The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
by Tommy Lee
from HarperEntertainment
The most influential, enduring, and iconic metal band of the 1980's reveals everything a tell-all of epic proportions.
This unbelievable autobiography explores the rebellious lives of four of the most influential icons in American rock history.
Motley Crue was the voice of a barely pubescent Generation X, the anointed high priests of backward-masking pentagram rock, pioneers of Hollywood glam, and the creators of MTV's first "power ballad." Their sex lives claimed celebrities from Heather Locklear to Pamela Anderson to Donna D'Errico. Their scuffles involved everyone from Axl Rose to 2LiveCrew. Their hobbies have included collecting automatic weapons, cultivating long arrest records, pushing the envelope of conceivable drug abuse, and dreaming up backstage antics that would make Ozzy Osbourne blanch with modesty.
Provocatively written and brilliantly designed, this book includes over 100 photos, many never before published, for the most exciting and insightful look ever into the Crue.
The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
by Alex Ross
from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Anyone who has ever gamely tried and failed to absorb, enjoy, and--especially--understand the complex works of Schoenberg, Mahler, Strauss, or even Philip Glass will allow themselves a wry smile reading New Yorker music critic Alex Ross's outstanding The Rest Is Noise. Not only does Ross manage to give historical, biographical, and social context to 20th-century pieces both major and minor, he brings the scores alive in language that's accessible and dramatic.
Take Ross's description of Schoenberg's Second Quartet, "in which he hesitates at a crossroads, contemplating various paths forming in front of him. The first movement, written the previous year, still uses a fairly conventional late-Romantic language. The second movement, by contrast, is a hallucinatory Scherzo, unlike any other music at the time. It contains fragments of the folk song 'Ach, du lieber Augustin'--the same tune that held Freudian significance for Mahler. For Schoenberg, the song seems to represent a bygone world disintegrating; the crucial line is 'Alles ist hin' (all is lost). The movement ends in a fearsome sequence of four-note figures, which are made up of fourths separated by a tritone. In them may be discerned traces of the bifurcated scale that begins Salome. But there is no longer a sense of tonalities colliding. Instead, the very concept of a chord is dissolving into a matrix of intervals." Armed with such a detailed aural roadmap, even a troglodyte--or a heavy metal fan--can explore these pivotal works anew. But it's not all crashing cymbals, honking tubas, and somber Germans stroking their chins. Ross also presents the human dramas (affairs, wars, etc.) behind these sweeping compositions while managing, against the odds, to discuss C-major triads, pentatonic scales, and B-flat dominant sevenths without making our eyes glaze over. And he draws a direct link between the Beatles and Sibelius. It's no surprise that the New York Times named The Rest Is Noise one of the 10 Best Books of 2007. Music nerds have found their most articulate valedictorian. --Kim HughesTrue Norwegian Black Metal
by Peter Beste
from Vice Books
"When we're on the road, all we watch is VBS, and our favorite series is Norwegian Black Metal." (Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters) Documentary photographer Peter Beste has spent the last five years working in the milieu of the Norwegian black metal scene. This scene, with its notorious events of murder, church arson, and self-mythology, is absolutely sealed to outsiders. The international black metal fan base is one of the most devoted, fanatical, and proprietary in the world. Beste's access and insight into this world is unprecedented and has yielded an amazing photographic journey, along with a very popular documentary series on VBS.tv, also available on YouTube. Beste, together with Johan Kugelberg, noted writer, editor, and collector of documentary photography, has brought the images into a hermeneutic narrative that makes for a compelling experience along the lines of Anders Petersen's Café Lehmitz, Ed Van Der Elsken's Love on the Left Bank, or William Klein's Life Is Good and Good for You in New York.
No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York 1976-1980
by Thurston Moore
from Abrams Image
This rarely documented scene was the creative stomping ground of young artists and filmmakers from Jean-Michel Basquiat to Jim Jarmusch as well as the musical genesis for the post-punk explosions of Sonic Youth and is here revealed for a new generation of fans and collectors.
Thurston Moore and Byron Coley have selected 150 unforgettable images, most of which have never been published previously, and compiled hundreds of hours of personal interviews to create an oral history of the movement, providing a never-seen-before exploration and celebration of No Wave.
Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time
by Rob Sheffield
from Three Rivers Press
Mix tapes: We all have our favorites. Stick one into a deck, press play, and you’re instantly transported to another time in your life. For Rob Sheffield, that time was one of miraculous love and unbearable grief. A time that spanned seven years, it started when he met the girl of his dreams, and ended when he watched her die
in his arms. Using the listings of fifteen of his favorite mix tapes, Rob shows that the power of music to build a bridge between people is stronger than death. You’ll read these words, perhaps surprisingly, with joy in your heart and a song in your head—the one that comes to mind when you think of the love of your life.
Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture
from The MIT Press
The groundbreaking mix CD that accompanies this book features Nam Jun Paik, the Dada Movement, John Cage, Sonic Youth, and many other examples of avant-garde music. Most of the CD's content comes from the archives of Sub Rosa, a legendary record label that has been the benchmark for archival sounds since the beginnings of electronic music. (For a complete list of audio credits, see below.)
If Rhythm Science was about the flow of things, Sound Unbound is about the remix--how music, art, and literature have blurred the lines between what an artist can do and what a composer can create. In Sound Unbound, Rhythm Science author Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid asks artists to describe their work and compositional strategies in their own words. These are reports from the front lines on the role of sound and digital media in an information-based society. The topics are as diverse as the contributors: composer Steve Reich offers a memoir of his life with technology, from tape loops to video opera; Miller himself considers sampling and civilization; novelist Jonathan Lethem writes about appropriation and plagiarism; science fiction writer Bruce Sterling looks at dead media; Ron Eglash examines racial signifiers in electrical engineering; media activist Naeem Mohaiemen explores the influence of Islam on hip hop; rapper Chuck D contributes "Three Pieces"; musician Brian Eno explores the sound and history of bells; Hans Ulrich Obrist and Philippe Parreno interview composer-conductor Pierre Boulez; and much more. "Press 'play,'" Miller writes, "and this anthology says 'here goes.'"
Contributors:
David Allenby, Pierre Boulez, Catherine Corman, Chuck D, Erik Davis, Scott De Lahunta, Manuel DeLanda, Cory Doctorow, Eveline Domnitch, Frances Dyson, Ron Eglash, Brian Eno, Dmitry Gelfand, Dick Hebdige, Lee Hirsch, Vijay Iyer, Ken Jordan, Douglas Kahn, Daphne Keller, Beryl Korot, Jaron Lanier, Joseph Lanza, Jonathan Lethem, Carlo McCormick, Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid, Moby, Naeem Mohaiemen, Alondra Nelson, Keith and Mendi Obadike, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Pauline Oliveros, Philippe Parreno, Ibrahim Quraishi, Steve Reich, Simon Reynolds, Scanner aka Robin Rimbaud, Nadine Robinson, Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR), Alex Steinweiss, Bruce Sterling, Lucy Walker, Saul Williams, Jeff E. Winner.
On the CD:
- RadioMentale and Matthew Herbert, "Cool Noises"
- Martyn Bates/Allen Ginsberg, "Once Loved/A Footnote to 'Howl' (DJ Spooky Remix)"
- Jean Cocteau, "Le buste (DJ Spooky Remix)"
- Sun Ra, "Imagination"
- Mikhail/Gertrude Stein, "Untitled in CoF Minor/A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson (DJ Spooky Remix)"
- DJ Spooky vs. Rob Swift, "Scratch Battle"
- Marcel Duchamp/The Master Musicians of Joujouka/RadioMentale, "The Creative Act/Interview with George Heard Hamilton/Boujeloud (Solo Drums)/I Could Never Make That Music Again"
- Raymond Scott, "The Paperwork Explosion"
- Alter Echo/Pamela Z, "Perpetual Next/Pop Titles 'You'"*
- Liam Gillick/ RadioMentale and Aphex Twin, "Sarah (Los Angeles Soundtrack)/I Could Never Make That Music Again"
