation-bridging tale, struggles to find himself and remain connected to them both. Richard Powers's The Time of Our Singing is a story of self-invention, allegiance, race, cultural ownership, the compromised power of music, and the tangled loops of time that rewrite all belonging.