The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll

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Author :
Publisher : Black Inc.
ISBN 13 : 1863954503
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (639 download)

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Book Synopsis The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll by : Robert Forster

Download or read book The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll written by Robert Forster and published by Black Inc.. This book was released on 2009 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a roller-coaster ride through the history and present of popular music - from The Monkees, The Rolling Stones, Nana Mouskouri and Neil Diamond to Cat Power, Antony and the Johnsons, Franz Ferdinand and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and covering such Australian mainstays as Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Mark Seymour, Paul Kelly and theCountdown spectacular. Robert Forster was a Go-Between and now has an acclaimed solo career. But in recent times he has established himself as one of the fi nest music critics in the business. This book gathers that writing into an entertaining whole and also includes several new pieces: Forster outlines the 10 Rules of Rock and Roll, reflects on the influence of The Velvet Underground and movingly remembers his partner in The Go-Betweens, Grant McLennan.

The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll

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Author :
Publisher : Jawbone Press
ISBN 13 : 1906002738
Total Pages : 203 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (6 download)

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Book Synopsis The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll by : Professor Robert Forster, PT

Download or read book The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll written by Professor Robert Forster, PT and published by Jawbone Press. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his first book The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll Australian singer-songwriter Robert Forster takes readers on an idiosyncratic journey through the past and present of popular music from Bob Dylan to Cat Power from AC/DC to Nana Mouskouri from The Saints to Franz Ferdinand. With thirty-years experience as a recording artist/performer and an undimmed love of popular music Forster's observations about his fellow artists balance the enthusiasm of a fan with an insider's authority. He is that rare thing a musician who can write about music and he brings to this collection of critical essays the erudition wit and craft of his songwriting.

The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781905792122
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (921 download)

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Book Synopsis The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll by : Robert Forster

Download or read book The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll written by Robert Forster and published by . This book was released on 2010-06 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

My Rock 'n' Roll Friend

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Author :
Publisher : Canongate Books
ISBN 13 : 1786898241
Total Pages : 203 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (868 download)

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Book Synopsis My Rock 'n' Roll Friend by : Tracey Thorn

Download or read book My Rock 'n' Roll Friend written by Tracey Thorn and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 2021-04-01 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Entertaining, affectionate and righteous' Guardian 'Says so much about being a woman' Cosey Fanni Tutti In 1983, backstage at the Lyceum in London, Tracey Thorn and Lindy Morrison first met. Tracey’s music career was just beginning, while Lindy, drummer for The Go-Betweens, was ten years her senior. They became confidantes, comrades and best friends, a relationship cemented by gossip and feminism, books and gigs and rock ’n’ roll love affairs. Thorn takes stock of thirty-seven years of friendship, teasing out the details of connection and affection between two women who seem to be either complete opposites or mirror images of each other. She asks what people see, who does the looking, and ultimately who writes women out of – and back into – history.

History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs

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Author :
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300190301
Total Pages : 278 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs by : Greil Marcus

Download or read book History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs written by Greil Marcus and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The legendary critic and author of Mystery Train “ingeniously retells the tale of rock and roll” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Unlike previous versions of rock ’n’ roll history, this book omits almost every iconic performer and ignores the storied events and turning points everyone knows. Instead, in a daring stroke, Greil Marcus selects ten songs and dramatizes how each embodies rock ’n’ roll as a thing in itself, in the story it tells, inhabits, and acts out—a new language, something new under the sun. “Transmission” by Joy Division. “All I Could Do Was Cry” by Etta James and then Beyoncé. “To Know Him Is to Love Him,” first by the Teddy Bears and almost half a century later by Amy Winehouse. In Marcus’s hands these and other songs tell the story of the music, which is, at bottom, the story of the desire for freedom in all its unruly and liberating glory. Slipping the constraints of chronology, Marcus braids together past and present, holding up to the light the ways that these striking songs fall through time and circumstance, gaining momentum and meaning, astonishing us by upending our presumptions and prejudices. This book, by a founder of contemporary rock criticism—and its most gifted and incisive practitioner—is destined to become an enduring classic. “One of the epic figures in rock writing.”—The New York Times Book Review “Marcus is our greatest cultural critic, not only because of what he says but also, as with rock-and-roll itself, how he says it.”—The Washington Post Winner of the Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award in Music Criticism, given by the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers

