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The Story of the B-52s: Neon Side of Town
by Scott Creney Brigette Adair HerronThe Story of the B-52s: Neon Side of Town is the first critical history of one of the most legendary and influential bands in American popular music. Locating The B-52s in the intellectual climate of their hometown of Athens, GA and following the band from New York’s downtown scene in the early 1980s to their upcoming farewell tour, the book argues that The B-52s are much more significant political and musical influences on American society than their reputation as a silly party band suggests, and that their ongoing commitment to values including cooperation, mutual support, and using disruptive fun as a form of social change are an antidote to the neoliberalization sweeping both Athens and the rest of the Western world. For example, the book shows how the band synthesized influences from the modern artists displayed at the University of Georgia art museum, early queer activism on campus in the 1970s, and their experiences as queer people living through the AIDS crisis to create music that continues to be artistically and politically influential today. The authors are active members of the Athens, GA music scene, and the book includes original interviews with a range of number close to the band.
The Story of The Bee Gees: Children of the World
by Bob StanleyA dazzling biography of one of the bestselling bands of all time, told with brilliant insight by renowned pop music scholar Bob Stanley.The world is full of Bee Gees fans. Yet for a band of such renown, little is known about Barry, Maurice, and Robin Gibb. People tend to have their favorite era of the Bee Gees's career, but many listeners are also conscious that there is more to uncover about the band. This book will provide the perfect solution, by pulling together every fascinating strand to tell the story of a group with the imagination of the Beatles, the pop craft of ABBA, the drama of Fleetwood Mac, and the emotional heft of the Beach Boys. Uniquely, the Bee Gees's tale spans the entire modern pop era—they are the only group to have scored British top-ten singles in the '60s, '70s, '80s, and &‘90s—and includes world-conquering disco successes like 'Stayin' Alive' and 'More Than a Woman', both from the soundtrack of the hit film Saturday Night Fever. But the Bee Gees's extraordinary career was one of highs and lows. From a vicious but temporary split in 1969 to several unreleased albums, disastrous TV and film appearances, and a demoralising cabaret season, the group weren't always revelling in the glow of million-selling albums, private jets, and UNICEF concerts. Yet, even in the Gibbs' darkest times, their music was rarely out of the charts, as sung by the likes of Al Green, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, and Destiny's Child. Capturing the human story at the heart of the Bee Gees, this book is a lyrical and stylish read, delighting hardcore fans with its details while engaging casual pop readers who simply want to know more about this important and enigmatic group.
The Story of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band
by H. O. BrunnIt was the five young men who called themselves The Original Dixieland Jazz Band who raised jazz from being a curious, local, and peculiarly Negro phenomenon into the greatest popular artform in history. In 1916 they swept Chicago off its feet. In 1917 they took New York by storm. For the first time jazz became fashionable. People crowded into Reisenwehr’s Restaurant where they played. They were in constant demand for shows and charity performances. They accompanied Sophie Tucker and appeared on the same bill as Caruso.In March 1917 they made the first jazz record and their fame flew across the whole continent. The record was the biggest seller in the R.C.A. catalogue, passing the magic million and easily outstripping the records of Caruso and Sousa’s Band which were the current popular idols.But, not content with America as their platform, they also became the first group to export the new music. And London, too, was caught up in the exciting rhythm and wild, savage, haunting gaiety of jazz. For more than a year they played to packed houses. They gave a command performance for King George V. They were the sensation of the Victory Ball to celebrate the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.When the band broke up for the first time in 1924, partly torn by inner dissension, partly frustrated by the wave of indignation against the frenzied enthusiasm of their supporters (in 1922 jazz was banned after midnight in New York City), they had firmly established themselves as the top entertainment group in the United States, and they had blazed a trail to success which all could follow. They had proved that jazz was not merely a folk-music which could only be appreciated by Negroes, but the expression, in a particularly exhilarating form, of something which was an essential part of human nature.“Here at last is the book that tells the truth about how jazz music really began.”—THE GRAMOPHONE -
