Not just the die-hard fans and collectors of vinyl recordings will be interested in this new book by Paul E. Winters. Since actually the whole idea of conserving the products of popular culture (which includes recorded sound and music) is carefully examined here. This goes along with analysis of the marketing ideas and promises used […]
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Category: B. R. Music
The Who and Philosophy by Rocco Gennaro and Casey Harison (eds.) (2016)
According to the editors, this is the first study of some philosophical aspects that are connected with the rock band The Who (while there already are many books that deal with meaning and criticism in the lyrics and works of other famous pop stars). Naturally, all the authors share a common admiration for the band […]
Devil’s Music, Holy Rollers and Hillbillies: How America Gave Birth to Rock and Roll by James A. Cos
What historically led to the rise of American teenage youth culture and paved the way for rock’n’roll is the subject of James Cosby’s latest book. As examined against the subcultural background of post-war America, and the arrival of new musical impulses from African American culture, teenager’s unknown struggles for autonomy in an altogether anxious and […]
Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll by Peter Guralnick (2015)
When one of the best music writers around publishes a book on one of the most important producers/talent-scouts/music explorers ever, the result should be nothing but brilliant. And it actually is. Peter Guralnick must not be introduced, he wrote many excellent books on American music and its respective history, rooted and connected to the American […]
Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America by Jesse Jarnow (2016)
Psychedelic drugs, most prominently LSD, can be credited for having changed Americans and American culture forever. Hardly anything else in the last 60 years has had such a strong influence on American culture as a whole, meaning it had the power to influence the arts (in particular, music), politics, spirituality, technology and naturally a high […]
Rock ‘N’ Film. Cinema’s Dance With Popular Music by David E. James (2016)
While already in the 1940s the Hollywood musical artistically integrated film, acting, dancing and singing, it also had another very important feature. “With sound, the movies had become the major means of disseminating popular songs, both those composed for Broadway musicals that were subsequently filmed and those written by the studio’s own teams of lyricists.” […]
Ralph Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music by Barry Mazor (2015)
This very musical biography is the classical blueprint for a music biopic or future TV series, although this has not yet been realized by the film industry. Mazor’s extensive research project on music marketer and Okeh Records producer Ralph Peer is the exciting story of a young clerk working both in shipping and in his […]
Anxiety Muted. American Film Music … by Stanley C. Pelkey and Anthony Bushard (eds.) (2015)
In this volume the thirteen contributors research how in audiovisual media of the 1950s and 1960s (TV and cinema), the modern anxieties about conformity, urbanization, gender and family were represented audibly, that is, in sound of any kind or the lack thereof. This could be the soundtrack, music used in the media, but also all […]
Savage Preservation: The Ethnographic Origins of Modern Media Technology by Brian Hochman (2014)
When technology and ethnographic curiosity meet, the result often is a huge body of data – mostly consisting of recordings and data stored in all varieties of the current technical standards. In five chapters, each one quite enthralling, Brian Hochman elaborates on various researchers, field studies and vanishing cultures, with subjects as Plains Indian sign […]