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American Hardcore

by Steven Blush George Petros

"American Hardcore sets the record straight about the last great American subculture"-Paper magazineSteven Blush's "definitive treatment of Hardcore Punk" (Los Angeles Times) changed the way we look at Punk Rock. The Sony Picture Classics-distributed documentary American Hardcore premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. This revised and expanded second edition contains hundreds of new bands, thirty new interviews, flyers, a new chapter ("Destroy Babylon"), and a new art gallery with over 125 rare photos and images.

American History Through a Whiskey Glass: How Distilled Spirits, Domestic Cuisine, and Popular Music Helped Shape a Nation

by Harris Cooper

Experience American history like never before with this unique, informative, and fun guide for history buffs, whiskey enthusiasts, folks who like to cook at home, and fans of popular music.American History Through a Whiskey Glass presents a unique perspective on American history. It describes how bourbon and rye whiskey played a role in the most important events in American history, including the voyage of the Mayflower, George Washington&’s failed and successful political campaigns, the Civil War, pioneers moving west, Prohibition (of course), plus many more into the twenty-first century. It does so with descriptions of historical events but also with amusing anecdotes and humorous quotes from the historical figures themselves. The book carefully aligns five elements: a narrative about whiskey&’s role in eight periods of American historydescriptions and tasting notes for American whiskeys that represent distilled spirits in each historical periodtutorials on how whiskey is produced and its numerous varietiesperiod-specific food recipes drawn mostly from historical cookbooksplaylists of the popular music during each period The book gives readers an integrated and entertaining perspective on popular culture in America at different times, revealing how Americans have politicked, drank their native spirits, ate, and sang. But it does more; readers will not only learn about America&’s history, they can experience it through numerous illustrations, whiskey tasting, food, and music. It provides an opportunity for readers to be involved in a truly immersive approach to life-long learning . . . and it&’s fun.

American Interior: The Quixotic Journey of John Evans

by Gruff Rhys

American Interior is a psychedelic historical travelogue from Welsh pop legend Gruff Rhys.In 1792, John Evans, a twenty-two-year-old farmhand from Snowdonia, Wales, travelled to America to discover whether there was indeed, as widely believed, a tribe of Welsh-speaking native Americans still walking the great plains. In 2012, Gruff Rhys set out on an 'investigative concert tour' in the footsteps of John Evans, with concerts in New Orleans, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St Louis, North Dakota and more. American Interior is the story of these journeys. It is also an exploration of how wild fantasies interact with hard history and how myth-making can inspire humans to partake in crazy, vain pursuits of glory, including exploration, war and the creative arts. Gruff Rhys is known around the world for his work as a solo artist as well as singer and songwriter with Super Furry Animals and Neon Neon, and for his collaborations with Gorillaz, Dangermouse, Sparklehorse, Mogwai and Simian Mobile Disco amongst others. The latest album by Neon Neon, Praxis Makes Perfect, based on the life of radical Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, was recently performed as an immersive live concert with National Theatre Wales.

American Junkie

by Tom Hansen

A non-stop trip into one man's land of desperate addicts, failed punk bands, and brushes with sad fame, as he sells drugs during the Seattle grunge years. In American Junkie, Tom Hansen maps his heroin addiction, from the promise of a young life to the prison of a mattress, from budding musician to broken down junkie, drowning in syringes and cigarette butts, shooting heroin into wounds the size of softballs, and ultimately, a ride to a hospital for a six-month stay and a painful self-discovery that cuts down to the bone. Through it all he never really loses his step, never lets go of his smarts, and always projects quintessential American reason, humor, and hope to make a story not only about drugs, but a compelling study of vulnerability and toughness.

American Klezmer: Its Roots and Offshoots

by Mark Slobin

Klezmer,the Yiddish word for a folk instrumental musician, today flourishes in the United States and abroad in the world music and accompany Jewish celebrations. The essays collected in this volume investigate American klezmer: its roots, its evolution, and its spirited revitalization. The contributors offer a wide range of perspectives on the musical, social, and cultural history of klezmer in American life.

