Pop Music Books
#TITLE#The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock (Cambridge Companions to Music)#/TITLE#
The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock (Cambridge Companions to Music)
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#TITLE#Reading Pop: Approaches to Textual Analysis in Popular Music#/TITLE#
Reading Pop: Approaches to Textual Analysis in Popular Music
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#TITLE#Words and Music: A History of Pop in the Shape of a City#/TITLE#
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.
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#TITLE#Pop Music: The Text Book#/TITLE#
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#TITLE#Pop Cultured: The Music Photography of Mark McNulty#/TITLE#
Pop Cultured: The Music Photography of Mark McNulty
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#TITLE#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)#/TITLE#
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#TITLE#Pop Music: Technology and Creativity - Trevor Horn and the Digital Revolution (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series)#/TITLE#
Pop Music: Technology and Creativity - Trevor Horn and the Digital Revolution (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series)
Customer Review: It Ainýt What You Do, Itýs the Way That You Do It
The first paragraph of this excellent book says it all :
“This book is intended for all those - students and teachers, specialists and non-specialists alike - who wish to approach pop music as an artistic, and not primarily as a social, cultural or historical phenomenon. Its main argument is that musical creativity in pop music is inextricably bound to developments in audio technology and the working practices which ensue. Because of the strength of this relationship, pop music differs in a number of important and significant ways from other kinds of popular music. This aspect is exemplified in this study through analysis of several recordings by Trevor Horn, who is widely acknowledged as the most important, innovative and successful British pop record producer of the early 1980s.”
Clearly the book is not about Trevor Horn: the book discusses the close relationships between technology and creativity in the case of pop music and uses some of Mr. Horn’s work to exemplify those ideas. Trivia buffs with a yen to know whether he works with a Chipmunk 451 or a Pinky and Perky 452 will undoubtedly prefer books in the style of Howard Massey’s where such gratuitous urges are amply satisfied. For those of a more enquiring mind who prefer to ask ‘why’ rather than ‘what’; who prefer a book couched in unusually accessible academic prose rather than a list of supernumerary studio equipment; to those who are party to the secret that “It Ain’t What You Do, It’s the Way That You Do It”; then this book is for you. That said, there is actually plenty of information on the equipment Mr. Horn uses and, more importantly, to what creative purpose.
For the serious student and for the teacher of popular music, the book is replete with a wealth of original insight and incisive analysis that ranges from visual to musicological to technical (the latter including, for the uninitiated, useful definitions of terminology such as compression). Worth mentioning are the points made on sampling. Prima facie, sampling may seem to be the final nail in the coffin of human musicality; a dry digital technique capable of replicating ad infinitum and with machine-tooled precision the utmost nuance of the human musical experience. To Warner though, samples and samplers offer “ways of countering the sonic impact of purely machine-driven and machine-generated music” and “their imperfections provide their aesthetic significance”.
The book’s author is quite right when he pinpoints that textual analysis of popular/pop music has suffered as a result of the dominance of cultural studies and is forthright in making the case that pop music is a worthy subject for textual academic study. Furthermore, the central thesis that technology is inextricably bound to creativity in pop music marks an important new departure in the academic study of popular music. Certainly, there have been writings on the use of or development of technology in the recording industry (Chanan for example), but these tend to be historical. There have been textual analyses of pop music (Tagg etc.), but these have ignored or bypassed the influence of technology. It would not be stretching a point too far to say that Timothy Warner’s book is the first major work to provide the spark in the gap missing in previous endeavours. For that fact alone the book is to be both commended and recommended.
Finally, a cat among the pigeons quote from Trevor Horn in response to the question that forms the crux of the book Is pop music a fundamentally technological art form?: “Yeah. That’s a fascinating question. In a lot of respects, even though the classical - you know the straight music people - might fancy themselves, we’ve got them fucking licked…”.
Good reading!
Customer Review: Definitely a ýmustý.
Pop Music, Technology and Creativity is the most original and wide-ranging book on pop music I have ever read. While focusing on the use of technology, which Warner considers to be one of the distinctive traits of pop music, this book is obviously not intended for the « techies ». Warner is careful to avoid all unnecessary jargon, and technology is always discussed in terms of its creative potential - never in a vacuum.
One of the many strengths of this extremely well informed book is that pop music is seen as a complex and multifaceted artefact produced by people who are both commercially aware and aesthetically motivated. Trevor Horn is a particularly good example of this, as confirmed by the long interview with him that concludes the book.
But this is not a book about Trevor Horn; it is about pop music and British pop music in particular. The seven recordings carefully analysed by Warner serve to highlight one or more interesting aspects of pop such as: the way in which the complexity of the production techniques can be reflected in the lyrics (’Video Killed the Radio Star’); scratching and sampling, and all their implications (McLaren’s ‘Buffalo Gals’); the interaction between performer and producer (’Owner of a Lonely Heart’); the use of repetition and the importance of remixes (’Relax’); the manipulation of timbre and space (Who’s afraid of the Art of Noise) ; the merits of the sequencer (Propaganda) ; the use of the Fairlight (Slave to the Rhythm), etc.