Text and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll

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Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1441171126
Total Pages : 356 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (411 download)

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Book Synopsis Text and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll by : Simon Warner

Download or read book Text and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll written by Simon Warner and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Text and Drugs and Rock'n'Roll explores the interaction between two of the most powerful socio-cultural movements in the post-war years - the literary forces of the Beat Generation and the musical energies of rock and its attendant culture. Simon Warner examines the interweaving strands, seeded by the poet/novelists Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and others in the 1940s and 1950s, and cultivated by most of the major rock figures who emerged after 1960 - Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Bowie, the Clash and Kurt Cobain, to name just a few. This fascinating cultural history delves into a wide range of issues: Was rock culture the natural heir to the activities of the Beats? Were the hippies the Beats of the 1960s? What attitude did the Beat writers have towards musical forms and particularly rock music? How did literary works shape the consciousness of leading rock music-makers and their followers? Why did Beat literature retain its cultural potency with later rock musicians who rejected hippie values? How did rock musicians use the material of Beat literature in their own work? How did Beat figures become embroiled in the process of rock creativity? These questions are addressed through a number of approaches - the influence of drugs, the relevance of politics, the effect of religious and spiritual pursuits, the rise of the counter-culture, the issue of sub-cultures and their construction, and so on. The result is a highly readable history of the innumerable links between two of the most revolutionary artistic movements of the last 60 years.

Season of the Witch

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Publisher : TarcherPerigee
ISBN 13 : 0399174966
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (991 download)

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Book Synopsis Season of the Witch by : Peter Bebergal

Download or read book Season of the Witch written by Peter Bebergal and published by TarcherPerigee. This book was released on 2015-10-13 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From the hoodoo-inspired sounds of Elvis Presley to the Eastern odysseys of George Harrison, from the dark dalliances of Led Zeppelin to the Masonic imagery of today's hip-hop scene, the occult has long breathed life into rock and hip-hop--and, indeed, esoteric and supernatural traditions are a key ingredient behind the emergence and development of rock and roll ... [and in this book] writer and critic Peter Bebergal illuminates this web of influences"--Amazon.com.

Allen Klein

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Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN 13 : 0547896867
Total Pages : 341 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (478 download)

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Book Synopsis Allen Klein by : Fred Goodman

Download or read book Allen Klein written by Fred Goodman and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2015 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the heyday of rock & roll through the lens of Allen Klein, the business manager, producer, and gadfly who "broke up the Beatles" and showed the Rolling Stones how to become the pre-eminent dynasty in popular music.

Twilight of the Gods

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Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0062657151
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (626 download)

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Book Synopsis Twilight of the Gods by : Steven Hyden

Download or read book Twilight of the Gods written by Steven Hyden and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Bestseller * Named one of Rolling Stone's Best Music Books of 2018 * One of Newsweek's 50 Best Books of 2018 * A Billboard Best of 2018 * A New York Times Book Review "New and Noteworthy" selection The author of the critically acclaimed Your Favorite Band is Killing Me offers an eye-opening exploration of the state of classic rock, its past and future, the impact it has had, and what its loss would mean to an industry, a culture, and a way of life. Since the late 1960s, a legendary cadre of artists—including the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, Black Sabbath, and the Who—has revolutionized popular culture and the sounds of our lives. While their songs still get airtime and some of these bands continue to tour, its idols are leaving the stage permanently. Can classic rock remain relevant as these legends die off, or will this major musical subculture fade away as many have before, Steven Hyden asks. In this mix of personal memoir, criticism, and journalism, Hyden stands witness as classic rock reaches the precipice. Traveling to the eclectic places where geriatric rockers are still making music, he talks to the artists and fans who have aged with them, explores the ways that classic rock has changed the culture, investigates the rise and fall of classic rock radio, and turns to live bootlegs, tell-all rock biographies, and even the liner notes of rock’s greatest masterpieces to tell the story of what this music meant, and how it will be remembered, for fans like himself. Twilight of the Gods is also Hyden’s story. Celebrating his love of this incredible music that has taken him from adolescence to fatherhood, he ponders two essential questions: Is it time to give up on his childhood heroes, or can this music teach him about growing old with his hopes and dreams intact? And what can we all learn from rock gods and their music—are they ephemeral or eternal?

