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Available for the first time as a traditional paperback, this revised and updated edition contains new and archival interviews with those closest to Chris Bell and the Big Star circle: their friends, family, former bandmates—even fans, exes, classmates, and coworkers. “Bell’s and Big Star’s existence was short, but the wealth of stories and quotes here provides a healthy sustenance for the truth seekers. A top-notch biography.” —San Francisco Book Review The varied cast of voices—many from the band’s hometown of Memphis—comprises all the members of Big Star, including Chris Bell, the iconic Alex Chilton, Andy Hummel, and Jody Stephens. In the following decades after its 197...
Using as its epigraph and unifying principle Luc Sante’s notion that “Every human being is an archeological site,” Field Recordings from the Inside provides a deep and personal examination at the impact of music on our lives. Bonomo effortlessly moves between the personal and the critical, investigating the ways in which music defines our personalities, tells histories, and offers mysterious, often unbidden access into the human condition. The book explores the vagaries and richness of music and music-making—from rock and roll, punk, and R&B to Frank Sinatra, Nashville country, and Delta blues—as well as the work of a diverse group of artists and figures—Charles Lamb, music writer Lester Bangs, painter and television personality Bob Ross, child country musician Troy Hess, and songwriter Greg Cartwright. Mining the often complex natures and shapes of the creative process, Field Recordings from the Inside is a singular work that blends music appreciation, criticism, and pop culture from one of the most critically acclaimed music writers of our time.
The first biography of the artist who “essentially invented indie and alternative rock” (Spin) A brilliant and influential songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist, the charismatic Alex Chilton was more than a rock star—he was a true cult icon. Awardwinning music writer Holly George-Warren’s A Man Called Destruction is the first biography of this enigmatic artist, who died in 2010. Covering Chilton’s life from his early work with the charttopping Box Tops and the seminal power-pop band Big Star to his experiments with punk and roots music and his sprawling solo career, A Man Called Destruction is the story of a musical icon and a richly detailed chronicle of pop music’s evolution, from the mid-1960s through today’s indie rock.
Acid Detroit tells the story of Motor City through its revolutionary music past and present, in order to find the seeds of radical transformation among its ruins. Acid Detroit is an exhilarating, technicolour view of Detroit’s musical and social history from the 1960s to the present day. Redefining the counterculture as a time of Acid Communism, Acid Detroit diverges from most books on the Sixties, which centre on California, to show that Detroit was an unequalled hotbed of radical activism, urban unrest and sonic innovation. Considering Detroit's unique mix of people and cultures and enduring sonic legacies, it covers everything from incendiary garage rock, to European-influenced techno a...
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Paul Collins' memoir covering the early Punk and Power Pop scenes in Los Angeles and San Francisco in the 1970s. Throughout the 1980s with The Beat, and up to the present day.
The history of rock and roll music can be seen in a long arc of Western civilization's struggle for both greater individual expression and societal stability. In the 1960s, the West's relationship with authority ruptured, in part due to the rock revolution. The lessons and implications of this era have yet to be fully grasped. This book examines the key artists, music, and events of the classic rock era--defined here as 1964 to 1980--through a virtual psychoanalysis of the West. Over these years, important truths unfold in the stories of British Invaders, hippies, proto-punks, and more, as well as topics to include drugs, primal scream therapy, the occult, spirituality, and disco and its detractors, to name just a few. Through a narrative that is equal parts entertaining, scholarly, and even spiritual, readers will gain a greater appreciation for rock music, better understand the confusing world we live in today, and see how greater individuality and social stability may be better reconciled moving forward.