Far from being a narrow, self-contained, unit, each of the analytical chapters echoes and/or develops points touched upon previously. Furthermore Warner is always happy to elaborate on the wider musical implications of the points he makes and never ignores the visual or cultural aspects of the final product.
The result is a rich, subtle and multifaceted book which may irritate and frustrate readers with narrow expectations, but which I found well written, informative, full of surprises and highly stimulating. Definitely a ‘must’.
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#TITLE#When the Music’s Over: Story of Political Pop#/TITLE#
When the Music’s Over: Story of Political Pop
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#TITLE#Follow the Music: The Life and High Times of Electra Records in the Great Years of American Pop Culture#/TITLE#
Follow the Music: The Life and High Times of Electra Records in the Great Years of American Pop Culture
Customer Review: Lovely telling of Elektra and the ’60s music industry
Elektra emerged from the ’60s as one of a very few independent labels to match the majors success. While others had fleeting commercial success or labored in record-collector obscurity, Elektra managed to maintain its artistic roots as it found its way up the top-40 charts. Label founder, Jac Holzman, and co-writer Gavan Daws re-tell the music industry’s transformation to a conglomeratized business through the prism of Elektra’s emergence in Greenwich Village folk clubs to its absorption into the WEA triad.
Holzman’s first-person reminiscences are brilliantly interwoven with interviews from many of those who were there, providing additional shades to many of the story’s events. The first half of the book is particularly fetching, following Holzman as he founds his label amid the folk revival of the early ’60s, and makes up business practices to match his feel for the art and artists. Also of great reward are Holzman’s tech-rich descriptions of equipment and recording sessions. Less incisive is Elektra’s flight into the arms of Warner Brothers, no doubt reflecting Holzman’s relative disinterest in the business of music.
Customer Review: great book about the music biz
This book really knocked me out. It’s a great look inside the sixties and seventies music business. What makes it particularly appealing is that the author was not just there but one of the major figures who made it happen. Jac Holzman and Gavan Daws have chosen to write the book from multiple points of view, quoting extensively from many of the best artists and producers of the time (even when their point of view is uncomplimentary or very different from the authors’). FOLLOW THE MUSIC lets you in on the party from many fascinating points of view. Reading this book brought me back to a time when this end of the century was being invented. I really loved it.
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#TITLE#100 Years of Popular Music: the Twenties: (Piano, Vocal, Guitar): Vol 1 (Years of Pop Music)#/TITLE#
100 Years of Popular Music: the Twenties: (Piano, Vocal, Guitar): Vol 1 (Years of Pop Music)
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#TITLE#Follow the Music: The Life and High Times of Electra Records in the Great Years of American Pop Culture#/TITLE#
Follow the Music: The Life and High Times of Electra Records in the Great Years of American Pop Culture
Customer Review: Lovely telling of Elektra and the ’60s music industry
Elektra emerged from the ’60s as one of a very few independent labels to match the majors success. While others had fleeting commercial success or labored in record-collector obscurity, Elektra managed to maintain its artistic roots as it found its way up the top-40 charts. Label founder, Jac Holzman, and co-writer Gavan Daws re-tell the music industry’s transformation to a conglomeratized business through the prism of Elektra’s emergence in Greenwich Village folk clubs to its absorption into the WEA triad.
Holzman’s first-person reminiscences are brilliantly interwoven with interviews from many of those who were there, providing additional shades to many of the story’s events. The first half of the book is particularly fetching, following Holzman as he founds his label amid the folk revival of the early ’60s, and makes up business practices to match his feel for the art and artists. Also of great reward are Holzman’s tech-rich descriptions of equipment and recording sessions. Less incisive is Elektra’s flight into the arms of Warner Brothers, no doubt reflecting Holzman’s relative disinterest in the business of music.
Customer Review: great book about the music biz
This book really knocked me out. It’s a great look inside the sixties and seventies music business. What makes it particularly appealing is that the author was not just there but one of the major figures who made it happen. Jac Holzman and Gavan Daws have chosen to write the book from multiple points of view, quoting extensively from many of the best artists and producers of the time (even when their point of view is uncomplimentary or very different from the authors’). FOLLOW THE MUSIC lets you in on the party from many fascinating points of view. Reading this book brought me back to a time when this end of the century was being invented. I really loved it.
