Fear Of Music: The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk and Disco
If there had been a music book of the year award in 2002, Garry Mulholland’s This is Uncool: The Greatest 500 Singles Since Punk and Disco would have walked away with the honors. Not only did it receive impressive reviews, but Mulholland simply has the knack of writing about music with such clarity that you can practically hear the song playing in your head. With his newest guide, he moves on from the single to the album format and produces an equally fantastic volume. Fans will be thrilled to discover that Fear of Music features all the witty, irreverent, and insightful criticism they expect from Mulholland. He takes on classics from the last 30 years by everyone from Iggy Pop (The Idiot), Television (Marquee Moon), and David Bowie (Heroes) through the Rolling Stones (Some Girls), Eminem (The Marshall Mathers LP), Madonna (The Immaculate Collection), Outkast (Speakerboxx/The Love Below), and The Prodigy (Music for the Jilted Generation). Of course The Talking Heads, whose Fear of Music gave the book its name, are here too. It’s the perfect gift for everyone who loves popular music, and readers will have a blast debating the selection.
The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion
Quite simply, the greatest albums of all time—and how they happened. The smartest, most keyed-in music critics from London’s best rock magazine provide opinionated, funny, insightful portraits of the best pop music records ever made. Redesigned and updated to include the most recent releases, and with a new section of artists contributing their top-five albums of all time. Informative, gossipy, and wide ranging, The MOJO Collection is an essential purchase for those who love and live music.
Beatles for Sale: How Everything They Touched Turned to Gold
Beatles for Sale is a brand new way of looking at a story you may think you know inside out. Author John Blaney shows for the first time how the group and their inner circle invented so much of what we now recognize as the modern business of making and selling rock music. This was certainly not because Lennon, McCartney, Epstein, and the rest had a clear vision of the way things ought to be. Very often it was simply down to making things up as they went along - because no one had been there before and no one knew how to do these things. The book details the ups and downs of the group as they promoted, advertised, and sold records, played concerts, sold merchandise, made films, and set up publishing and record companies of their own. It is a story of naivety and greed, inexperience and luck, gullibility and ingenuity. It is the story of every aspect of how the Beatles made money - and how virtually every group since then has followed in their footsteps.
Rock 'N' Roll 39-59
Snare drum backbeat plus electric guitar: the simple formula that launched the rock star, and contemporary teen culture along with it. Today rock 'n' roll seems to define postwar American culture, especially in its impact abroad. Though its inception is often imagined as sudden and seismic, it was of course a gradual and complex transition from boogie-woogie to the stardom of Elvis Presley and Bill Haley. A thorough survey of rock 'n' roll's bloodline would even reach back as far as 1939, a time when the electric guitar's role was mostly played by piano or saxophone. Rock 'n' Roll 39-59 does this, with the assistance of some of the genre's finest photographers. Bruce Davidson, Wayne Miller, Robert W. Kelley, Esther Bubley, Eve Arnold and Ernest C. Withers are all here, amid a wealth of visual props, including priceless period posters, records, rare souvenirs, photographs and film stills, and indices of the movement's key venues, events, artists, producers and people. This book describes a lively mess of genres, from boogie-woogie to blues, gospel, big band jazz, country and most of all rhythm and blues--interbreeding against a backdrop of colossal social change, and culminating in the rock 'n' roll explosion of the mid-1950s.
Simpsonology: There's a Little Bit of Springfield in All of Us
In this amusing and informative appreciation of The Simpsons, sociologist Tim Delaney looks at the many ways America's longest-running sitcom and animated TV program reflects American culture. For more than fifteen years, the Simpsons have touched upon nearly every aspect of the American social scene--from family dynamics and social mores to local customs and national institutions. With over four hundred episodes aired so far, Delaney finds a goldmine of insights couched in parody on any number of perennial topics:
· On television's influence on American culture, Krusty the Clown says, "Would it really be worth living in a world without television? I think the survivors would envy the dead."
· On New Age religion, Homer says, "To think, I turned to a cult for mindless happiness when I had beer all along."
· On the thorny issue of gun ownership and home security, Homer purchases a pistol at "Bloodbath and Beyond" and then tells Marge, "I don't have to be careful, I got a gun."
· On the theme of community spirit, Bart thoughtlessly signs up with a local Boy Scout troop while on a sugar rush from eating a "Super-Squishee." The next day he realizes what he has done: "Oh, no. I joined the Junior Campers!" To which his sister, Lisa, responds: "The few, the proud, the geeky."
Delaney finds many more episodes relevant to major sociological issues such as environmentalism, feminism, romance and marriage, politics, education, health, aging, and more. Students of popular culture and laypersons alike will learn basic sociological concepts and theories in a refreshing, jargon-free work that offers plenty of entertainment.
A Complete History of American Comic Books
This book is an updated history of the American comic book by an industry insider. You’ll follow the development of comics from the first appearance of the comic book format in the Platinum Age of the 1930s to the creation of the superhero genre in the Golden Age, to the current period, where comics flourish as graphic novels and blockbuster movies. Along the way you will meet the hustlers, hucksters, hacks, and visionaries who made the American comic book what it is today. It’s an exciting journey, filled with mutants, changelings, atomized scientists, gamma-ray accidents, and supernaturally empowered heroes and villains who challenge the imagination and spark the secret identities lurking within us.