American Lonesome: The Work of Bruce Springsteen

by Gavin Cologne-Brookes

American Lonesome: The Work of Bruce Springsteen begins with a visit to the Jersey Shore and ends with a meditation on the international legacy of Springsteen’s writing, music, and performances. Gavin Cologne-Brookes’s innovative study of this popular musician and his position in American culture blends scholarship with personal reflection, providing both an academic examination of Springsteen’s work and a moving account of how it offers a way out of emotional solitude and the potential lonesomeness of modern life. <P><P>Cologne-Brookes proposes that the American philosophical tradition of pragmatism, which assesses the value of ideas and arguments based on their practical applications, provides a lens for understanding the diversity of perspectives and emotions encountered in Springsteen’s songs and performances. Drawing on pragmatist philosophy from William James to Richard Rorty, Cologne-Brookes examines Springsteen’s formative environment and outsider psychology, arguing that the artist’s confessed tendency toward a self-reliant isolation creates a tension in his work between lonesomeness and community. He considers Springsteen’s portrayals of solitude in relation to classic and contemporary American writers, from Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Emily Dickinson to Richard Wright, Flannery O’Connor, and Joyce Carol Oates. As part of this critique, he discusses the difference between escapist and pragmatic romanticism, the notion of multiple selves as played out both in Springsteen’s work and in our perception of him, and the impact of performances both recorded and live. By drawing on his own experiences seeing Springsteen perform—including on tours showcasing the album The River in 1981 and 2016—Cologne-Brookes creates a book about the intimate relationship between art and everyday life. <P><P>Blending research, cultural knowledge, and creative thinking, American Lonesome dissolves any imagined barriers between the study of a songwriter, literary criticism, and personal testimony.

American Mafia: A History of Its Rise to Power

by Thomas Reppetto

"Reppetto's book earns its place among the best . . . he brings fresh context to a familiar story worth retelling." —The New York Times Book Review Organized crime—the Italian American kind—has long been a source of popular entertainment and legend. Now Thomas Reppetto provides a balanced history of the Mafia's rise—from the 1880s to the post-WWII era—that is as exciting and readable as it is authoritative.Structuring his narrative around a series of case histories featuring such infamous characters as Lucky Luciano and Al Capone, Reppetto draws on a lifetime of field experience and access to unseen documents to show us a locally grown Mafia. It wasn't until the 1920s, thanks to Prohibition, that the Mafia assumed what we now consider its defining characteristics, especially its octopuslike tendency to infiltrate industry and government. At mid-century the Kefauver Commission declared the Mafia synonymous with Union Siciliana; in the 1960s the FBI finally admitted the Mafia's existence under the name La Cosa Nostra.American Mafia is a fascinating look at America's most compelling criminal subculture from an author who is intimately acquainted with both sides of the street.

American Music Documentary: Five Case Studies of Ciné-Ethnomusicology

by Benjamin J. Harbert

Documentary filmmakers have been making films about music for a half-century. American Music Documentary looks at five key films to begin to imagine how we might produce, edit, and watch films from an ethnomusicological point of view. Reconsidering Albert and David Maysles’s Gimme Shelter, Jill Godmilow’s Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman, Shirley Clarke’s Ornette: Made in America, D.A. Pennebaker’s and Chris Hegedus’s Depeche Mode: 101, and Jem Cohen’s and Fugazi’s Instrument, Harbert lays the foundations for the study and practice of “ciné-ethnomusicology.” Interviews with directors and rich analysis from the disciplinary perspectives of film studies and ethnomusicology make this book a critical companion to some of the most celebrated music documentaries of the twentieth century.