Everybody Needs a Rock

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Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1442408111
Total Pages : 32 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (424 download)

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Book Synopsis Everybody Needs a Rock by : Byrd Baylor

Download or read book Everybody Needs a Rock written by Byrd Baylor and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-08-16 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everybody needs a rock -- at least that's the way this particular rock hound feels about it in presenting her own highly individualistic rules for finding just the right rock for you.

Why Karen Carpenter Matters

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Publisher : University of Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 1477318860
Total Pages : 153 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (773 download)

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Book Synopsis Why Karen Carpenter Matters by : Karen Tongson

Download or read book Why Karen Carpenter Matters written by Karen Tongson and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2019-06-01 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the '60s and '70s, America's music scene was marked by raucous excess, reflected in the tragic overdoses of young superstars such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. At the same time, the uplifting harmonies and sunny lyrics that propelled Karen Carpenter and her brother, Richard, to international fame belied a different sort of tragedy—the underconsumption that led to Karen's death at age thirty-two from the effects of an eating disorder. In Why Karen Carpenter Matters, Karen Tongson (whose Filipino musician parents named her after the pop icon) interweaves the story of the singer’s rise to fame with her own trans-Pacific journey between the Philippines—where imitations of American pop styles flourished—and Karen Carpenter’s home ground of Southern California. Tongson reveals why the Carpenters' chart-topping, seemingly whitewashed musical fantasies of "normal love" can now have profound significance for her—as well as for other people of color, LGBT+ communities, and anyone outside the mainstream culture usually associated with Karen Carpenter’s legacy. This hybrid of memoir and biography excavates the destructive perfectionism at the root of the Carpenters’ sound, while finding the beauty in the singer's all too brief life.

Rock and Roll Cage Match

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Publisher : Crown Archetype
ISBN 13 : 0307449653
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Rock and Roll Cage Match by : Sean Manning

Download or read book Rock and Roll Cage Match written by Sean Manning and published by Crown Archetype. This book was released on 2008-08-26 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Music defines us. To return the favor, we’ll stick up with zealous passion for the performers and bands that we love . . . and heap aspersions and ridicule upon people who dare to place their allegiances above our own. In Rock and Roll Cage Match, today’ s leading cultural critics, humorists, music journalists, and musicians themselves take sides in thirty of the all-time juiciest “who’s better” musical disputes. Marc Spitz on the Smiths vs. the Cure: “If the Smiths are its James Dean, the Cure are the Marlon Brando of modern rock.” Mick Stingley on Van Halen vs. Van Hagar: “Eddie Van Halen single-handedly (sometimes quite literally) conjured rapturous sounds, and reinvented the idea of what could be done with a guitar with his sleight of hand. . . . As for the lyrics . . . Where Roth had been nuanced and clever, relying on double entendres and sexual innuendo, Sammy was ham-fisted and cloying and just downright embarrassing. Gideon Yago on Nirvana vs. Metallica: “Here is why Nirvana will always be a better band than Metallica. It’s not because they hit harder (they do). It’s not because they are tighter (they’re definitely not). . . . It’s because Metallica is fundamentally about respecting rules—of metal, of production, of technicality—and Nirvana is about breaking those rules down in the pursuit of innovation. Metallica was metal. Nirvana was something else.” Touré on Michael Jackson vs. Prince: “[Prince] was the wild son of Jimi, the younger brother of Rick James and Richard Pryor, the ultrasexual black Casanova who told you up front that he had a dirty mind . . . Michael held the opposite appeal. His music was often about escaping through dance or being hopeful about the world.” Russ Meneve on Bruce Springsteen vs. Bon Jovi: “I really, truly mean it when I say, Mr. Springsteen, no disrespect . . . you are a legend. But in the Battle a da Jerz, when that thick chemical-waste smoke clears and the overly sprayed mall hair parts, the Jov man is the last man rockin’.” Whitney Pastorek on Whitney Houston vs. Mariah Carey: “Frankly, dry recitations of figures are just too easily negated by simple things like, say, bringing up someone’s horrible taste in choosing movie roles. Watch, I’ll do it right now: Yes, Mariah has seventeen number one singles, and Whitney only eleven. But Whitney made The Bodyguard, which is basically a classic, and Mariah starred in Glitter, a colossal suckfest of crapitude that should disqualify her on the spot.”