- James Joyce/Erik Satie, "Eolian Episode/Gnossiene (DJ Spooky Dub Version)"
- Steve Reich, "Reed Phase"
- Shukar/RadioMentale/Raoul Hausmann, "Cika-Laka/Cool Noises/Bbb"
- Augustos de Campos/Bill Laswell/To Rococo Rot, "Dias Dias Dias (Spoken by Caetano Veloso)/Above the Earth/Contacte"
- John Cage, "Rozart Mix"
- Antonin Artaud, "Pour Finir avec le Jugement de Dieu (To Have Done with God's Judgment) (DJ Spooky Remix)"
- DJ Spooky, "One Laptop Theme"
- Susan Deyhim, "The Spilled Cup (DJ Spooky Remix)"
- Raymond Scott, "General Motors: Futurama (Interstitial)"
- Marcel Duchamp/George Lewis and Aki Takase, "Erratum Musical (Score for Three Voices)/Voyage for Three"
- Bill Laswell/René Magritte, "Ghost Dub/Le Surréalisme et les Questions"
- Anthony Braxton and Evan Parker/Pauline Oliveros, "The First Set— Area 4 (Solo)/A Little Noise in the System (Moog System)"
- Bora Yoon, "// (DJ Spooky Remix)"
- Pierre Schaeffer, "Cinqétudes de bruits: Étude violette"
- Daniel Bernard Roumain and Ryuichi Sakamoto, "The Need to Be"**
- Phillip Glass, "Music in Fifths"
- Edgard Varèse, "Poème électronique"
- Iannis Xenakis, "Concret PH"
- Ryoji Ikeda, "One Minute"
- Sonic Youth, "Audience (DJ Spooky Remix)"
- Alter Echo/Ge-te Do-pe, "Aftermath of Creations Dub (in Three Parts)/Dong Lim"
- Terry Riley/Alter Echo, "Dorian Reeds/Aftermath of Creations Dub (in Three Parts)"
- Luigi Russolo/DJ Spooky, "Corale/FTP > Bundle/Conduit 23"
- Fanfare Savale/Vladimir Mayakovsky, "Rumba Lu Georgel/I Know the Power of Words"
- Droma/Trilok Gurtu and Bill Laswell, "Pilgrim's Song (Trala Shepa)/Kala"
- Nam Jun Paik, "Hommage àJohn Cage"
- Morton Subotnick/DJ Spooky, "Mandolin/Acid Bassline"
- The Master Musicians of Joujouka/Hans Arp, "Mali Mal Hal M'Halmaz/Boujeloud (Solo Drums)/Dada-Sprüche"
- Sub Swara/Kurt Schwitters, "Koli Stance/Anna Blume"
- Walter Ruttmann/Troupe from Taschingang, "Week End/Ache Lhamo"
- Raymond Scott, "Bendix 1: The Tomorrow People"
- Martyn Bates/Trinlem, "I Can't Look for You/The Palaces of Gesar's Family (DJ Spooky Remix)"
- Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky, "Incantation for Tape"
- Carsten Nicolai, "Time ... Dot(3)"
- William S. Burroughs and Iggy Pop with Techno Animal, "The Western Land"
*From Pamela Z's A Delay Is Better CD released by Starkland (www.starkland.com).
**"The Need to Be" is from DBR's album etudes4violin&electronix released on Thirsty Ear Recordings.
Special thanks for Editorial Assistance to Roy Christopher.
Classical Music for Dummies
by David Pogue
from For Dummies
In a time when school music classes (if they exist at all) teach their students the finer points of the themes from The Twilight Zone and Jaws instead of real music; when classical radio stations are converted to Lite Rock or switched to a "top 100" classical jukebox format; and when even churches increasingly favor banal "Jesus Is My Boyfriend"-style slop instead of Bach, Mozart, and Vaughn Williams, classical music may legitimately be seen as an endangered cultural species. Enter Scott Speck and David Pogue, who take out the unnecessary mystery, and offer an easy-to-swallow quickie education, ranging from Gregorian chants to contemporary composers such as John Adams and John Corigliano. If you can't tell an oboe from a bassoon, there's also a dandy guide to the instruments of the orchestra, and once you're through that information you'll know the difference between a concerto and a sonata. Best of all is the introduction to music theory, which actually makes a daunting subject seem easy. It's all supported by a helpful enhanced compact disc (it works in your CD-ROM drive; it plays on your stereo's CD player) containing more than an hour of representative musical tidbits from good EMI recordings. Although the tone is unremittingly flippant and the jokes are, for the most part, pretty bad, Classical Music for Dummies is one of the better works in this series, and really does provide a useful reference for a subject too often seen as arcane.
