Showing titles in History & Criticism

Silenced on Stage The Censorship and Banning of Opera, Vaudeville, and Broadway Musicals from Shakespeare to Hamilton From the raucous riots over Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring to the fierce backlash against The Book of Mormon, Silenced on Stage takes you on a whirlwind journey through the fascinating history of censorship in theatre and music. In this compelling exploration, Richard Fleischman dives deep into the clashes between powerful authorities and the bold artists who have pushed boundaries and challenged the status quo. Whether it’s religious protests against rock operas, political...

And After All gives the mic to the fans that launched Oasis to stratospheric fame and takes a deep dive into the band’s formation, history, and reunion. Through the lens of the fans who were there for all the songs, feuds, and incredible shows, journalist Melissa Locker examines the path Oasis charted as they cemented their place in modern rock history.

In this volume, you will learn all the secrets and details regarding the conception, recording, and release of the legendary "Clutching at Straws" album by Marillion. The author tells all about the origins of the work, how it was conceived by the band, and also explains its historical context. He makes a meticulous analysis of each track on the album, mentioning its sources of inspiration, revealing details about the recording sessions, and much more. He explains the legacy left by the album and its influence over other artists and also in the world of music. In the end, there a ...

Does the opening "pling pling plinggg" of Bette Midler's "The Rose" fill you with existential dread? Do you cringe at the mere whiff of what Phil Collins is spewing "In the Air Tonight"? Have you ever bolted from a restaurant because Celine Dion's cover of "All By Myself" was threatening to drive you over the edge? Well, turn around, bright eyes because Tom Reynolds is here with I Hate Myself and Want to Die, a laugh-out-loud-till-you're sobbing compendium of the world's most hideously depressing pop songs and a guide to what makes them so heartwrenchingly bad.

The music of 1966 doesn’t have the cachet of some of the other years of that incredible decade. It’s not 1964 with The British Invasion, and the thrill of hearing The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Kinks for the first time, and it’s not 1967 with hippies, Flower Power, ‘All You Need Is Love’ and the psychedelic music explosion, or 1969 with Woodstock, The Rolling Stones’ infamous concert at Altamont or The Beatles’ last live performance on the rooftop of their Apple offices. Maybe nothing in particular about the music of 1966 stands out to you, but I bet you remember many...

It's a big question, and one that has been written about endlessly in an attempt to reveal the "formula" for creating a worldwide, smash hit record. First of all a good song speaks to you. You remember it, even if it's just one really good line.... It fills you with emotions, whether those be sad or happy ones. Then there is something else...it's the way the music was produced and its techniques which hook you in and enhance the listening experience. Inside this book, you will find a timeless blueprint for making smash hit songs.

In Pop Masculinities, author Kai Arne Hansen investigates the performance and policing of masculinity in pop music as a starting point for grasping the broad complexity of gender and its politics in the early 21st century. Drawing together perspectives from critical musicology, gender studies, and adjacent scholarly fields, the book presents extended case studies of five well-known artists: Zayn, Lil Nas X, Justin Bieber, The Weeknd, and Take That.

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's a well-tended garden of Mozart or the thorny thickets on a Schumann page.

Far from being "the quiet one," George Harrison was a writer and arranger of terrific power and beauty, and his guitar playing was fundamental to the Beatles' sound and success. Now fully revised and expanded, this new edition of While My Guitar Gently Weeps: The Music of George Harrison is the most comprehensive evaluation of George Harrison's musical career ever published.

By turns fascinating, funny, and bizarre, this book offers insight into the peculiar choices and idiosyncratic psychologies of hundreds of top musicians from the 1960s to the present. Originally published more than two decades ago to great success, it's been out of print for years and has now been completely updated and expanded to feature dozens of exclusive interviews, including conversations with groups like The Black Keys, The Killers, Twenty One Pilots, Coldplay, Cage the Elephant, and Vampire Weekend.

