Anoint My Head - How I Failed to Make it as a Britpop Indie Rock-Star

Author: Andy MacLeod
Publisher: Pointy Books
ISBN: 9781838271954
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 350

Book Description
A coming-of-age story about pursuing your dreams and what happens when reality gets in the way. Perfect for fans of Caitlin Moran, Nick Hornby & Ricky Gervais. It's 1992 and Horace dreams of becoming a rockstar with his band the Pointy Birds. The only problem is that his day-job (mis-)filing vinyl in a Soho record store is stealing all his time and energy, plus rival bands like Suede, Blur, Pulp and Radiohead are moving on to bigger and better things. But then someone called Ricky offers his services as a band manager and at last the dream can start. Anoint My Head is the tale of a band who didn't become rich, or famous but had a manager who did. It is also the story of a musical era, and documents the rise of some of the biggest British Britpop bands of the nineties, plus a comedian who went on to write quite a successful sitcom about a paper merchants in Slough. 'The Pointy Birds...bland and inoffensive...with a seriously overacting singer.' NME

Retromania

Author: Simon Reynolds
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429968583
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 498

Book Description
One of The Telegraph's Best Music Books 2011 We live in a pop age gone loco for retro and crazy for commemoration. Band re-formations and reunion tours, expanded reissues of classic albums and outtake-crammed box sets, remakes and sequels, tribute albums and mash-ups . . . But what happens when we run out of past? Are we heading toward a sort of culturalecological catastrophe where the archival stream of pop history has been exhausted? Simon Reynolds, one of the finest music writers of his generation, argues that we have indeed reached a tipping point, and that although earlier eras had their own obsessions with antiquity—the Renaissance with its admiration for Roman and Greek classicism, the Gothic movement's invocations of medievalism—never has there been a society so obsessed with the cultural artifacts of its own immediate past. Retromania is the first book to examine the retro industry and ask the question: Is this retromania a death knell for any originality and distinctiveness of our own?

Can't Stand Up For Falling Down

Author: Allan Jones
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 140888593X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
The Sunday Times' Music Book of the Year 2017 Allan Jones launched Uncut magazine in 1997 and for 15 years wrote a popular monthly column called Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before, based on his experiences as a music journalist in the 70s and 80s, a gilded time for the music press. By turns hilarious, cautionary, poignant and powerful, the Stop Me... stories collected here include encounters with some of rock's most iconic stars, including David Bowie, Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Elvis Costello, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Smiths, R.E.M. and Pearl Jam. From backstage brawls and drug blow-outs, to riots, superstar punch-ups, hotel room confessionals and tour bus lunacy, these are stories from the madness of a music scene now long gone.

My Thoughts Exactly

Author: Lily Allen
Publisher: Kings Road Publishing
ISBN: 1911600923
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Book Description
THE NO.1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ************************************* 'Witty, dark, devastating' Caitlin Moran 'Unflinching, unputdownable' Guardian 'Brutally honest, funny, emotionally raw' Matt Haig 'I love it' Jon Ronson ************************************* So, this is me. Lily Allen. I am a mother, and I was a wife. I'm also a singer and a songwriter. I have loved and been let down. I've been stalked and assaulted. I am a success and a failure. I've been broken and full of hope. I am all these things and more. I'm telling my truth because when women share their stories, loudly and clearly and honestly, things begin to change - for the better. So, this is my story. These are my thoughts exactly. **Includes an exclusive new chapter**

