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Hip Hop America
- Narrated by: Brandon Dirden
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
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Hip Hop America
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From Nelson George, supervising producer and writer of the hit Netflix series The Get Down, Hip Hop America is the definitive account of the society-altering collision between Black youth culture and the mass media.
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 99
Ed Ward covers the first half of the history of rock & roll in this sweeping and definitive narrative - from the 1920s, when the music of rambling medicine shows mingled with the songs of vaudeville and minstrel acts to create the very early sounds of country and rhythm and blues, to the rise of the first independent record labels post-World War II, and concluding in December 1963, just as an immense change in the airwaves took hold and the Beatles prepared for their first American tour.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Author's blindspots mar this book
- By Mark Clark on 03-28-17
By: Ed Ward
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Pure Invention
- How Japan's Pop Culture Conquered the World
- By: Matt Alt
- Narrated by: Matt Alt
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 246
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 213
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 212
Japan is the forge of the world’s fantasies: karaoke and the Walkman, manga and anime, Pac-Man and Pokémon, online imageboards and emojis. But as Japan media veteran Matt Alt proves in this brilliant investigation, these novelties did more than entertain. They paved the way for our perplexing modern lives.
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3 out of 5 stars
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great book ruined by ending
- By Grant Holder on 06-07-22
By: Matt Alt
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Can't Stop Won't Stop
- A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
- By: Jeff Chang
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 19 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 142
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 118
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 120
Forged in the fires of the Bronx and Kingston, Jamaica, hip-hop became the Esperanto of youth rebellion and a generation-defining movement. In a post-civil rights era defined by deindustrialization and globalization, hip-hop crystallized a multiracial, polycultural generation's worldview and transformed American politics and culture. But that epic story has never been told with this kind of breadth, insight, and style.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Not About Hip Hop Music
- By A. Yerkes on 09-06-19
By: Jeff Chang
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On the Shoulders of Giants
- My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance
- By: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Raymond Obstfeld
- Narrated by: Richard Allen
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 38
In On the Shoulders of Giants, indomitable basketball star and best-selling author and historian Kareem Abdul-Jabbar invites listeners on an extraordinarily personal journey back to his birthplace. He leads us through one of the greatest political, cultural, literary, and artistic movements in our history, revealing the tremendous impact the Harlem Renaissance had on both American culture and his own life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The best of both worlds
- By Marianne on 10-06-08
By: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and others
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Cool Town
- How Athens, Georgia, Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture
- By: Grace Elizabeth Hale
- Narrated by: Emily Cauldwell
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 65
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 53
In 1979, the self-titled debut album by the B-52s burst onto the Billboard charts, capturing the imagination of fans and music critics worldwide. The fact that the group had formed in the sleepy southern college town of Athens, Georgia, only increased the fascination. Soon, more Athens bands followed the B-52s into the vanguard of the new American music that would come to be known as "alternative", including R.E.M., who catapulted over the course of the 1980s to the top of the musical mainstream.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I feel like I was there when it happened
- By Joseph Suciu on 01-11-23
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Here We Are Now
- The Lasting Impact of Kurt Cobain
- By: Charles R. Cross
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 55
Simply stated, Kurt Cobain changed the cultural conversation in his all-too-brief life, and even after his shattering death. With interviews and commentary from all corners of the pop culture universe, from the people who knew Cobain to those who continue to help his legend grow, Here We Are Now explores what a singular life meant, and how that meaning can be measured, when and if it can be.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An amazing afterword on culture post Cobain
- By Rebecca F. on 06-11-15
By: Charles R. Cross
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Music
- A Subversive History
- By: Ted Gioia
- Narrated by: Jamie Renell
- Length: 17 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 125
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 106
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 106
Histories of music overwhelmingly suppress stories of the outsiders and rebels who created musical revolutions and instead celebrate the mainstream assimilators who borrowed innovations, diluted their impact, and disguised their sources. In Music: A Subversive History, Ted Gioia reclaims the story of music for the riffraff, insurgents, and provocateurs. Gioia tells a 4,000-year history of music as a global source of power, change, and upheaval.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Squeezing cherry-picked facts into a simplistic narrative
- By Erik A. Ritland on 11-24-20
By: Ted Gioia
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Elton John
- The Biography
- By: David Buckley
- Narrated by: Simon Shepherd
- Length: 16 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 53
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 50
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Story4 out of 5 stars 50
Elton John is as much loved for his outrageous personality and witty outspokenness as for his music. Such shamelessness and sheer silliness rivals anything uttered by punk rockers, yet it is so typically Elton: honest and intemperate. Tragedy and heartbreak have played a large part in his life. Behind the parties, the hedonism, the lavish stage costumes, and silly glasses lies a more somber story. Between disputes with managers, legal wranglings, public breakups, and divorce, John has been faced with serious health problems and drug addictions.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Trite!