The rock & roll times

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Author :
Publisher : Spring Hill Books*
ISBN 13 : 9781905862108
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (621 download)

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Book Synopsis The rock & roll times by : Will Beattie

Download or read book The rock & roll times written by Will Beattie and published by Spring Hill Books*. This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beattie shows you how to create a successful career in music, by securing a record company deal or by making it on your own. This is a guide on how the music industry works for new bands seeking record details.

The Lincoln Highway

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0735222363
Total Pages : 593 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (352 download)

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Book Synopsis The Lincoln Highway by : Amor Towles

Download or read book The Lincoln Highway written by Amor Towles and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-03-21 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER More than ONE MILLION copies sold A TODAY Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick A New York Times Notable Book, and Chosen by Oprah Daily, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Bill Gates and Barack Obama as a Best Book of the Year “Wise and wildly entertaining . . . permeated with light, wit, youth.” —The New York Times Book Review “A classic that we will read for years to come.” —Jenna Bush Hager, Read with Jenna book club “Fantastic. Set in 1954, Towles uses the story of two brothers to show that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as we might hope.” —Bill Gates “A real joyride . . . elegantly constructed and compulsively readable.” —NPR The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the City of New York. Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles's third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes. “Once again, I was wowed by Towles’s writing—especially because The Lincoln Highway is so different from A Gentleman in Moscow in terms of setting, plot, and themes. Towles is not a one-trick pony. Like all the best storytellers, he has range. He takes inspiration from famous hero’s journeys, including The Iliad, The Odyssey, Hamlet, Huckleberry Finn, and Of Mice and Men. He seems to be saying that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as an interstate highway. But, he suggests, when something (or someone) tries to steer us off course, it is possible to take the wheel.” – Bill Gates

Grant & I: Inside and Outside the Go-Betweens

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Author :
Publisher : Omnibus Press
ISBN 13 : 1783239395
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (832 download)

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Book Synopsis Grant & I: Inside and Outside the Go-Betweens by : Robert Forster

Download or read book Grant & I: Inside and Outside the Go-Betweens written by Robert Forster and published by Omnibus Press. This book was released on 2017-08-14 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “In early ’77 I asked Grant if he’d form a band with me. ‘No,’ was his blunt reply.” Grant McLennan didn’t want to be in a band. He couldn’t play an instrument; Charlie Chaplin was his hero du jour. However, when Robert Forster began weaving shades Hemingway, Genet, Chandler and Joyce into his lyrics, Grant was swayed and the 80s indie sensation, The Go-Betweens, was born. These friends would collaborate for three decades, until Grant’s tragic, premature death in 2006. Beautifully written – like lyrics, like prose – Grant & I is a rock memoir akin to no other. Part ‘making of’, part music industry exposé, part buddy-book, this is a delicate and perceptive celebration of creative endeavour. With wit and candour Robert Forster pays tribute to a band who found huge success in the margins, who boldly pursued a creative vision, and whose beating heart was the band’s friendship.