American Music Librarianship: A Research and Information Guide

by Carol June Bradley

The literature of American music librarianship has been around since the 19th century when public libraries began to keep records of player-piano concerts, significant donations of books and music, and suggestions for housing music. As the 20th century began, American periodicals printed more and more articles on increasingly specialized topics within music studies. Eventually books were developed to aid the music librarian; their publication has continued over the course of nearly a century. This book reflects the great diversity of the literature of music librarianship. The main resources included are items of historical interest, descriptions of individual collections, catalogues of collections, articles describing specific library functions, record-related subjects, bibliographies designed for music library use, literature from Canada and Britain when relevant to U.S. library practices, key discographies, and information on specialized music research. The material is ordered by topic and indexed by author, subject, and library name.

The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity: And the Performance of Personal Identity

by Raymond Knapp

The American musical has long provided an important vehicle through which writers, performers, and audiences reimagine who they are and how they might best interact with the world around them. Musicals are especially good at this because they provide not only an opportunity for us to enact dramatic versions of alternative identities, but also the material for performing such alternatives in the real world, through songs and the characters and attitudes those songs project. This book addresses a variety of specific themes in musicals that serve this general function: fairy tale and fantasy, idealism and inspiration, gender and sexuality, and relationships, among others. It also considers three overlapping genres that are central, in quite different ways, to the projection of personal identity: operetta, movie musicals, and operatic musicals. Among the musicals discussed are Camelot, Candide; Chicago; Company; Evita; Gypsy; Into the Woods; Kiss Me, Kate; A Little Night Music; Man of La Mancha; Meet Me in St. Louis; The Merry Widow; Moulin Rouge; My Fair Lady; Passion; The Rocky Horror Picture Show; Singin' in the Rain; Stormy Weather; Sweeney Todd; and The Wizard of Oz. Complementing the author's earlier work, The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity, this book completes a two-volume thematic history of the genre, designed for general audiences and specialists alike.

American Myths in Post-9/11 Music

by Daniele Cuffaro

After September 11, 2001, the void left following the attack on the Twin Towers in the heart of New York was the visible symbol that there was to be a breaking point with the past. The attacks dramatically changed the everyday lives of the American people and the new devastating landscape led people to seek to restore the certainties that had been so suddenly shattered. In doing this, Americans went back to the historical myths in their culture. This book explores the collective memory and historical American myths like, for example, the myth of the innocent nation and the frontier myth, and shows how some of these nationally considered historical truths have not disappeared, but were indeed exhumed in the music produced post-9/11.

American Negro Songs: 230 Folk Songs and Spirituals, Religious and Secular

by John W. Work

From joyous gospel to deeply felt blues, this wonderful collection contains vintage songs sung and played through the years by black Americans — at work, in church, and for pure entertainment. Included are spirituals, blues, work songs, and a variety of social and dance songs.This important volume was originally compiled in 1940 by Dr. John W. Work, the noted musicologist affiliated with Fisk University and the celebrated Fisk Jubilee Singers. In it, he discusses the origins and history of black American folk music, the influence of slavery and African cultures, and the lyric significance of such much-loved songs as "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," Steal Away to Jesus," "Lord, I Want to Be a Christian," and "John Henry." These informative notes lead up to the heart of the book: the complete words and music for 230 religious and secular songs, including "Study War No More," "Keep Me from Sinking Down," "You May Bury Me in the East," "Rock of Ages," "Go Tell It on the Mountain," and many others.This is an indispensable treasury of music for singers, musicians and all readers seeking a comprehensive sourcebook of black American folk music. It will be equally welcomed at parties, family get-togethers, sing-alongs, church events, and other gatherings where people want to play and sing these classic folk songs that are an integral part of American musical history.