- By michael mckone on 08-04-22
By: David Buckley
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All Shook Up
- How Rock ‘n’ Roll Changed America
- By: Glenn C. Altschuler
- Narrated by: Jack Garrett
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 74
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Story4 out of 5 stars 52
As Glenn Altschuler reveals in All Shook Up, the rise of rock 'n roll--and the outraged reception to it--in fact can tell us a lot about the values of the United States in the 1950s, a decade that saw a great struggle for the control of popular culture. Altschuler shows, in particular, how rock's "switchblade beat" opened up wide fissures in American society along the fault-lines of family, sexuality, and race.
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4 out of 5 stars
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50's Rock&Roll was more of a force than I thought
- By James on 10-19-11
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Never a Dull Moment
- 1971 - the Year That Rock Exploded
- By: David Hepworth
- Narrated by: David Hepworth
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 212
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 200
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 197
On New Year's Eve, 1970, Paul McCartney told his lawyers to issue the writ at the High Court in London, effectively ending The Beatles. You might say this was the last day of the pop era. The following day, which was a Friday, was 1971. You might say this was the first day of the rock era. And within the remaining 364 days of this monumental year, the world would hear Don McLean's "American Pie", The Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar", The Who's "Baba O'Riley", Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven", and more.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A blast from the past
- By Amazon Customer on 07-30-16
By: David Hepworth
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Dig If You Will the Picture
- Funk, Sex, God and Genius in the Music of Prince
- By: Ben Greenman
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
Ben Greenman, New York Times best-selling author, contributing writer to The New Yorker, and owner of thousands of recordings of Prince and Prince-related songs, knows intimately that there has never been a rock star as vibrant, mercurial, willfully contrary, experimental, or prolific as Prince. Uniting a diverse audience while remaining singularly himself, Prince was a tireless artist, a musical virtuoso and chameleon, and a pop-culture prophet.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Reads like a indepth career review & analysis
- By herb on 05-18-17
By: Ben Greenman
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Audience of One
- Television, Donald Trump, and the Politics of Illusion
- By: James Poniewozik
- Narrated by: Matthew Josdal
- Length: 11 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 88
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 87
In the tradition of Neil Postman's masterpiece Amusing Ourselves to Death, Audience of One shows how American media have shaped American society and politics, by interweaving two crucial stories. The first story follows the evolution of television from the three-network era of the 20th century, which joined millions of Americans in a shared monoculture, into today's zillion-channel, internet-atomized universe, which sliced and diced them into fractious, alienated subcultures. The second story is a cultural critique of Donald Trump.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Enlightening, insightful, terrifying.
- By L Watson on 09-22-19
By: James Poniewozik
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1965
- The Most Revolutionary Year in Music
- By: Andrew Grant Jackson
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 38
During 12 unforgettable months in the middle of the turbulent '60s, America saw the rise of innovative new sounds that would change popular music as we knew it. In 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music, music historian Andrew Grant Jackson (Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of The Beatles' Solo Careers) chronicles a groundbreaking year of creativity fueled by rivalries between musicians and continents, sweeping social changes, and technological breakthroughs.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Seems like a good overview
- By wylie smith on 01-12-23
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Uncommon People
- The Rise and Fall of The Rock Stars
- By: David Hepworth
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 56
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 50
The age of the rock star, like the age of the cowboy, has passed. Like the cowboy, the idea of the rock star lives on in our imaginations. What did we see in them? Swagger. Recklessness. Sexual charisma. Damn-the-torpedoes self-belief. A certain way of carrying themselves. Good hair. Interesting shoes. Talent we wished we had. What did we want of them? To be larger than life but also like us. To live out their songs. To stay young forever. No wonder many didn't stay the course.
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5 out of 5 stars
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INSIGHTFULL!
- By CLAUDIA R KENNEDY on 02-18-18
By: David Hepworth
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Cowboys and Indies
- The Epic History of the Record Industry
- By: Gareth Murphy
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 15 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 39
Cowboys and Indies is the definitive record-business bible, chronicling the pioneers who set the stylus on the most important labelsand musical discoveries of the last century. The narrative follows all the musical trends and developments from the phonograph to the Internet age as it delves behind the big business of corporate hit machines and the diligent industry of small, curated labels.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Epic, yet incomplete.
- By Rob G. on 10-14-14
By: Gareth Murphy