From the Back Cover
"One part history and one part how-to add up to a book that really puts the ‘Pow’ back into comics." —Joe Quesada, Editor-in-Chief, Marvel Comics
"Shirrel Rhoades reflects on his journey through the world of comics as a reader, collector, and executive, offering a very personal perspective on a unique American art form and industry." —Paul Levitz, President and Publisher of DC Comics
"It’s a rare treat to read a book on this peculiar medium by a man who knows it as well, from the inside, as Shirrel Rhoades—and a fast, fun, crystal-clear book it is." —Gerard Jones, Author of Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangster, and the Birth of the Comic Book
Teenage: The Prehistory of Youth Culture: 1875-1945
“The definitive history of youth in revolt, from the gaslight age to the dawn of rock.”
—David Fricke, Rolling Stone
“Compulsive reading . . . Teenage is a rich, rewarding book that makes an important contribution to cultural history.”
—Camille Paglia, The New York Times Book Review
“Resonant . . . Savage explores . . . [an] array of teenager types, from the wild, sensational precursors to juvenile delinquency to the straight-laced good-citizen proto-preppie. It’s Savage’s claim to being a great historian, and it’s mighty convincing.”
—The Onion
In his previous landmark book on youth culture and teen angst, the award-winning England’s Dreaming, Jon Savage presented the “definitive history of the English punk movement” (The New York Times). Now, in Teenage, he explores the secret prehistory of a phenomenon we thought we knew, in a monumental work of cultural investigative reporting. Beginning in 1875 and ending in 1945, when the term “teenage” became an integral part of popular culture, Savage draws widely on film, music, literature high and low, fashion, politics, and art and fuses popular culture and social history into a stunning chronicle of modern life.
Wacky Packages
Wacky Packages—a series of collectible stickers featuring parodies of consumer products and well-known brands and packaging—were first produced by the Topps company in 1967, then revived in 1973 for a highly successful run. In fact, for the first two years they were published, Wacky Packages were the only Topps product to achieve higher sales than their flagship line of baseball cards. The series has been relaunched several times over the years, most recently to great success in 2007.
Known affectionately among collectors as “Wacky Packs,” as a creative force with artist Art Spiegelman, the stickers were illustrated by such notable comics artists as Kim Deitch, , Bill Griffith, Jay Lynch, and Norm Saunders.
This first-ever collection of Series One through Series Seven (from 1973 and 1974) celebrates the 35th anniversary of Wacky Packages and is sure to amuse collectors and fans young and old.
Working with Walt: Interviews With Disney Artists
Walt Disney created or supervised the creation of live-action films, television specials, documentaries, toys, merchandise, comic books, and theme parks. His vision, however, manifested itself first and foremost in his animated shorts and feature-length cartoons, which are loved by millions around the world.
Working with Walt: Interviews with Disney Artists collects revealing conversations with animators, voice actors, and designers who worked extensively with Disney during the heyday of his animation studio. The book includes fifteen interviews with artists who directed segments of such classic animated features as Dumbo and Fantasia. Some interviewed were part of Disney's famed team dubbed "The Nine Old Men of Animation," and some worked closely with Disney on Steamboat Willie, his first cartoon with sound.
Among the subjects the interviewees discuss are the studio's working environment, the high-water mark of animation during Hollywood's Golden Age, and Disney's mixture of childlike charm and hard-nosed business drive. Through these voices, Don Peri preserves an account of the Disney magic from those who worked closely with him.
Radio Drama: A Comprehensive Chronicle of American Network Programs, 1932-1962
Grams (CBS Radio Mystery Theater) has unearthed a mother lode of information about old-time radio. Over 300 programs are alphabetically arranged by title, not just drama and genre programs but documentaries, variety shows, and musical comedies. The titles of individual episodes are listed with air dates and cast members. Directors, producers, writers, and musical personnel are credited, and meticulous care is given to title changes, sponsor, and the day and time of broadcast. Sometimes, though, attention to minutiae obscures more important facts. The entry on The Return of Nick Carter, for instance, notes that the first two episodes were called Nick Carter, Master Detective but neglects to mention that after a three-year run the program used this title again for another eight years. Better use of cross references (only one now appears) would help clarify connections among various programs. Also, some popular shows are inexplicably omitted, notably Little Orphan Annie, The Lone Ranger, and The Shadow, and the 39-page three-column index gives ample access to the people involved but doesn't refer to program titles, sponsors, or networks.
Captain Kirk's Guide to Women
Casanova, Don Juan, James Bond -- these are men of legendary romance, but only one man can boast that his seductive powers take him boldly where no man has gone before: James T. Kirk.
Captain Kirk's status as an interstellar stud is proven by his ability to seduce any woman, in any situation, in any part of the galaxy. From high-society princesses to unbalanced Orion slave girls, from gender-switching shape-shifters to emotion-deprived androids -- they all swoon, acquiesce, and malfunction from just one kiss.
But a single question remains in the minds of millions: How does he do it?
Captain Kirk's Guide to Women is the first book to answer this question by probing deeply into Kirk's character, charisma, and seductive techniques, making it possible for any man to model himself after the Casanova of the Cosmos. It is also the only warp-powered romance manual written with enough wit, charm, and humor to help the female of the species make first contact.
Employing meticulous research, along with fanatic-level detail and the kind of pointy-eared logic even a Vulcan would find fascinating, Captain Kirk's Guide to Women shows you how to be as effective as Captain Kirk.
available here via Amazon. Thats a big change from my big Who-mania days of the mid-80s when it seems like nobody here had heard of the Doctor and I went nuts buying books and cheap plastic Dalek toys on a trip to London.