The Story of the Saxophone
by Lesa Cline-RansomeBrassy, smokey, melodious. There's nothing like the saxophone. This incredible work from the award-winners behind Before She was Harriet includes a poster of jazz music's greatest talents.You may think that the story of the saxophone begins with Dexter Gordon or Charlie Parker, or on a street corner in New Orleans. It really began in 1840 in Belgium with a young daydreamer named Joseph-Antoine Adolphe Sax—a boy with bad luck but great ideas.Coretta Scott King Honoree Lesa Cline-Ransome unravels the fascinating history of how Adolphe's once reviled instrument was transported across Europe and Mexico to New Orleans. Follow the saxophone's journey from Adolphe's imagination to the pawn shop window where it caught the eye of musician Sidney Bechet and became the iconic symbol of jazz music it is today. Deflty retold, this history is paired with the gorgeous artwork of James E. Ransome, including an attention-grabbing poster of iconic jazz musicians you can find inside the jacket.A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music
by Dave GrohlSo, I&’ve written a book. Having entertained the idea for years, and even offered a few questionable opportunities (&‘It&’s a piece of cake! Just do four hours of interviews, find someone else to write it, put your face on the cover, and voila!&’), I have decided to write these stories just as I have always done, in my own hand. The joy that I have felt from chronicling these tales is not unlike listening back to a song that I&’ve recorded and can&’t wait to share with the world, or reading a primitive journal entry from a stained notebook, or even hearing my voice bounce between the Kiss posters on my wall as a child. This certainly doesn&’t mean that I&’m quitting my day job, but it does give me a place to shed a little light on what it&’s like to be a kid from Springfield, Virginia, walking through life while living out the crazy dreams I had as young musician. From hitting the road with Scream at 18 years old, to my time in Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, jamming with Iggy Pop or playing at the Academy Awards or dancing with AC/DC and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, drumming for Tom Petty or meeting Sir Paul McCartney at Royal Albert Hall, bedtime stories with Joan Jett or a chance meeting with Little Richard, to flying halfway around the world for one epic night with my daughters…the list goes on. I look forward to focusing the lens through which I see these memories a little sharper for you with much excitement.
The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music
by Dave GrohlSo, I've written a book. <p><p> Having entertained the idea for years, and even offered a few questionable opportunities ("It's a piece of cake! Just do 4 hours of interviews, find someone else to write it, put your face on the cover, and voila!") I have decided to write these stories just as I have always done, in my own hand. The joy that I have felt from chronicling these tales is not unlike listening back to a song that I've recorded and can't wait to share with the world, or reading a primitive journal entry from a stained notebook, or even hearing my voice bounce between the Kiss posters on my wall as a child. <p><p> This certainly doesn't mean that I'm quitting my day job, but it does give me a place to shed a little light on what it's like to be a kid from Springfield, Virginia, walking through life while living out the crazy dreams I had as young musician. From hitting the road with Scream at 18 years old, to my time in Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, jamming with Iggy Pop or playing at the Academy Awards or dancing with AC/DC and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, drumming for Tom Petty or meeting Sir Paul McCartney at Royal Albert Hall, bedtime stories with Joan Jett or a chance meeting with Little Richard, to flying halfway around the world for one epic night with my daughters…the list goes on. I look forward to focusing the lens through which I see these memories a little sharper for you with much excitement. <p> <b>New York Times Bestseller</b>
Storyteller Guitar
by Doug LarsonEvery object around us contains the history of all the people and places that brought it here. But rarely is that history explored. In this book, instead of breaking an object apart to reveal those stories, they are told by building the object a guitar named Storyteller from scratch. The text and illustrations reveal the rich lives of the people, places, and projects that breathed life into it. The stories range from people who were pioneers in landscape restoration to those involved with automobile manufacturing. The places include the high arctic, tropical forests, and vertical cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment. The projects include stage plays, laser physics and the establishment of the first Canadian diamond mines. By bringing together these disparate stories in one musical instrument the book makes the argument that art, science, and history are part of everybody’s life.