The American Orchestra and Theodore Thomas

by Charles Edward Russell

The history of the American orchestra.<P><P> Pulitzer Prize Winner

American Orchestras in the Nineteenth Century

by John Spitzer

Studies of concert life in nineteenth-century America have generally been limited to large orchestras and the programs we are familiar with today. But as this book reveals, audiences of that era enjoyed far more diverse musical experiences than this focus would suggest. To hear an orchestra, people were more likely to head to a beer garden, restaurant, or summer resort than to a concert hall. And what they heard weren't just symphonic works--programs also included opera excerpts and arrangements, instrumental showpieces, comic numbers, and medleys of patriotic tunes. This book brings together musicologists and historians to investigate the many orchestras and programs that developed in nineteenth-century America. In addition to reflecting on the music that orchestras played and the socioeconomic aspects of building and maintaining orchestras, the book considers a wide range of topics, including audiences, entrepreneurs, concert arrangements, tours, and musicians' unions. The authors also show that the period saw a massive influx of immigrant performers, the increasing ability of orchestras to travel across the nation, and the rising influence of women as listeners, patrons, and players. Painting a rich and detailed picture of nineteenth-century concert life, this collection will greatly broaden our understanding of America's musical history.

American Orchestras in the Nineteenth Century

by John Spitzer

Studies of concert life in nineteenth-century America have generally been limited to large orchestras and the programs we are familiar with today. But as this book reveals, audiences of that era enjoyed far more diverse musical experiences than this focus would suggest. To hear an orchestra, people were more likely to head to a beer garden, restaurant, or summer resort than to a concert hall. And what they heard weren’t just symphonic works—programs also included opera excerpts and arrangements, instrumental showpieces, comic numbers, and medleys of patriotic tunes.This book brings together musicologists and historians to investigate the many orchestras and programs that developed in nineteenth-century America. In addition to reflecting on the music that orchestras played and the socioeconomic aspects of building and maintaining orchestras, the book considers a wide range of topics, including audiences, entrepreneurs, concert arrangements, tours, and musicians’ unions. The authors also show that the period saw a massive influx of immigrant performers, the increasing ability of orchestras to travel across the nation, and the rising influence of women as listeners, patrons, and players. Painting a rich and detailed picture of nineteenth-century concert life, this collection will greatly broaden our understanding of America’s musical history.

American Popular Music

by David Lee Joyner

This text provides an overview of the four major areas of American contemporary music: jazz, rock, country, and musical theater. Each genre is approached chronologically with the emphasis on the socio-cultural aspects of the music. Readers will appreciate Joyner's engaging writing style and come away with the fundamental skills needed to listen critically to a variety of popular music styles.

American Popular Music: New Approaches to the Twentieth Century

by Rachel Rubin Jeffrey Melnick

Designed as a broad introductory survey, and written by experts in the field, this book examines the rise of American music over the 20th century - the period in which that music came into its own and achieved unprecedented popularity. Beginning with a look at music as a business, 11 essays explore a variety of popular musical genres, including Tin Pan Alley, blues, jazz, country, gospel, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, folk, rap, and Mexican American corridos. Reading these essays, we come to see that the forms created by one group often appeal to, and are in turn influenced by, other groups - across lines of race, ethnicity, class, gender, region and age. The chapters speak to one another, arguing for the primacy of such concepts as minstrelry, urbanization, hybridity and crossover as the most powerful tools for understanding American popular music. Moving beyond outdated music-industry categories and misleading genre labels, while acknowledging the complexities of the market, the book recovers and reinforces the essential blackness of much popular music - even a presumably white form like country and western.

American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3

by Larry Starr Christopher Waterman

Explore the rich terrain of American popular music with the most complete, colorful, and authoritative introduction of its kind. In the fifth edition of their best-selling text, American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3, Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman provide a unique combination of cultural and social history with the analytical study of musical styles.

