The most familiar format of electronic dance music is the DJ set. Performed live with turntables, headphones, twelve-inch vinyl records, and a mixing board, these performances are largely improvised, evolving in response to the demands of a particular situation through interaction with a dancing audience. In Playing with Something that Runs, author Mark J. Butler draws on extensive interviews with musicians in their studios to provide an in-depth look at this fascinating and unique genre of popular music.

The first music-driven analysis of electronic dance music.

My Memories of John Hartford is a memoir about author Bob Carlin's years working alongside singer, songwriter, banjoist, and fiddler John Hartford (1937-2001). Throughout his short life, Hartford was a hit tunesmith, festival headliner, and godfather of newgrass music. He also made contributions to the film and television industry as a star in The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour and helped create the soundtrack for O Brother, Where Art Thou? Carlin and Hartford first met when Carlin interviewed the entertainer for Fresh Air with Terry Gross. From this first meeting over microphones developed a sixteen-year affiliation. Six years into their friendship, a working collaboration grew between the two. Carlin first accompanied John Hartford on several albums, eventually becoming his project manager for audio and video recordings. Finally, Carlin was recruited into John Hartford's last Stringband, for which he also served as the de facto road manager and right-hand guy. My Memories of John Hartford opens with an overview of the years before Hartford and Carlin's friendship, then details the last fifteen years of John Hartford's life. Included are in-depth descriptions of Hartford's lifestyle, as well as his philosophies about music, performing, recording, and living as he expressed them to the author or to those around him, with some road stories thrown in for good measure. And, those last fifteen years of his short life, while tempered by available information, are viewed here through the impressionist lenses of the author's own experience.

How do we reclaim our innate enchantment with the world? And how can we turn our natural curiosity into a deep, abiding love for knowledge? Frank Oppenheimer, the younger brother of the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, was captivated by these questions, and used his own intellectual inquisitiveness to found the Exploratorium, a powerfully influential museum of human awareness in San Francisco, that encourages play, creativity, and discovery—all in the name of understanding. In this elegant biography, K. C. Cole investigates the man behind the museum with sharp insight and deep sympathy. The Oppenheimers were a family with great wealth and education, and Frank, like his older brother, pursued a career in physics. But while Robert was unceasingly ambitious, and eventually came to be known for his work on the atomic bomb, Frank’s path as a scientist was much less conventional. His brief fling with the Communist Party cost him his position at the University of Minnesota, and he subsequently spent a decade ranching in Colorado before returning to teaching. Once back in the lab, however, Frank found himself moved to create something to make the world meaningful after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was inspired by European science museums, and he developed a dream of teaching Americans about science through participatory museums. Thus was born the magical world of the Exploratorium, forever revolutionizing not only the way we experience museums, but also science education for years to come. Cole has brought this charismatic and dynamic figure to life with vibrant prose and rich insight into Oppenheimer as both a scientist and an individual.

(Applause Books). For six decades, Harold Clurman illuminated our artistic, social, and political awareness in thousands of reviews, essays, and lectures. His work appeared indefatigably in The Nation, The New Republic, The London Observer, The New York Times, Harper's, Esquire, New York Magazine , and more. The Collected Works of Harold Clurman captures over six hundred of Clurman's encounters with the most significant events in American theatre as well as his regular passionate embraces of dance, music, art and film. This chronological epic offers the most comprehensive view of American theatre seen through the eyes of our most extraordinary critic. 1102 pages, hardcover.