Storytelling in Jazz and Musicality in Theatre: Through the Mirror
by Sven BjerstedtArt forms tend to mirror themselves in each other. In order to understand literature and fine arts better, we often turn to music, speaking of the ‘tone’ in a book and of the ‘rhythm’ in a painting. In attempts to understand music better, we turn instead to the narrative arts, speaking of the ‘story’ of a musical piece. This book focuses on two examples of such conceptual mirror reflexivity: narrativity in jazz music and musicality in spoken theatre. These intermedial metaphors are shown to be significant to the practice and reflection of performing artists through their ability to mediate holistic views of what is considered to be of crucial importance in artistic practice, analysis, and education. This exploration opens up possibilities for new theoretical and practical insights with regard to how the borderland between temporal art forms can be conceptualized. The book will be of interest not only to scholars of music and theatre, but also to those who work in the fields of aesthetics, intermedial studies, cognitive linguistics, arts theory, communication theory, and cultural studies.
Storytelling in Opera and Musical Theater (Musical Meaning and Interpretation)
by Nina PennerStorytelling in Opera and Musical Theater is the first systematic exploration of how sung forms of drama tell stories. Through examples from opera's origins to contemporary musicals, Nina Penner examines the roles of character-narrators and how they differ from those in literary and cinematic works, how music can orient spectators to characters' points of view, how being privy to characters' inner thoughts and feelings may evoke feelings of sympathy or empathy, and how performers' choices affect not only who is telling the story but what story is being told. Unique about Penner's approach is her engagement with current work in analytic philosophy. Her study reveals not only the resources this philosophical tradition can bring to musicology but those which musicology can bring to philosophy, challenging and refining accounts of narrative, point of view, and the work-performance relationship within both disciplines. She also considers practical problems singers and directors confront on a daily basis, such as what to do about Wagner's Jewish caricatures and the racism of Orientalist operas. More generally, Penner reflects on how centuries-old works remain meaningful to contemporary audiences and have the power to attract new, more diverse audiences to opera and musical theater. By exploring how practitioners past and present have addressed these issues, Storytelling in Opera and Musical Theater offers suggestions for how opera and musical theater can continue to entertain and enrich the lives of 21st-century audiences.
Storytelling in Siberia: The Olonkho Epic in a Changing World
by Robin P HarrisOlonkho , the epic narrative and song tradition of Siberia 's Sakha people, declined to the brink of extinction during the Soviet era. In 2005, UNESCO 's Masterpiece Proclamation sparked a resurgence of interest in olonkho by recognizing its important role in humanity 's oral and intangible heritage. Drawing on her ten years living in the Russian North, Robin P. Harris documents how the Sakha have used the Masterpiece program to revive olonkho and strengthen their cultural identity. Harris 's personal relationships with and primary research among Sakha people provide vivid insights into understanding olonkho and the attenuation, revitalization, transformation, and sustainability of the Sakha 's cultural reemergence. Interdisciplinary in scope, Storytelling in Siberia considers the nature of folklore alongside ethnomusicology, anthropology, comparative literature, and cultural studies to shed light on how marginalized peoples are revitalizing their own intangible cultural heritage.
Storytime in India: Wedding Songs, Victorian Tales, and the Ethnographic Experience
by Helen Priscilla Myers Umesh Chandra PandeyAn American ethnomusicologist and her Indian collaborator recount their experiences researching Bhojpuri wedding songs in India.Stories are the backbone of ethnographic research. During fieldwork, subjects describe their lives through stories. Afterward ethnographers come home from their journeys with stories of their own about their experiences in the field.Storytime in India is an exploration of the stories that come out of ethnographic fieldwork. Helen Priscilla Myers and Umesh Chandra Pandey examine the ways in which their research collecting Bhojpuri wedding songs became interwoven with the stories of their lives, their work together, and their shared experience reading The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope. Moving through these intertwined stories, the reader learns about the complete Bhojpuri wedding tradition through songs sung by Gangajali and access to the original song recordings and their translations. In the interludes, Pandey reads and interprets The Eustace Diamonds, confronting the reader with the ever-present influence of colonialism, both in India and in ethnographic fieldwork. Interwoven throughout are stories of the everyday, highlighting the ups and downs of the ethnographic experience.Storytime in India combines the style of the Victorian novel with the structure of traditional Indian village tales, in which stories are told within stories. This book questions how we can and should present ethnography as well as what we really learn in the field. As Myers and Pandey ultimately conclude, writers of scholarly books are storytellers themselves and scholarly books are a form of art, just like the traditions they study.
