Showing titles in Music

Nearly 20 years in the making, Can't Buy Me Love is a masterful work of group biography, cultural history, and musical criticism. That the Beatles were an unprecedented phenomenon is a given. Here Jonathan Gould seeks to explain why, placing the Fab Four in the broad and tumultuous panorama of their time and place, rooting their story in the social context that girded both their rise and their demise.

Pete Seeger: The Storm King audio collection presents Pete Seeger's spoken words as he captivatingly recounts his most engaging stories, narratives, and poems - set to new music created by over 70 musicians from traditions as diverse as African Music, Blues, Bluegrass, Celtic Music, Classical Guitar, Folk, Israeli Music, Jazz, Native American Music, and Tuvan Throat Singing - taking Pete's wisdom and stories out to new audiences and into a new technological age.

Do you dream of playing guitar like your heroes? Stop dreaming, because now it's your turn to ROCK. Jam Heavy Metal Guitar Volume 1 is your introduction to the fast track of becoming a Metal Guitar Master Blazer. No boring, old school lessons here, just the straight to the bone secrets you need to play and sound great. Metal fans are the most dedicated in the world, if you love metal and want to play badass metal riffs and scales, this comprehensive program will get you on track FAST.

This audiobook introduces listeners to the study of folk music as a kind of music and as an aspect of human culture. It uses music as an index to understanding American culture while it introduces listeners to various concepts in the field of ethnomusicology.

Created exclusively with and for teen musicians, this hands-on, step-by-step program uses insight, enthusiasm, and humor to teach teens how to brainstorm ideas, craft effective lyrics, and put those lyrics to music. An award-winning and Billboard-charting songwriter and teacher, Alex Forbes has taught dozens of teens via her Manhattan workshops and coaching sessions how to turn their thoughts and feelings into incisive, evocative songs.

Through a deft compilation of primary sources—letters, memoirs, and personal accounts from composers, librettists, and performers—Michael Rose re-creates for his readers the circumstances that gave rise to fifteen operatic milestones. From Monteverdi and Mozart to Puccini and Berg, each chapter focuses on a well-known opera and tells the story that lies behind its creation.

Before "Fred and Ginger" there was "Fred and Adele", a show-business partnership and cultural sensation like no other. In our celebrity-saturated era, it's hard to comprehend what a genuine phenomenon these two siblings from Omaha were. At the height of their success in the mid-1920s, the Astaires seemed to define the Jazz Age. They were Gershwin's music in motion, a fascinating pair who wove spellbinding rhythms in song and dance. In this book, the first comprehensive study of their theatrical career together, Kathleen Riley traces the Astaires' rise to fame from humble midwestern origins.

Before he was the swaggering, stadium-packing megastar, Bruce Springsteen was a brooding introvert, desperate to strike a balance between his nuanced songwriting and the heft of his backing band. Clinton Heylin's revelatory biography, E Street Shuffle, chronicles the evolution and influence of Springsteen's E Street Band as they rose from blue-collar New Jersey to the heights of rock stardom.

In The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll, Wes Smith examines the phenomenon of the AM deejays who captivated a generation and helped define the counterculture that has forever changed the landscape of American youth. Smith takes a close look at nine of the men who made this happen and explores the reasons for their influence and its lasting effects on the generation whose lives still unfold to the soundtrack laid down by these platter-spinners of their youth.

Pamela Des Barres, celebrated “queen of the groupies,” chronicled her adventures with rock stars in her bestseller I’m with the Band. This book picks up where that one left off, with Pamela embarking on marriage and motherhood, all the while sharing quarters and making friends with stars. But this is a survivor’s story about the anguish of coping with loved ones’ addictions, about suffering divorce, about the joys and terrors of raising a gifted son.

Pamela Des Barres, the world’s foremost supergroupie, here offers an all-access backstage pass to the world of rock stars and the women who love them. Having had her own affairs with legends such as Keith Moon and Jimmy Page--as documented in her bestselling memoir I’m with the Band--Pamela now turns the spotlight onto other women who have found their way into the hearts and bedrooms of some of the world’s greatest musicians.

This is a richly detailed portrait of a woman who has lived an incredible life, one that far transcends her best known role as courtesan to the chief Rolling Stone. From aristocratic lineage to convent school, stardom to attempted suicide, junkie to punk, Marianne has seen her life flash by in banner headlines. Researched through over 50 interviews with her family, former lovers and friends, this reveals the truth behind the headlines, the person behind the profile.

Over three years since the charismatic composer, violinist, and singer Alessandro Stradella sought refuge in the palaces and twisted alleys of Genoa, royally welcomed despite the alleged scandals and even crimes that forced him to flee from Rome, Venice, and Turin, his professional and personal life have begun to unravel again. He is offered, by the very man he is rumored to have wronged, a respectable if slightly shabby apartment and yet another chance to redeem his character and career. He moves in to the curiosity and consternation of his caretakers, also tenants, three women whose reputations are of concern only to themselves.

Well over a century after Wagner's death, the man and his music are as controversial as ever. Praised for his profound insights into the workings of the human heart, he has also been condemned as a dangerous libertine, a proto-fascist and an arrogant bore. His vast four-part operatic Ring cycle has been elevated as one of the greatest achievements of western culture and dismissed as an unparalleled example of creative megalomania.

Yngwie Malmsteen's revolutionary guitar style - combining elements of classical music with the speed and volume of heavy metal - made him a staple of the 80s rock scene. Decades later, he's still a legend among guitarists, having sold 11 million albums and influenced generations of rockers since. In Relentless, Malmsteen shares his personal story, from the moment he burst onto the scene seemingly out of nowhere in the early 80s to become a household name in the annals of heavy metal.

Top drum workshop teacher Chris Puleston invites listeners to participate in their own home drum workshops. This audiobook program, with music by Chris Puleston, incorporates easy exercises and techniques for both beginners and more advanced students.

Behold the Rolling Stones: run-ins with the law, chart-topping successes, and now the World's Greatest Continually Operating Rock and Roll Band. 50 Licks tells the story of the Stones, right from its very origins. On July 12, 1962, London's Marquee Club debuted a new act, a blues-inflected rock band named after a Muddy Waters song-the Rolling Stones. They were a hard-edged band with a flair for the dramatic, styling themselves as the devil's answer to the sainted Beatles.

Despite dogged attempts by musicologists worldwide to find its source, the violin’s origins remain maddeningly elusive. The instrument surfaced from nowhere in particular, in a world that Columbus had only recently left behind and Shakespeare had yet to put on paper. By the end of the violin’s first century, people were just discovering its possibilities. But it was already the instrument of choice for some of the greatest music ever composed by the end of its second. By the dawn of its fifth, it was established on five continents as an icon of globalization, modernization, and social mobility, an A-list trophy, and a potential capital gain.

The Police have sold more than 50 million albums, made Rolling Stone's Greatest Artists of All Time list, and finished a triumphant world reunion tour in 2008. Now British journalist Chris Campion draws on extensive research and new interviews to trace the inside saga of this iconic group, including the unorthodox business strategies employed by manager Miles Copeland that took them to the top and the intense rivalry that drove Sting, Andy Summers, and Stewart Copeland to split at the height of their success in the 1980s.

Waylon Jennings. Willie Nelson. Kris Kristofferson. Three renegade musicians. Three unexpected stars. Three men who changed Nashville and country music forever. Streissguth's new book brings to life an incredible chapter in musical history and reveals for the first time a surprising outlaw zeitgeist in Nashville. Based on extensive research and probing interviews with key players, what emerges is a fascinating glimpse into three of the most legendary artists of our times and the definitive story of how they changed music in Nashville and everywhere.