The more you know about classical music, the more you love it. Now, thanks to Classical Music For Dummies, you can achieve a whole new level of insight into both the composers and the compositions that have made classical music one of the great accomplishments of humankind.
Classical Music For Dummies doesn't assume that you have a degree in musicology -- or even that you took a course in music appreciation. Rather, the multimedially gifted David Pogue and renowned conductor Scott Speck explain classical music in terms you can understand, and they describe musical elements so that you can hear them for yourself.
A reference you can dip into at any point, Classical Music For Dummies covers such topics as
- The various forms that classical music takes -- from symphonies to string quartets
- What goes on behind the scenes and on stage to fill a concert hall with great classical music
- How to recognize, by sight and by sound, the many instruments that make up an orchestra
- The nuts and bolts of classical music -- from rhythm to harmonic progression
When We Get to Surf City: A Journey Through America in Pursuit of Rock and Roll, Friendship, and Dreams
by Bob Greene
from St. Martin's Press
In a dazzling and exhilarating display of narrative on-the-road reporting, award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Bob Greene takes readers on an unforgettable American journey of music, memories, and universal longing.
Running away to join the circus is a dream we’re told to put away once we’re no longer young. But, as Bob Greene writes, “just when in our lives we give up on capturing the freedom and bright mornings of our world when it was new, sometimes something happens to keep the sun high in the sky a while longer. Sometimes we find something we weren’t even aware we were looking for."
For fifteen years beginning in the 1990s, Greene stepped into a universe that, out in the country every summer night, is hiding in plain sight: the touring world of the great early rock bands who gave America the car-radio and jukebox music it still loves best. Singing backup with the legendary Jan and Dean as they endlessly crisscross the nation, Greene takes us to football stadiums and minor-league ballparks, to no-name ice cream stands and midnight diners, to back roads and carnival midways as he tells a riveting story of great fame and lingering sorrow, of unexpected friendship and lasting dreams, of the things that keep us going in the face of all the things that threaten to stop us.
Striking chords of recognition and yearning, When We Get to Surf City glistens with cameos by the men and women with whom Greene traveled the United States on his deliriously unlikely journey, including Chuck Berry, Martha and the Vandellas, the Everly Brothers, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Beach Boys, the Monkees, the Kingsmen, James Brown, Lesley Gore, the Drifters, Little Eva, and the Coasters.
All of them—not just the people on the stage, but the people in the audiences, too—are seeking their private versions of the mythical destination Jan and Dean came up with all those years ago: Surf City as the perfect, cloudless place we all believe is out there, if only we can find it.
Hilarious and heartbreaking, moving and brilliant, this is the trip of a lifetime, a travelogue of the heart, accompanied by a thundering guitar chorus of Fender Stratocasters. It is a story destined to touch readers not just today, but for generations to come, as long as the music itself echoes.
A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music
by George E. Lewis
from University Of Chicago Press
Faced with shrinking economic opportunities in Chicago and a segregated music industry, the original members of the AACM found inspiration in the civil rights movement’s call for change through self-determination and collective action. These musicians pooled their individual strengths in a new organization powerfully committed to a forward-thinking approach to musical creation and performance. Evolving a range of experimental methods, from invented instruments and unusual musical scores to improvisation and the early use of computers, the AACM challenged the borders separating classical music and jazz.
Moving from Chicago to New York to Paris, and from founding member Steve McCall’s kitchen table to Carnegie Hall, A Power Stronger Than Itself uncovers a vibrant, multicultural universe and brings to light a major piece of the history of avant-garde music and art.
A History of Western Music
by Donald J. Grout
from W. W. Norton
Renowned for its comprehensive coverage of genres and styles in Western music from antiquity to the present, A History of Western Music has secured its place—through six editions and for almost half a century—as the definitive resource for every musician. In this latest edition, J. Peter Burkholder has renewed and updated the book to suit the ways in which instructors teach and students learn today, all while maintaining the authority and comprehensive coverage that has defined this classic text. In a shift of emphasis, this edition places people making choices at the center of the story. Linking historical and social context directly to musical practice and styles, this edition calls attention to what's important, where it fits, why it matters, and who cares.
+++