Stradivari's Genius
by Toby Faber"'Tis God gives skill, but not without men's hands: He could not make Antonio Stradivari's violins without Antonio."-George EliotAntonio Stradivari (1644--1737) was a perfectionist whose single-minded pursuit of excellence changed the world of music. In the course of his long career in the northern Italian city of Cremona, he created more than a thousand stringed instruments; approximately six hundred survive. In this fascinating book, Toby Faber traces the rich, multilayered stories of six of these peerless instruments-five violins and a cello-and the one towering artist who brought them into being.Blending history, biography, meticulous detective work, and an abiding passion for music, Faber embarks on an absorbing journey as he follows some of the most prized instruments of all time. Mysteries and unanswered questions proliferate from the outset-starting with the enigma of Antonio Stradivari himself. What made this apparently unsophisticated craftsman so special? Why were his techniques not maintained by his successors? How is it that even two and a half centuries after his death, no one has succeeded in matching the purity, depth, and delicacy of a Stradivarius?In Faber's illuminating narrative, each of the six fabled instruments becomes a character in its own right-a living entity cherished by artists, bought and sold by princes and plutocrats, coveted, collected, hidden, lost, copied, and occasionally played by a musician whose skill matches its maker's.Here is the fabulous Viotti, named for the virtuoso who enchanted all Paris in the 1780s, only to fall foul of the French Revolution. Paganini supposedly made a pact with the devil to transform the art of the violin-and by the end of his life he owned eleven Strads. Then there's the Davidov cello, fashioned in 1712 and lovingly handed down through a succession of celebrated artists until, in the 1980s, it passed into the capable hands of Yo-Yo Ma. From the salons of Vienna to the concert halls of New York, from the breakthroughs of Beethoven's last quartets to the first phonographic recordings, Faber unfolds a narrative magnificent in its range and brilliant in its detail. "A great violin is alive," said Yehudi Menuhin of his own Stradivarius. In the pages of this book, Faber invites us to share the life, the passion, the intrigue, and the incomparable beauty of the world's most marvelous stringed instruments.From the Hardcover edition.
Straight from the Heart: BONNIE TYLER'S LONG-AWAITED AUTOBIOGRAPHY
by Bonnie TylerThe candid and heartfelt memoir of vocal powerhouse Bonnie TylerWe all know the name, and we all know that voice, but what the world doesn't know is how Bonnie Tyler came to be the vocal powerhouse that took the music industry by storm. Now, after nearly 50 years in the limelight, Bonnie will lift the lid on her private life: her 50-year marriage, health, family, friendships, and fallouts with the world's biggest stars. Bonnie's is a fascinating, whirlwind of a life, and here, for the first time, she tells the whole story with no filter. The Welsh 80s pop legend tells her story of humble start in a small mining town in South Wales where she lived with her large, loving and eclectically musical family. From singing in church, her incredible voice surprising the congregation, to performing in pubs, to becoming a global icon and national treasure, throughout her successful career she has remained true to herself and her beginnings. This year marks the 40th anniversary of Total Eclipse of the Heart, one of the most famous power ballads of all time. Now as Bonnie approaches 50 years in the business she continues to move with the times, releasing new music and constantly touring the world.A happy childhood of music and freedom is conjured up here, along with the trickier side to being a woman in the music industry in the 1980s. Bonnie will speak with her characteristic no-nonsense humour and candour to create an inspiring and entertaining story of success, longevity and staying true to your roots.(P)2023 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
Straight from the Heart: BONNIE TYLER'S LONG-AWAITED AUTOBIOGRAPHY
by Bonnie TylerYou know the name and you can't mistake the voice. Now you can read the incredible story of how a shy, music-loving teenager called Gaynor Hopkins morphed into legendary international superstar Bonnie Tyler and carved out an extraordinary career that is still going strong to this day.After five decades in the business - during which time she has recorded some of the most iconic songs of all time, travelled the world and performed for royalty and the Pope - Bonnie is sharing her fascinating journey for the first time. And she's not holding back. From her early days growing up in a tiny mining village in South Wales, to her career as a club singer that led to her accidental discovery by a talent scout, the Top of the Pops devotee had no idea she would one day grace the infamous illuminated stage alongside some of her biggest idols. Her rise to fame would sound like a fairy tale if it wasn't all true.Bonnie has always determinedly followed her own path, even when sceptical music execs told her she would fail. Her bravery led to her working with the legendary producer and songwriter Jim Steinman, going on to record the classic power ballads 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' and 'Holding Out for a Hero', as well as duetting with some of the best-known names in the business. She is undoubtedly one of the biggest vocal powerhouses of her generation, but her roots remain firmly in her beloved Wales. She is resolutely down to earth, funny and endlessly charming. Whether she's talking about the family she adores or sharing hilarious anecdotes from her many years in the spotlight, Bonnie never fails to entertain.Finally, we get to hear the amazing tale of a woman who has led the way for so many other female artists - and has had a bloody great time doing it. Bonnie's much-anticipated memoir is inspirational, moving and straight from the heart.