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#TITLE#100 Years of Popular Music: the Twenties: (Piano, Vocal, Guitar): Vol 1 (Years of Pop Music)#/TITLE#
100 Years of Popular Music: the Twenties: (Piano, Vocal, Guitar): Vol 1 (Years of Pop Music)
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#TITLE#Pop Music: Technology and Creativity - Trevor Horn and the Digital Revolution (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series)#/TITLE#
Pop Music: Technology and Creativity - Trevor Horn and the Digital Revolution (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series)
Customer Review: It Ainýt What You Do, Itýs the Way That You Do It
The first paragraph of this excellent book says it all :
“This book is intended for all those - students and teachers, specialists and non-specialists alike - who wish to approach pop music as an artistic, and not primarily as a social, cultural or historical phenomenon. Its main argument is that musical creativity in pop music is inextricably bound to developments in audio technology and the working practices which ensue. Because of the strength of this relationship, pop music differs in a number of important and significant ways from other kinds of popular music. This aspect is exemplified in this study through analysis of several recordings by Trevor Horn, who is widely acknowledged as the most important, innovative and successful British pop record producer of the early 1980s.”
Clearly the book is not about Trevor Horn: the book discusses the close relationships between technology and creativity in the case of pop music and uses some of Mr. Horn’s work to exemplify those ideas. Trivia buffs with a yen to know whether he works with a Chipmunk 451 or a Pinky and Perky 452 will undoubtedly prefer books in the style of Howard Massey’s where such gratuitous urges are amply satisfied. For those of a more enquiring mind who prefer to ask ‘why’ rather than ‘what’; who prefer a book couched in unusually accessible academic prose rather than a list of supernumerary studio equipment; to those who are party to the secret that “It Ain’t What You Do, It’s the Way That You Do It”; then this book is for you. That said, there is actually plenty of information on the equipment Mr. Horn uses and, more importantly, to what creative purpose.
For the serious student and for the teacher of popular music, the book is replete with a wealth of original insight and incisive analysis that ranges from visual to musicological to technical (the latter including, for the uninitiated, useful definitions of terminology such as compression). Worth mentioning are the points made on sampling. Prima facie, sampling may seem to be the final nail in the coffin of human musicality; a dry digital technique capable of replicating ad infinitum and with machine-tooled precision the utmost nuance of the human musical experience. To Warner though, samples and samplers offer “ways of countering the sonic impact of purely machine-driven and machine-generated music” and “their imperfections provide their aesthetic significance”.
The book’s author is quite right when he pinpoints that textual analysis of popular/pop music has suffered as a result of the dominance of cultural studies and is forthright in making the case that pop music is a worthy subject for textual academic study. Furthermore, the central thesis that technology is inextricably bound to creativity in pop music marks an important new departure in the academic study of popular music. Certainly, there have been writings on the use of or development of technology in the recording industry (Chanan for example), but these tend to be historical. There have been textual analyses of pop music (Tagg etc.), but these have ignored or bypassed the influence of technology. It would not be stretching a point too far to say that Timothy Warner’s book is the first major work to provide the spark in the gap missing in previous endeavours. For that fact alone the book is to be both commended and recommended.
Finally, a cat among the pigeons quote from Trevor Horn in response to the question that forms the crux of the book Is pop music a fundamentally technological art form?: “Yeah. That’s a fascinating question. In a lot of respects, even though the classical - you know the straight music people - might fancy themselves, we’ve got them fucking licked…”.
Good reading!
Customer Review: Definitely a ýmustý.
Pop Music, Technology and Creativity is the most original and wide-ranging book on pop music I have ever read. While focusing on the use of technology, which Warner considers to be one of the distinctive traits of pop music, this book is obviously not intended for the « techies ». Warner is careful to avoid all unnecessary jargon, and technology is always discussed in terms of its creative potential - never in a vacuum.
One of the many strengths of this extremely well informed book is that pop music is seen as a complex and multifaceted artefact produced by people who are both commercially aware and aesthetically motivated. Trevor Horn is a particularly good example of this, as confirmed by the long interview with him that concludes the book.
But this is not a book about Trevor Horn; it is about pop music and British pop music in particular. The seven recordings carefully analysed by Warner serve to highlight one or more interesting aspects of pop such as: the way in which the complexity of the production techniques can be reflected in the lyrics (’Video Killed the Radio Star’); scratching and sampling, and all their implications (McLaren’s ‘Buffalo Gals’); the interaction between performer and producer (’Owner of a Lonely Heart’); the use of repetition and the importance of remixes (’Relax’); the manipulation of timbre and space (Who’s afraid of the Art of Noise) ; the merits of the sequencer (Propaganda) ; the use of the Fairlight (Slave to the Rhythm), etc.
Far from being a narrow, self-contained, unit, each of the analytical chapters echoes and/or develops points touched upon previously. Furthermore Warner is always happy to elaborate on the wider musical implications of the points he makes and never ignores the visual or cultural aspects of the final product.
The result is a rich, subtle and multifaceted book which may irritate and frustrate readers with narrow expectations, but which I found well written, informative, full of surprises and highly stimulating. Definitely a ‘must’.
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#TITLE#The Velvet Underground (Icons of Pop Music)#/TITLE#
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 
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#TITLE#From Pac-Man to Pop Music: Interactive Audio in Games and New Media: 0 (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series)#/TITLE#
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