I Live Inside

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Author :
Publisher : Minnesota Historical Society
ISBN 13 : 087351999X
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (735 download)

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Book Synopsis I Live Inside by : Michelle Leon

Download or read book I Live Inside written by Michelle Leon and published by Minnesota Historical Society. This book was released on 2016-03-15 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Babes in Toyland burst onto the Minneapolis music scene in the late 1980s and quickly established itself at the forefront of punk/alternative rock. The all-female trio featured a shy, seventeen-year-old Jewish teen from the suburbs on bass guitar—an instrument she had never played before joining the band. Over the next few years, Michelle Leon lived the rock-and-roll lifestyle—playing live concerts, recording in studios, touring across the United States and Europe, and spending endless hours in stuffy vans, staying in two-star motels, and sleeping on strangers’ couches in town after town. The grind and drama of life in the band gradually wore on Leon, however, and a heartbreaking tragedy led her to rethink her commitment to the band and the music scene. Leon’s sensitive, sensory prose puts readers right on stage with Babes in Toyland while also conveying the uncertainty, vulnerability, and courage needed by a girl who never felt like she fit in to somehow find her place in the world. “A crucial and compelling account of what it was to be a woman making music in the nineties. . . . Fantastic and ferocious.”—Jessica Hopper, music and culture critic and author of The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic “Profound, poetic, badass, tender, and inspiring.”—Will Hermes, author of Love Goes to Buildings on Fire “I Live Inside feels as real and personal as reading your own memories. . . . Parts read like a fairy tale while others are so haunting they will never leave you.”—Kelli Mayo, musician (Skating Polly) “Leon draws you right into the Babes in Toyland van, shows you the after party tensions and what is in the mind of this particular girl in a band.”—Darcey Steinke, author of Sister Golden Hair: A Novel and others “[Leon’s] prose is stunning, her eye is wry, and her heart enormous; the result is a compelling memoir filled with pop culture, travel, intrigue, and a young artist’s quest to find her voice.”—Laurie Lindeen, musician (Zuzu’s Petals) and author of Petal Pusher: A Rock and Roll Cinderella Story “By the end of this lyrical, tough, and moving memoir, you’ll not only feel like you know Michelle Leon, you’ll also want to talk and dance and listen to music with her.”—Scott Heim, author of Mysterious Skin and We Disappear “A vivid, poetic memoir.”—Mark Yarm, author of Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge “This is Planet Leon.”—David Markey, filmmaker, author, and musician

A Long Strange Trip

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Author :
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0307418774
Total Pages : 738 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis A Long Strange Trip by : Dennis McNally

Download or read book A Long Strange Trip written by Dennis McNally and published by Crown. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 738 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The complete history of one of the most long-lived and legendary bands in rock history, written by its official historian and publicist—a must-have chronicle for all Dead Heads, and for students of rock and the 1960s’ counterculture. From 1965 to 1995, the Grateful Dead flourished as one of the most beloved, unusual, and accomplished musical entities to ever grace American culture. The creative synchronicity among Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan exploded out of the artistic ferment of the early sixties’ roots and folk scene, providing the soundtrack for the Dionysian revels of the counterculture. To those in the know, the Dead was an ongoing tour de force: a band whose constant commitment to exploring new realms lay at the center of a thirty-year journey through an ever-shifting array of musical, cultural, and mental landscapes. Dennis McNally, the band’s historian and publicist for more than twenty years, takes readers back through the Dead’s history in A Long Strange Trip. In a kaleidoscopic narrative, McNally not only chronicles their experiences in a fascinatingly detailed fashion, but veers off into side trips on the band’s intricate stage setup, the magic of the Grateful Dead concert experience, or metaphysical musings excerpted from a conversation among band members. He brings to vivid life the Dead’s early days in late-sixties San Francisco—an era of astounding creativity and change that reverberates to this day. Here we see the group at its most raw and powerful, playing as the house band at Ken Kesey’s acid tests, mingling with such legendary psychonauts as Neal Cassady and Owsley “Bear” Stanley, and performing the alchemical experiments, both live and in the studio, that produced some of their most searing and evocative music. But McNally carries the Dead’s saga through the seventies and into the more recent years of constant touring and incessant musical exploration, which have cemented a unique bond between performers and audience, and created the business enterprise that is much more a family than a corporation. Written with the same zeal and spirit that the Grateful Dead brought to its music for more than thirty years, the book takes readers on a personal tour through the band’s inner circle, highlighting its frenetic and very human faces. A Long Strange Trip is not only a wide-ranging cultural history, it is a definitive musical biography.