American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy To Mp3

by Larry Starr Christopher Waterman

In American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3, Second Edition, Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman examine popular music in the United States from its beginnings into the 21st century, offering a comprehensive look at the music, the cultural history of the times, and the connections between them. Using well-chosen examples, insightful commentaries, and an engaging writing style, this text traces the development of jazz, blues, country, rock, Motown, hip-hop, and other popular styles,highlighting the contributions of diverse groups to the creation of distinctly American styles. It combines an in-depth treatment of the music itself--including discussions of stylistic elements and analyses of musical examples--with solid coverage of the music's attendant historical, social, and cultural circumstances. The authors incorporate strong pedagogy including numerous boxed inserts on significant individuals, recordings, and intriguing topics; coverage of early American popular music; and a rich illustration program. Detailed listening charts explain the most important elements of recordings discussed at length in the text. The charts are complemented by two in-text audio CDs and--new to this edition--an iMix published at iTunes, which makes most of the songs immediately available to students and instructors. Features of the Second Edition * Integrates full color throughout * Provides more coverage of women artists, with new material on women in rock 'n' roll inChapter 8 and a box on Queen Latifah in Chapter 14 * Reorganizes the discussion of post-1970s music: disco is now included with mainstream 70s pop, while hip-hop is treated in two chapters (12 and 14) in order to emphasize its significance and diversity * Adds new material on the recent alternative country music explosion * Includes new developments in music technology in the thoroughly revised concluding chapter * Offers revised and more vivid visual elements, including more than 100 new photos (most in full color) and an illustrated timeline * Provides redesigned listening guides, enhanced by an iMix published at iTunes (accessible at www. oup. com/us/popmusic) * Supplemented by a Companion Website at www. oup. com/us/popmusic (containing both student and instructor resources) and an Instructor's Manual and a Computerized Test Bank on CD * FREE with the purchase of this book: a 6-month subscription to Grove Music Online (www. grovemusic. com)--a $180 value Remarkably accessible,American Popular Music, Second Edition, is ideal for courses in American Popular Music, the History of Popular Music, Popular Music in American Culture, and the History of Rock 'n' Roll. Its welcoming style and warm tone will captivate readers, encouraging them to become more critically aware listeners of popular music.

American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3

by Larry Starr Christopher Waterman Brad Osborn

Explore the rich terrain of American popular music with the most complete introduction of its kind. With the sixth edition of the bestselling text American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3, Starr and Waterman help students hear more in the music around them with a cultural and social history of popular music.

The American Song Treasury: 100 Favorites

by Theodore Raph

". . . besides innumerable good old tunes running in our heads, [there's] a sense of having actually lived in the years [covered by] this book." -- The International MusicianMusic has always played an important part in American life--from the hymns sung in colonial days, to partisan songs that supported independence, and war songs that boosted morale. Immigration, westward movement and industrialization all helped contribute to America's musical archives. This outstanding collection of 100 all-time favorite songs offers an unbeatable combination: the music and lyrics of well-known tunes in easy-to-sing keys, together with equally entertaining background information on each song. Assembled by noted composer, arranger and musical director Theodore Raph, this impressive volume spans 300 years--from the haunting strains of Greensleeves to songs that reached new peaks of popularity in the 1950s (He's Got the Whole World in His Hand).Perfect for party sing-alongs or for one's own enjoyment, these appealing songs all made past his parades. Yankee Doodle was "on the charts" during the Revolutionary War; Clementine and Sweet Betsy from Pike were widely hummed, sung, whistled and played in the mid-nineteenth century. She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain and Wabash Cannonball heralded the era of transcontinental railroad construction; and regional songs such as My Old Kentucky Home, On the Banks of the Wabash, and Home on the Range became nationwide favorites.Easy-to-play piano accompaniments, guitar chords and complete lyrics make these familiar melodies ideal ice-breakers on picnics, boating excursions, camping trips and a host of other group activities. Because they're in the public domain, these tunes are also desirable for professional and commercial use. (No permission or royalty payments necessary!) Singers, pianists, students, teachers -- songsters at all levels of expertise -- will be delighted with these musical moments from bygone eras.

The American Symphony (Routledge Revivals)

by Neil Butterworth

First published in 1998, this volume is the first book to focus on the American symphony. Neil Butterworth surveys the development of the symphony in the United States from early European influences in the last century to the present day, and asks why American composers have shown such allegiance to a musical form which their European contemporaries appear to have discarded. An overview of the growth of musical societies in America during the eighteenth century and the establishment of the first professional orchestras during the early part of the nineteenth century is followed by chronological analyses of the works of those composers who have played important parts in the progress of symphony in the United States, from Charles Ives, Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, to contemporary figures such as William Bolcom and John Harbison. Complete with a comprehensive catalogue of symphonies and an extensive discography, this book is an indispensable reference work.

