Showing titles in History & Criticism

Since its launch in late 1992, the BBC’s ‘Later….with Jools Holland’ has been widely regarded as the world’s foremost music programme, showcasing a huge variety of bands, singers and musicians in a live performance setting. Now in its 50th series ‘Later…’ has broadcasted over 300 episodes. The book will be a definitive, celebratory oral history of the show—and the last three decades of music more generally—featuring interviews with many of those who have performed over its quarter century.

The Show That Never Ends is the behind-the-scenes story of the extraordinary rise and fall of progressive ("prog") rock, epitomized by such classic, chart-topping bands as Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, and Emerson Lake & Palmer, and their successors Rush, Styx, and Asia. With inside access to all the key figures, Washington Post national reporter David Weigel tells the story with the gusto and insight prog rock's fans (and its haters) will relish.

The Grateful Dead rose to greatness under the inspired leadership of guitarist Jerry Garcia, but the band very nearly died along with him. When Garcia passed away suddenly in 1995, the remaining band members experienced full crises of confidence and identity. So long defined by Garcia's vision for the group, the surviving "Core Four", as they came to be called, were reduced to strained relationships, and catastrophic business decisions. It would take 20 years before relationships were mended enough for the Grateful Dead as fans remembered them to once again take the stage.

By the early 1960s nearly everybody paying attention to country music agreed that George Jones was the greatest country singer of all time. After taking honky-tonk rockers like “White Lightning” all the way up the country charts, he revealed himself to be an unmatched virtuoso on “She Thinks I Still Care,” thus cementing his status as a living legend. That’s where the trouble started.

West Midlands 1980s, home to heavy metal. Black Sabbath and Judas Priest are household names, but over the smoking chimneys and factory yards, something new and equally ugly forms.... "Grebo" was a media-constructed music genre that even today sends a shudder down the spines of discerning music fans and critics. A homegrown proto-grunge, grebo was a British phenomenon that drew on an eclectic range of influences, from punk, '60s garage, and psychedelia, through to '70s heavy rock and thrash metal. It foreshadowed rave culture and was steeped in class politics.

When Dave Hickey was 12, he rode the surfer's dream: the perfect wave. And, like so many things in life we long for, it didn't quite turn out - he shot the pier and dashed himself against the rocks of Sunset Cliffs in Ocean Beach, which just about killed him. Fortunately, for Hickey and for us, he survived, and continues to battle, decades into a career as one of America's foremost critical iconoclasts, a trusted, even cherished no-nonsense voice commenting on the all-too-often nonsensical worlds of art and culture.

From Mozart to Mendelssohn, this comprehensive guide to classical music history and classical music biography is the perfect latest addition to the best-selling Big Ideas series. Easy to understand and clear to follow, this history of classical music explores and explains music theory and the impact of seminal pieces, while also providing fascinating stories about the lives of crucial composers and performers. Including an insightful foreword by Katie Derham, The Classical Music Book analyses more than 90 works by famous composers.

Songs that sell the most copies become hits, but some of those hits become something more—iconic recordings that not only inspire a generation but also change the direction of music. In Anatomy of 55 More Songs, based on his column for the Wall Street Journal, music journalist and historian Marc Myers tells the story behind fifty-five rock, pop, R&B, country, and soul-gospel hits through intimate interviews with the artists who wrote and recorded them.

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.

The '90s was the decade when British culture reclaimed its position at the artistic centre of the world. Not since the 'Swinging Sixties' had art, comedy, fashion, film, football, literature and music interwoven into a blooming of national self-confidence. It was the decade of Lad Culture and Girl Power, of Blur vs Oasis. When fashion runways shone with British talent, Young British Artists became household names, football was 'coming home' and British film went worldwide.

The story of two outsiders and obsessives whose collision prompted an evangelistic alliance on the furthest frontiers of underground music. Steve Davis first met Kavus Torabi - guitarist with Gong, Guapo, Cardiacs and Knifeworld - in the mid-2000s at a gig by French underground rock legends Magma. Over the next few years, this unlikely duo's shared affinity for visionary psychedelic music would become the foundation of not only a firm friendship, but also the most infectiously inclusive broadcasting style since the much-mourned death of John Peel.

Paul Morley had stopped being surprised by modern pop music and found himself retreating into the sounds of artists he loved when, as an emerging music journalist in the '70s, he wrote for NME. But not wishing to give in to dreary nostalgia, endlessly circling back to the bands he wrote about in the past, he went searching for something new, rare and wondrous - and found it in classical music.

January 1970: the Beatles assemble one more time to put the finishing touches on Let It Be; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are wrapping up Déjà Vu; Simon and Garfunkel are unveiling Bridge Over Troubled Water; James Taylor is an upstart singer-songwriter who's just completed Sweet Baby James. Over the course of the next twelve months, their lives---and the world around them---will change irrevocably.

Music journalists Dean Budnick and Josh Baron chronicle the behind-the-scenes history of the modern concert industry. Filled with entertaining rock-and-roll anecdotes about The Rolling Stones, The Grateful Dead, Pearl Jam, and more - and charting the emergence of players like Ticketmaster, StubHub, Live Nation, and Outbox - Ticket Masters will transfix every concertgoer who wonders just where the price of admission really goes. This edition has an updated epilogue that covers recent industry developments.

No singer has been more mythologized and more misunderstood than jazz legend Billie Holiday, who helped to create much of the mystique herself with her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues - and this authentic biography sets the record straight.

Chances are you've heard Handel's Messiah at least once, if not many times. Maybe you've even performed it, as have countless musicians around the world. After all, it's probably one of the best-loved, and certainly one of the best-known, works in the standard repertoire. But if you think you know all there is to know about the great composers famous oratorio, think again. For example, it may surprise you to learn that: Handel's first impulse to compose the work came not from religious or even musical inspiration. It had a whole lot more to do with money.

One-time manager of the Yardbirds, Marc Bolan, Japan, Ultravox, Asia, Wham!, and many others, Simon Napier-Bell recollects the 1960s in all its excess and flamboyance. These are frank and scurrilous tales of sex, drugs, and famous stars, encompassing people such as Keith Moon, John Lennon, the Bee Gees, Robert Stigwood, Brian Epstein, the Yardbirds, Marc Bolan, and just about everyone else who was there.

This is the impassioned and exhilarating story of the composers who dared to challenge the conventional world of classical music in the twentieth century. Traversing the globe from Ethiopia and the Philippines to Mexico, Jerusalem, Russia and beyond, journalist, critic and BBC Radio 3 broadcaster Kate Molleson tells the stories of ten figures who altered the course of musical history, only to be side-lined and denied recognition during an era that systemically favoured certain sounds—and people—over others.

That Thin, Wild Mercury Sound is the definitive treatment of Bob Dylan's magnum opus, Blonde on Blonde, not only providing the most extensive account of the sessions that produced the trailblazing album but also setting the record straight on much of the misinformation that has surrounded the story of how the masterpiece came to be made. Including many new details and eyewitness accounts, as well as keen insight into the Nashville cats who helped Dylan reach rare artistic heights, it explores the lasting impact of rock's first double album.

As a pioneering rock journalist for Hit Parader, Vogue, Saturday Review, and other publications, Ellen Sander had a backstage pass to the hottest music scenes of the 1960s. In this feast of juicy anecdotes and keen social commentary, she draws upon her professional and personal experiences to chronicle pop culture's highs and lows during the turbulent decade. Join her for weird and wild road trips with companions ranging from Yippies to the members of Led Zeppelin.