Straight Life: The Story Of Art Pepper
by Art Pepper Laurie PepperArt Pepper (1925-1982) was called the greatest alto saxophonist of the post-Charlie Parker generation. But his autobiography, Straight Life, is much more than a jazz book--it is one of the most explosive, yet one of the most lyrical, of all autobiographies. This edition is updated with an extensive afterword by Laurie Pepper covering Art Pepper's last years, and a complete and up-to-date discography by Todd Selbert.
Straight No Chaser Sound Bites: A Cappella, Cocktails, and Cuisine
by Straight No Chaser, Inc.Food, Drink, and Behind–the-Scenes stories from everyone's favorite a cappella group, Straight No Chaser. With 15 years in the music business, eight albums, and more than 1.5 million concerts tickets sold, Straight No Chaser treasures two things: family and food. Straight No Chaser Sound Bites features a collection of their favorite food and drink recipes combined with behind-the-scenes stories as they welcome their fans into the family.Formed in 1996 at Indiana University, Straight No Chaser's story has been replete with twists and turns. Sound Bites deliciously recounts members' memories of moments from an unlikely yet wonderful cascade of events that propelled forward their career of creating music, touring, and becoming part of countless family traditions.Steve, Jerome, Charlie, Randy, Walt, Mike, Jasper, Seggie, and Tyler each offer their own (sometimes contradicting) stories of their adventures, as well as sensational recipes for cocktails, such as the Honey Lavender Greyhound, Grapefruit Jalapeño Cilantro Shrub, and SN-Tini, and foods, including "Choose Your Own Adventure" risotto, Great Grandma Erma's Apple Crisp, SNC M&C, Momma C's Fried Chicken—and many more.Straight No Chaser Sound Bites invites the group's many fans, old and new, to celebrate the harmony of music, food, and drink in their own homes. So settle in and enjoy.
Straight Outta Scotland: A True Story of Fakery, Money and Betrayal in the Music Industry
by Gavin BainCalifornia Schemin'is the remarkable real life story of how two rappers from Dundee pretended to be two rappers from California and duped the record industry out of hundreds of thousands of pounds. Gavin Bain and Billy Boyd - or Silibil N' Brains, as they became known - were two ordinary Scottish boys who shared an extraordinary dream: to become rap superstars. Creating new identities for themselves, they persuaded the music industry that they were the latest hot young talent from California. Silibil N' Brains then lived out that lie for more than two years, securing an enormous record deal with Sony and being catapulted into the industry high-life, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Madonna, Eminem and D12. But, ironically, they could never actually deliver and promote the album that they were paid so much money to put together. As soon as they became famous they would be recognised by anyone who had known them in their former lives in Scotland and the dream would evaporate. As the pressure mounted, there would be disastrous consequences ... California Schemin' is a story of incredible highs and terrible lows, of doing whatever it takes to follow your dream.
Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island
by Greil Marcus Robert ChristgauIn 1978, Greil Marcus asked twenty writers on rock-including Dave Marsh, Lester Bangs, Nick Tosches, Ellen Willis, and Robert Christgau-a question: What one rock-and-roll album would you take to a desert island? The resulting essays were collected in Stranded, twenty passionate declarations to such albums as The Rolling Stones' Beggars Banquet, the Ramones' Rocket to Russia, Something Else by the Kinks, and more. Universally revered as the ur-text of rock journalism, Stranded is an indispensable classic.
Strange Beautiful Music: A Musical Memoir
by Joe Satriani Jake BrownGo behind the scenes with the musician The New York Times called "a guitar God!" Oft-hailed as the Jimi Hendrix of his generation, living guitar legend Joe Satriani has long transcended stylistic boundaries with a sound that raises the bar like a new horizon for the broader genre of instrumental guitar rock. Joe's 6-string secrets have astounded listeners around the world for nearly 30 years. In Strange Beautiful Music: A Musical Memoir, Satriani and coauthor, music biographer Jake Brown, take fans on their first authorized tour of the story behind his climb to stardom and the creative odyssey involved in writing and recording a storied catalog of classics including "Surfing with the Alien," "Summer Song," "Satch Boogie," "Always With Me, Always With You," "The Extremist," "Flying in a Blue Dream," "Crowd Chant," and more. Featuring previously unpublished photos and hours of exclusive, firsthand interviews with Satriani, Strange Beautiful Music offers a unique look inside the studio with Joe, giving fans a chance to get up close and personal like never before. With insider details about his collaboration with multi-platinum supergroup Chickenfoot, exclusive interviews with Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony of Van Halen and Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, commentary from fellow guitar legends such as Steve Vai, Metallica's Kirk Hammett, Primus's Larry LaLonde, and legendary music producers including Glynn Johns and the late Andy Johns, this memoir offers a rare inside look for die-hard Satriani fans, guitar enthusiasts, and anyone who loves to rock.
The Strange Career of Porgy and Bess
by Ellen NoonanCreated by George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward and sung by generations of black performers, Porgy and Bess has been both embraced and reviled since its debut in 1935. In this comprehensive account, Ellen Noonan examines the opera's long history of invention and reinvention as a barometer of twentieth-century American expectations about race, culture, and the struggle for equality. In its surprising endurance lies a myriad of local, national, and international stories.For black performers and commentators, Porgy and Bess was a nexus for debates about cultural representation and racial uplift. White producers, critics, and even audiences spun revealing racial narratives around the show, initially in an attempt to demonstrate its authenticity and later to keep it from becoming discredited or irrelevant. Expertly weaving together the wide-ranging debates over the original novel, Porgy, and its adaptations on stage and film with a history of its intimate ties to Charleston, The Strange Career of "Porgy and Bess" uncovers the complexities behind one of our nation's most long-lived cultural touchstones.
Strange Footing: Poetic Form and Dance in the Late Middle Ages
by Seeta ChagantiFor premodern audiences, poetic form did not exist solely as meter, stanzas, or rhyme scheme. Rather, the form of a poem emerged as an experience, one generated when an audience immersed in a culture of dance encountered a poetic text. Exploring the complex relationship between medieval dance and medieval poetry, Strange Footing argues that the intersection of texts and dance produced an experience of poetic form based in disorientation, asymmetry, and even misstep. Medieval dance guided audiences to approach poetry not in terms of the body’s regular marking of time and space, but rather in the irregular and surprising forces of virtual motion around, ahead of, and behind the dancing body. Reading medieval poems through artworks, paintings, and sculptures depicting dance, Seeta Chaganti illuminates texts that have long eluded our full understanding, inviting us to inhabit their strange footings askew of conventional space and time.Strange Footing deploys the motion of dance to change how we read medieval poetry, generating a new theory of poetic form for medieval studies and beyond.
