Jolly Herring: 77 Songs Folk and Pop (Classroom Music)
Customer Review: WARNING - NO MUSIC IN THIS EDITION
I bought this book for someone who wanted to learn the songs in it. Unfortunately, it only contains the words. The other review for this book, I now realise, is for the spiral bound edition which contains the music, tabs etc., but this paperback edition doesn’t. I’m sure the words might be useful in a classroom environment, where the teacher has the master copy, but is of no use if you want to teach yourself the songs.

Sadly, the spiral bound version is no longer available. Please be careful not to assume, like I did, that this is a direct re-print. It isn’t!

Customer Review: Join the Herring Inn for a toast to folk and pop!
A fantastic anthology filled with your good old sea shanties, folk songs and pop memories with inspiring (and light-hearted) illustrations by Roy Bentley.
Join Mr. Herring, his wife and their customers, for an old sing-song around the piano: songs from ‘Right Said Fred’ and ‘Hole in the ground’ to ‘Football Crazy’, ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ and ‘The Drunken Sailor’…77 songs old and new.

Compiled, I think, for school children, I believe this to be an excellent and rewarding recourse for your upper-primary and lower secondary schools singing. Especially for your community groups!
A&C Black has certainly something to sing and dance about, isn’t that right Mr. Herring?

-

Read more..

The Velvet Underground (Icons of Pop Music)
Customer Review: Are the Velvets as serious as this book? Yes.
I’ve collected all the Velvets literature that I know exists and yet I found this book to be a fresh take on the band that made New York cool. There are so many angles to consider that you begin to wonder how such a complex group like the Velvets could produce something so simple as Sister Ray. This book explains it. I had to check out some things but I found them to be right, and there are pages of footnotes that are really fascinating in themselves. There’s some annoying stuff - was Nico really so witty? - and I don’t get the ending, which is too smart for the likes of me, but on the whole it’s a great ride, like Lou Reed’s ‘Heroin’.

Customer Review: The Velvets. A serious Witts-ism
It must be a near impossible brief to write something aimed at both music undergrads and the `general reader’, which this book claims to do but I think Richard Witts pretty much manages to pull it off. `The Velvet Underground’ is the first in a series of books on pop icons, (Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and others are to follow) which not only examines the musical, social and cultural influences on `The Velvets’ but which proves to be at one and the same time a downright enjoyable read.

Although set against the background of Manhattan’s down town drug culture, this is no seedy romp through the under belly of the 1960s New York music scene. This is a serious book in which just about every aspect of the band’s genesis, demise and subsequent influence on punk, post punk and rock music is covered. Each Velvet in turn is subjected to detailed scrutiny in terms of background, his/her gravitation to New York City, musical interests and experiences, influences felt, and contribution to the band and its radical sound-world.

Cale’s Experimentalism and his association with the avant-gardist La Monte Young and The Theatre of Eternal Youth, probably receives the most overtly academic analysis, but Reed, Morrison, Tucker, Nico, Warhol and Morrissey are also fully scrutinized in a clear, cogent and well argued challenge to much of the myth and hyperbole which has grown up around this `confluence of misfits’ (Witts).

Serious it might be, but anecdotes a-plenty and some sharp comments stop it slipping into too-dry academic commentary. (There’s a very funny Witts-ism following a Nico quote which I won’t reveal. You can read it for yourself.) So, as long as the general reader who picks up this book has a somewhat serious interest in music or The Velvets, I doubt he will be disappointed. And if the undergrads ever get around to opening the cover, even they might come away having learned something pertinent

-

Continue …

Listening to Popular Music: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love “Led Zeppelin” (Tracking Pop): Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love “Led Zeppelin” (Tracking Pop)

-

Usenet Spreadsheet Quantifies Pop Music History with Hard Numbers …

Words and Music: A History of Pop in the Shape of a City
Customer Review: The music is the star, even if he probably is the best rock writer of all time
Possibly the greatest rock writer of all time, possibly the natural heir to Wittgenstein, possibly the greatest book ever written about Pop music.

Through a car ride with an image of Kylie and a collection of lists Paul Morley, former NME journalist and cultural impresario, charts the progress and connections found in popular music over the last four decades. Paying particular attention to the leftfield and the near unknown, Morley not only directs us to the music we either love or should love, he also shows us how to best appreciate this musical menagerie and goes further than most in depicting the importance and purpose of this music in the listeners life.

Morley is an engrossing and eloquent writer gripping the reader on an unconventional journey through the city of music with an engaging array of lists, footnotes, and details of travels with a Kylie avatar.