Americana: The Kinks, the Riff, the Road: The Story

by Ray Davies

The Kinks singer recounts and reflects on his travels in America: “This is no tired rock story but something far more profound, funny, and disturbing.” —The Irish TimesAs a boy in postwar England, legendary Kinks singer/songwriter Ray Davies fell in love with America—its movies and music, and its culture of freedom, fed his imagination. Then, as part of the British Invasion, he toured the US with the Kinks during one of the most tumultuous eras in recent history—until the Kinks were banned from performing there from 1965-69. Many tours and trips later, while living in New Orleans, he experienced a transformative event: the shooting (a result of a botched robbery) that nearly took his life. In Americana, Davies tries to make sense of his long love-hate relationship with the country that both inspired and frustrated him. From his quintessentially English perspective as a Kink, Davies—with candor and humor—takes us on a very personal road trip through his life and storied career as a rock star, and reveals what music, fame, and America really mean to him. Some of the most fascinating characters in recent pop culture make appearances, from the famous to the perhaps even-more-interesting behind-the-scenes players. The book also includes photos from Davies’s own collection and the band’s archive.“The chapters on the New Orleans shooting [are] astonishing, really riveting.” —The New York Post“Davies is candid and honest about his personal and creative struggles.” —The New York Times

Americana Portrait Sessions

by Jeff Fasano

Americana Portrait Sessions is the first photography book to take a comprehensive view of contemporary Americana music. The collection features intimate portraits that reveal the strength, heart, and soul of nearly two hundred great artists from the big tent that is Americana music, all shot through the expert lens of Jeff Fasano. Fasano's unparalleled access to Americana artists like Sheryl Crow, Rhiannon Giddens, Vince Gill, Keb' Mo', Judy Collins, John Oates, The Avett Brothers, The McCrary Sisters, Lucinda Williams, Margo Price, Blind Boys of Alabama, and Kris Kristofferson gives Americana Portrait Sessions the kind of authority that comes from true reach into the breadth of the genre. But this collection is as important for the artists few fans know as for the ones with successful careers behind them. While the book champions the diversity of race, gender, sexuality, and age inherent in Americana music, it also spans career arcs to bring lesser-known acts into the spotlight.Americana Portrait Sessions brings you backstage to the greenrooms and quiet corners where artists like The War and Treaty, Jewel, Jason Isbell, and The Wooten Brothers aren't just artists performing, but people hanging out.

The Americana Revolution: From Country and Blues Roots to the Avett Brothers, Mumford and Sons, and Beyond (Roots of American Music: Folk, Americana, Blues, and Country)

by Michael Scott Cain

Americana is a music that defies definition. It isn’t rock, although it does encompass rock. It isn’t folk, but folk is there. It isn’t Celtic, but it is woven with Celtic threads. It is a blend of forms, music that draws on a wide range of influences. Gathering these many genres together, Americana continually reinvents itself and actively tells the story of its origins and its future. <p><p> The Americana Revolution: From Country and Blues Roots to the Avett Brothers, Mumford & Sons, and Beyond is an informal social history that describes Americana as both a musical genre and a movement, showing what it is, where it came from, and where it is going. Musician and historian Michael Scott Cain examines how the idea of genre, especially Americana, affects the creation and consumption of music. He tries to discern the formulas of this slippery genre and seeks out the places where artists have broken or bent those formulas in the name of creativity. Through anecdotes and interviews, Cain provides a firsthand view into the creation of Americana to clarify how the genre can be categorized and defined. <p><p> Through the stories of its creators both long gone and new to the scene, Americana music comes alive as a diverse melting pot of creative genius. With this book, Cain grants music lovers from all backgrounds an unparalleled view into the future of a music that embraces new influences but never forgets its roots.

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