Jonathan Cott met John Lennon in 1968 and remained friends with him and Yoko Ono until John's death in 1980. He has kept in touch with Yoko since that time, and is one of the few writers who understands her profoundly positive influence on Lennon. This deeply personal book recounts the course of these friendships over the decades and provides an intimate look at two of the most astonishing cultural figures of our time. And what Jonathan Cott has to say will be found nowhere else.

In October 1942, SS guards at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp violently disbanded a rehearsal of a secret Jewish choir led by conductor Rosebery d'Arguto. Many in the group did not live to see morning, and those who survived were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only one of its members survived the Holocaust. Yet their story survives, thanks to Aleksander Kulisiewicz. An amateur musician, he was not Jewish, but became friends with d'Arguto in Sachsenhausen. D'Arguto tasked him with a mission: to save the musical heritage of the victims of the Nazi camps.

From the award-winning author of Bring It On Home: Peter Grant, Led Zeppelin, and Beyond and Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd comes this deeply researched alphabetical biography of Queen and each of its dynamic members. Addressing the phenomenal success of the movie Bohemian Rhapsody, acclaimed music journalist Mark Blake builds on the legend of Queen and their enduring audience appeal.

In 1948, the Orioles, a Baltimore-based vocal group, recorded "It's Too Soon to Know". Combining the sound of Tin Pan Alley with gospel and blues sensibilities, the Orioles saw their first hit reach #13 on the pop charts, thus introducing the nation to vocal rhythm & blues and paving the way for the most successful groups of the 1950s. In the first scholarly treatment of this influential musical genre, Stuart Goosman chronicles the Orioles' story and that of myriad other black vocal groups in the postwar period.

From renowned diplomat and musician András Simonyi - whom Stephen Colbert calls "the only ambassador I know who can shred a mean guitar!" - comes a timely and revealing memoir about growing up behind the Iron Curtain and longing for freedom while chasing the great power of rock and roll. In Rocking Toward a Free World, Simonyi charts the struggle of growing up in 1960s Hungary, a world in which listening to his favorite music was a powerful but furtive endeavor: records were black-market bootlegs, and concerts were held under strict control, even banned....

During fifty years of publishing the “Bible of Rock and Roll,” Jann Wenner recorded a series of interviews that are now regarded among the most important historical documents of rock. From the hubris and pissed-off attitude of Pete Townshend, to the volcano that was John Lennon after the breakup of the Beatles, to Bono, using music to speak to God, these interviews reveal the beating hearts of six creative giants.

Suzi Ronson was working in a Beckenham hair salon in the early seventies when Mrs Jones came in for her weekly shampoo and set. After being introduced to her son David and his wife Angie, Suzi finds herself at the Bowies' bohemian apartment and is soon embroiled in their raucous world. Having crafted his iconic Ziggy Stardust hairstyle, Suzi becomes the only working woman in David's touring party and joins the Spiders from Mars as they perform around the globe.

The ska revival in the UK and the 2 Tone label represented unity of black and white in both the content of the songs, and appearance of the bands. While race may have been central to this declaration, where did gender fit in? Many bands had few, if any, women in their lineup and so women had to do it for themselves. Empowered by punk and impassioned by Jamaican ska and reggae, they took up the microphone, the saxophone, drumsticks. Women demanded their space on the stage and in the studio. Through exclusive interviews with more than 50 women involved in ska in the UK during the ‘70s and ...

In this beautifully crafted book, Freddy Cristobal Dominguez makes a provocative case for Dylan as a historian, offering a deep consideration of the musician's historical influences and practices. Utilizing interviews, speeches, and the close analysis of lyrics and live performances, Bob Dylan in the Attic is the first book to consider Dylan's work from the point of view of historiography.

Low-rise jeans, butterfly clips, The Lizzie McGuire Movie, and Paris Hilton’s nights out. The early 2000s were a time of major moments in fashion, media, celebrity culture, and especially music. The aughts were a particularly fruitful era for female artists—still the only decade in the history of recorded music when women made up more than half the list of highest-grossing performers—and especially pop stars. Artists such as Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, and Beyoncé were leading the charge—their success not only leading to a new respect for female artists, but for pop stardom itself.