Customer Review: Can’t get it out of my head
Gives you a fresh pair of ears in order to see the world with.
If you’ve ever been transported somewhere else by music then this book will do the literary equivalent.
Read it.

-

Read more..

The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock (Cambridge Companions to Music)

-

Read more..

Read more..

Jolly Herring: 77 Songs Folk and Pop (Classroom Music)
Customer Review: WARNING - NO MUSIC IN THIS EDITION
I bought this book for someone who wanted to learn the songs in it. Unfortunately, it only contains the words. The other review for this book, I now realise, is for the spiral bound edition which contains the music, tabs etc., but this paperback edition doesn’t. I’m sure the words might be useful in a classroom environment, where the teacher has the master copy, but is of no use if you want to teach yourself the songs.

Sadly, the spiral bound version is no longer available. Please be careful not to assume, like I did, that this is a direct re-print. It isn’t!

Customer Review: Join the Herring Inn for a toast to folk and pop!
A fantastic anthology filled with your good old sea shanties, folk songs and pop memories with inspiring (and light-hearted) illustrations by Roy Bentley.
Join Mr. Herring, his wife and their customers, for an old sing-song around the piano: songs from ‘Right Said Fred’ and ‘Hole in the ground’ to ‘Football Crazy’, ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ and ‘The Drunken Sailor’…77 songs old and new.

Compiled, I think, for school children, I believe this to be an excellent and rewarding recourse for your upper-primary and lower secondary schools singing. Especially for your community groups!
A&C Black has certainly something to sing and dance about, isn’t that right Mr. Herring?

-

IMRAN.COM - Imran Anwar - IMRAN.TV - New Server New WebHost

Idolator, All About the Music… If Only It Were

Pop Music: The Text Book

-

A BRIEF HISTORY OF POP AND ROCK MUSIC IN THE 1960'S

Inside the Music of Brian Wilson: The Songs, Sounds, and Influences of the Beach Boys’ Founding Genius: The Songs, Sounds, and Influences of a Pop Legend

-

Anti Pop Music Festival 2007

Open Directory - Arts: Music: Anti-Music: Pop

Words and Music: A History of Pop in the Shape of a City
Customer Review: The music is the star, even if he probably is the best rock writer of all time
Possibly the greatest rock writer of all time, possibly the natural heir to Wittgenstein, possibly the greatest book ever written about Pop music.

Through a car ride with an image of Kylie and a collection of lists Paul Morley, former NME journalist and cultural impresario, charts the progress and connections found in popular music over the last four decades. Paying particular attention to the leftfield and the near unknown, Morley not only directs us to the music we either love or should love, he also shows us how to best appreciate this musical menagerie and goes further than most in depicting the importance and purpose of this music in the listeners life.

Morley is an engrossing and eloquent writer gripping the reader on an unconventional journey through the city of music with an engaging array of lists, footnotes, and details of travels with a Kylie avatar.

Customer Review: Can’t get it out of my head
Gives you a fresh pair of ears in order to see the world with.
If you’ve ever been transported somewhere else by music then this book will do the literary equivalent.
Read it.

-

ASCAP Celebrates 25 Years of Honoring Pop Music's Top Music …

“Top of the Pops”: Mishaps, Miming and Music
Customer Review: BUY IT!
If you’re looking, then you’ll love it. Made me wonder if the real reason for TOTP’s demise was trying to compete with MTV, Later With Jools Holland et al - when instead they should have been trading on irony and nostalgia, re-hiring DLT, Paul Burnett and Jimmy Savile, putting together a new all-female dance troupe, and going deliberately camp and trashy…

Customer Review: ‘Wonderful, Memory Filled Fest For Fans’
In July 2006 the very last edition of Top Of The Pops was aired. For me it was a very sad day and it felt somehow as if by losing the programme something fundamental about who I am and what I’d become was dying. In truth, the end had been coming for some time and the show had simply become outdated by the arrival of the internet generation and the birth of MTV and the like. Still, If you felt as strongly as I did and were worried by the fact, you will love this book which is a fitting and worthy monument to the lifetime of the show. Without giving too much away (I really don’t want to dilute the enjoyment of reading this one bit for you!) the text is written with an amazing amount of affection for the programme and Ian Gittins has interviewed and used quotes from hundreds of the shows stars over the years to help tell his story. Full of fantastic colour photos of the stars and presenters from every era of the show (so good to see Sir Jimmy Savile’s crazy costumes again!!), this is a real gem of a book and one that will evoke many a happy memory within those of us that grew up with what was a national institution. Who knows, it might even make you shed a few tears… ESSENTIAL.

-

Read more..