Strange Fruit: The Biography Of A Song
by David MargolickRecorded by jazz legend Billie Holiday in 1939, "Strange Fruit" is considered to be the first significant song of the civil rights movement and the first direct musical assault upon racial lynchings in the South. Originally sung in New York's Cafe Society, these revolutionary lyrics take on a life of their own in this revealing account of the song and the struggle it personified. Strange Fruit not only chronicles the civil rights movement from the '30s on, it examines the lives of the beleaguered Billie Holiday and Abel Meeropol, the white Jewish schoolteacher and communist sympathizer who wrote the song that would have an impact on generations of fans, black and white, unknown and famous, including performers Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt, and Sting.
Strange Stars: How Science Fiction and Fantasy Transformed Popular Music
by Jason HellerA Hugo Award-winning author and music journalist explores the weird and wild story of when rock ’n’ roll met the sci-fi world of the 1970sAs the 1960s drew to a close, and mankind trained its telescopes on other worlds, old conventions gave way to a new kind of hedonistic freedom that celebrated sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. Derided as nerdy or dismissed as fluff, science fiction rarely gets credit for its catalyzing effect on this revolution.In Strange Stars, Jason Heller recasts sci-fi and pop music as parallel cultural forces that depended on one another to expand the horizons of books, music, and out-of-this-world imagery.In doing so, he presents a whole generation of revered musicians as the sci-fi-obsessed conjurers they really were: from Sun Ra lecturing on the black man in the cosmos, to Pink Floyd jamming live over the broadcast of the Apollo 11 moon landing; from a wave of Star Wars disco chart toppers and synthesiser-wielding post-punks, to Jimi Hendrix distilling the “purplish haze” he discovered in a pulp novel into psychedelic song. Of course, the whole scene was led by David Bowie, who hid in the balcony of a movie theater to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey, and came out a changed man…If today’s culture of Comic Con fanatics, superhero blockbusters, and classic sci-fi reboots has us thinking that the nerds have won at last, Strange Stars brings to life an era of unparalleled and unearthly creativity—in magazines, novels, films, records, and concerts—to point out that the nerds have been winning all along.
Strange Things Are Happening
by Richard Norris'The rainbow reaches right across the sky, for miles and miles, and has landed right in the middle of our field. My mother, Alison, is standing at the beginning. I'm sure it's a beginning, rather than the end, as there's no pot of gold in sight. The point where everything forms or, perhaps, is not quite formed as yet. That's my favourite place. A place alive with possibility.'Strange Things Are Happening begins with the wonder of that rainbow, and continues with many escapades down the rabbit hole. From punk and the beginnings of the DIY scene, through Acid House, psychedelia, the rise of electronic dance music and much more, Richard Norris has been involved in countless countercultural revolutions. From misadventures in Amsterdam with Timothy Leary, with Sun Ra at customs, and Shaun Ryder in Joe Strummer's beaten up Cadillac in Tijuana, to his extraordinarily influential output in The Grid and Beyond The Wizards Sleeve, Richard Norris' story is one of collaboration and community, fuelled by relentless psychedelic curiosity.Strange Things Are Happening is a record of a life lived in the moment, forever in thrall to discovery, exploration and innovation - the search for what lies at the other end of that rainbow.
Strange Things Are Happening
by Richard Norris'The rainbow reaches right across the sky, for miles and miles, and has landed right in the middle of our field. My mother, Alison, is standing at the beginning. I'm sure it's a beginning, rather than the end, as there's no pot of gold in sight. The point where everything forms or, perhaps, is not quite formed as yet. That's my favourite place. A place alive with possibility.'Strange Things Are Happening begins with the wonder of that rainbow, and continues with many escapades down the rabbit hole. From punk and the beginnings of the DIY scene, through Acid House, psychedelia, the rise of electronic dance music and much more, Richard Norris has been involved in countless countercultural revolutions. From misadventures in Amsterdam with Timothy Leary, with Sun Ra at customs, and Shaun Ryder in Joe Strummer's beaten up Cadillac in Tijuana, to his extraordinarily influential output in The Grid and Beyond The Wizards Sleeve, Richard Norris' story is one of collaboration and community, fuelled by relentless psychedelic curiosity.Strange Things Are Happening is a record of a life lived in the moment, forever in thrall to discovery, exploration and innovation - the search for what lies at the other end of that rainbow.