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Outsider musicians can be the product of damaged DNA, alien abduction, drug fry, demonic possession, or simply sheer obliviousness. This book profiles dozens of outsider musicians, both prominent and obscure—figures such as The Shaggs, Syd Barrett, Tiny Tim, Jandek, Captain Beefheart, Daniel Johnston, Harry Partch, and The Legendary Stardust Cowboy—and presents their strange life stories along with photographs, interviews, cartoons, and discographies. About the only things these self-taught artists have in common are an utter lack of conventional tunefulness and an overabundance of earnestness and passion. But, believe it or not, they're worth listening to, often outmatching all contenders for inventiveness and originality. A CD featuring songs by artists profiled in the book is also available.
The role of sound and digital media in an information-based society: artists—from Steve Reich and Pierre Boulez to Chuck D and Moby—describe their work. 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 ...
Named the best radio station in America by Rolling Stone magazine four years running, WFMU is considered the alternative radio station. LCD (Lowest Common Denominator), the station's program guide—begun in 1986 as a visual counterpart to WFMU’s oddball programming—was a wicked cocktail of satire, cultural news, alternative history, and provocative artwork that has earned its own devoted cult followers. It ceased publication in 1998 and its back issues have become treasured—and valuable—collector’s items. Dave the Spazz has spent the past twenty years hosting a weekly radio show on WFMU, self-publishing, freelance writing, making artwork, singing in punk-rock bands, and holding down one crummy job after another.
by Irwin Chusid 11 x 10, SC, 180 pages, FC, $34.95 The first collection of the marvelous, mischievous album cover art of Jim Flora (1914-1998), collecting most of his known covers. The book also includes rarely seen illustrations and covers from Columbia's "Coda" trade journal and elsewhere.
Flora was prolific in his commercial work; he created art privately in equal measure and often with more fiendish pleasure. His style is cartoonish, evoking childhood nostalgia and dereliction of adult responsibility. There are clowns and kitty cats, grinning faces and beaming suns. But Flora did not restrain his darker impulses. His montages are crammed with bullets and knives and fang-baring snakes. Muggers run amok, demons frolic with rouged harlots, and Flora's characters suffer that is, are afflicted by the artist with severe disfigurement. The banal and the violent often coexist within inches of each other on the canvas.
There are undercurrents and peripheral taste preferences that are a defining part of our individual and collective cultural experience. Music is no exception. George Plasketes adapts the iconic "A-side/B-side" dichotomy from the 45 r.p.m. for use as a unique conceptual, critical, historical, and cultural framework for exploring and threading together a variety of popular music and media texts. The profiles and perspectives focus on the peripheries; on texts which might be considered "B-sides"”overlooked, underappreciated, and unsung cases, creators, patterns and productions that have unassumingly, but significantly, marked popular culture, music and media during the past 40 years. The unde...
A third collection of amusing nightmares from the demonic wand of Jim Flora: art and artifacts spanning Flora's career, including more from his Columbia Records days, children's book roughs and outtakes, rarely seen cartoon-science illustrations and more.
The Moog synthesizer "bent the course of music forever" Rolling Stone declared. Bob Moog, the man who did that bending, was a lovable geek with Einstein hair and pocket protectors. He walked into history in 1964 when his homemade contraption unexpectedly became a sensation---suddenly everyone wanted a Moog. The Beatles, The Doors, The Byrds, and Stevie Wonder discovered his synthesizer, and it came to be featured in seminal film scores including Apocalypse Now and A Clockwork Orange. The Moog's game-changing sounds saturated 60's counterculture and burst into the disco party in the 70's to set off the electronic dance music movement. Bob had singlehandedly founded the synth industry and beco...
A memoir-in-essays about how skateboarding re-defines space, curates culture, confronts mortality, and affords new perspectives on and off the board Chipping a board—where small pieces of deck and tape break off around the nose and tail—is a natural part of skateboarding. Novice or pro, you’ll see folks riding chipped boards as symbols of their stubborn dedication toward a deck, a toy, and aging bodies that will also reach their inevitable end. In Chipped, José Vadi personalizes and expands upon this symbol. Written after finishing his debut collection Inter State: Essays From California, Vadi used these essays to explore his own empathy in aging, and to elaborate on the impact skateb...
The popularity of cartoon music, from Carl Stalling's work for Warner Bros. to Disney sound tracks and "The Simpsons"' song parodies, has never been greater. This lively and fascinating look at cartoon music's past and present collects contributions from well-known music critics and cartoonists, and interviews with the principal cartoon composers. Here Mark Mothersbaugh talks about his music for "Rugrats," Alf Clausen about composing for "The Simpsons," Carl Stalling about his work for Walt Disney and Warner Bros., Irwin Chusid about Raymond Scott's work, Will Friedwald about "Casper the Friendly Ghost," Richard Stone about his music for "Animaniacs," Joseph Lanza about "Ren and Stimpy," and much, much more.