Switched on Pop

Author: Nate Sloan
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190056657
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
Pop music surrounds us - in our cars, over supermarket speakers, even when we are laid out at the dentist - but how often do we really hear what's playing? Switched on Pop is the book based on the eponymous podcast that has been hailed by NPR, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, and Entertainment Weekly for its witty and accessible analysis of Top 40 hits. Through close studies of sixteen modern classics, musicologist Nate Sloan and songwriter Charlie Harding shift pop from the background to the foreground, illuminating the essential musical concepts behind two decades of chart-topping songs. In 1939, Aaron Copland published What to Listen for in Music, the bestseller that made classical music approachable for generations of listeners. Eighty years later, Nate and Charlie update Copland's idea for a new audience and repertoire: 21st century pop, from Britney to Beyoncé, Outkast to Kendrick Lamar. Despite the importance of pop music in contemporary culture, most discourse only revolves around lyrics and celebrity. Switched on Pop gives readers the tools they need to interpret our modern soundtrack. Each chapter investigates a different song and artist, revealing musical insights such as how a single melodic motif follows Taylor Swift through every genre that she samples, André 3000 uses metric manipulation to get listeners to "shake it like a Polaroid picture," or Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee create harmonic ambiguity in "Despacito" that mirrors the patterns of global migration. Replete with engaging discussions and eye-catching illustrations, Switched on Pop brings to life the musical qualities that catapult songs into the pop pantheon. Readers will find themselves listening to familiar tracks in new waysand not just those from the Top 40. The timeless concepts that Nate and Charlie define can be applied to any musical style. From fanatics to skeptics, teenagers to octogenarians, non-musicians to professional composers, every music lover will discover something ear-opening in Switched on Pop.

A Man Called Destruction

Author: Holly George-Warren
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698151429
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Book Description
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.

Never Say No to a Rock Star

Author: Glenn Berger
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781943156085
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
In 1974, at the age of seventeen, author Glenn Berger served as "Schlepper" and apprentice to the legendary recording engineer Phil Ramone at New York City's A&R Studios, and was witness to music history on an almost daily and nightly basis as pop and rock icons such as Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Frank Sinatra, Burt Bacharach, Bette Midler, and James Brown performed their hit-making magic, honed their sound, strutted their stuff, bared their souls, and threw epic tantrums. In this memoir, full of revelatory and previously unknown anecdotal observations of these musical giants, Glenn recounts how he quickly learned the ropes to move up from schlepperhood to assistant to the tyrannical Ramone, and eventually, to become a recording engineer superstar himself. Not only is Never Say No to A Rock Star a fascinating, hilarious and poignant behind-the-scenes look of this musical Mecca, but Berger, now a prominent psychologist, looking back through the prism of his youthful experience and his years working as a counselor and therapist, provides a telling and honest examination of the nature of fame and success and the corollaries between creativity, madness and self-destruction.

Ghosts of My Life

Author: Mark Fisher
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
ISBN: 178279624X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Book Description
This collection of writings by Mark Fisher, author of the acclaimed Capitalist Realism, argues that we are haunted by futures that failed to happen. Fisher searches for the traces of these lost futures in the work of David Peace, John Le Carré, Christopher Nolan, Joy Division, Burial and many others.

Pig City

Author: Andrew Stafford
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant
ISBN: 9781459691476
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 588

Book Description
A 10th anniversary edition of this cult classic with a new introduction. From cult heroes the Saints and the Go - Betweens to national icons Powderfinger and international stars Savage Garden, Brisbane has produced more than its share of great bands. But behind the music lay a ghost city of malice and corruption. Pressed under the thumb of the Bjelke - Petersen government and its toughest enforcers - the police - Brisbane's musicians, radio announcers and political activists braved ignorance, harassment and often violence to be heard. Pig City's reputation has grown in the decade since its first publication. In 2007, Queensland Music Festival staged the book as an all - day music event, headlined by the first performance in nearly 30 years by the original line - up of the Saints. This updated 10th anniversary edition features a scathing new introduction by the author, assessing the changing shape of Brisbane, its music, and troubling developments since the return of the state of Queensland to conservative governance.

Morrissey & Marr: The Severed Alliance

Author: Johnny Rogan
Publisher: Omnibus Press
ISBN: 0857127829
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 863

Book Description
Morrissey & Marr: The Severed Alliance is among the most successful – and controversial – rock biographies ever published. Having denounced the book and called for the death of its author Johnny Rogan, Morrissey later did a U-turn and cited it as evidence in the royalty-related court case brought by Smiths drummer Mike Joyce.Now, 20 years after it was first published, Rogan has returned to his definitive Smiths biography to produce a completely revised edition based on new information and new interviews to add to the almost 100 initially conducted over a four-year period. Widely acclaimed as one rock’s leading writers, Johnny Rogan now brings yet more insight and analysis to his best-selling book that revealed, for the first time, the true and unsanitised story of The Smiths – the most important group of their generation.