Showing titles in History & Criticism

FOREWORD BY JAMES MURPHY 'Literally changed the course of my life' James Murphy When someone says, 'You have to know your history...' this is it. A pop culture classic for over two decades, now fully refreshed and updated as part of White Rabbit's Deep Cuts series, Last Night a DJ ... is the...

From Gregorian Chant to Henryk Gorecki, the first living classical composer to get into the pop album charts, here is the fascinating story of over a thousand years of Western classical music and the composers who have sought to express in music the deepest of human feelings and emotions. Polyphony, sonata form, serial music - many musical expressions are also explained - with the text illustrated by performances from some of the most highly praised recordings of recent years.

'Superb and timely' KATE MOSSE 'Impressive, important, deeply moving' SARAH WATERS 'Brilliant' ANTHONY HOROWITZ What role could music play in a death camp? What was the effect on those women who owed their survival to their participation in a Nazi propaganda project? And how did it feel to be...

Bloomsbury presents M Train written and read by Patti Smith. 'So honest and pure as to count as a true rapture' JOAN DIDION 'A poetic masterpiece' JOHNNY DEPP 'Our St John of the Cross, a mystic full of compassion' EDMUND WHITE 'A roadmap to my life', from the National Book Award-winning author...

Brought to you by Penguin. A dazzlingly original reassessment of the power and plurality of women's singing voices by the critically acclaimed author of Art Monsters and Scaffolding For millennia, women’s raised voices have been heard as unruly, uncivilized, dangerous. Women singing were cast...

Bloomsbury presents Torment Saint by William Todd Schultz, read by Christopher Ragland Elliott Smith was one of the most gifted songwriters of the nineties, adored by worshipful fans for his subtly melancholic words and melodies. The sadness had its sources in the life. There was trauma from an...

When Miranda Sawyer interviewed Liam Gallagher in 1994, his gag wishing Damon Albarn would die of AIDS became front-page news all over the world. This fascinating pop history, exploring the moment British music suddenly meant everything, explains why. Picking out twenty key songs, delving into the surprising stories behind them and their unlikely creators, UNCOMMON PEOPLE takes us back to when Jarvis Cocker became a national hero, films like Trainspotting were international hits, rave became what everybody did - and it felt like the revolution was happening.

Bloomsbury presents The Musical Human by Michael Spitzer, read by Daniel Levitin. A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK 'Full of delightful nuggets' Guardian online 'Entertaining, informative and philosphical ... An essential read' All About History 'Extraordinary range ... All the world and more is here'...

WINNER OF THE SILVER ARIAS AWARD 2024 IN THE BEST AUDIO BOOK OR READING CATEGORY 'Love this book! It triggers so many memories of the rave era. Thoroughly recommended.' - FATBOY SLIM 'Captures the hedonism and humour of the nineties with a laugh-out-loud honesty. The perfect Ibiza holiday read...

A must-read for old-school hip-hop heads and burgeoning fans alike Time 'Hip Hip is not History, it's Our story. Brilliant book' Craig Charles 'Hip-Hop Is History melds a detailed chronological retelling of the genre's story with occasionally hair-raising memoir ' Guardian 'Sharp and lyrical...

Nick has been fantastically involved throughout the production of this download, so that it has become something far more than simply an author reading his work. For once, we can genuinely say this audiobook comes complete with bells and whistles, not to mention some Arctic winds, Venetian canals, telephones, aeroplanes, and a squealing pig or two!

John Eliot Gardiner grew up passing one of the only two authentic portraits of Bach every morning and evening on the stairs of his parents’ house, where it hung for safety during World War II. He has been studying and performing Bach ever since, and is now regarded as one of the composer's greatest living interpreters. The fruits of this lifetime's immersion are distilled in this remarkable book, grounded in the most recent Bach scholarship but moving far beyond it.

Guitar sleuth and music-history detective Deke Dickerson tells the true tales behind 48 rare-guitar and amplifier finds that will make any player or collector green with envy. Finding that holy grail of a guitar stashed away beneath a bed, in a closet, in the dusty corner of a guitar shop, or up...

'A flaming juggernaut of heavy-metal biog' GUARDIAN 'This is the definitive account of heavy metal's biggest band of all' CLASSIC ROCK 'Truly enlightening' ROCK SOUND 'ENTER NIGHT, Mick Wall's biography of Metallica confirms this grizzled veteran to be as engaged and waspishly authoritative a...

“An excellent history of the queer world’s countless music scenes.” —Emma Alpern, Vulture “An essential book for this moment.” —Rob Sheffield The definitive history of LGBTQ music, from Stonewall to RuPaul, and its impact on culture and American life From the underground...

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BILLY BRAGG Over the last seven decades, some of rock 'n' roll's most celebrated figureheads have flirted with the imagery and theatre of the Third Reich. From Keith Moon and Vivian Stanshall kitting themselves out in Nazi uniforms to Siouxsie Sioux and Sid Vicious...

Originally published in 1978 as The Beach Boys and the California Myth, this groundbreaking study was both the first full-length book on the band and the first to recognize Brian Wilson as one of the most significant and influential artists of the twentieth century. Covering the turbulent family strife and internal conflicts as well as giving proper attention to the remarkable music, the book was an instant classic.

There has never been a band like Pearl Jam. The Seattle quintet has recorded 11 studio albums; sold some 85 million records; played more than a thousand shows, in 50 countries; and had five different albums reach number one. But Pearl Jam's story is about much more than music. Not for You is the first full-length treatment of Pearl Jam's odyssey and importance in the culture, from the '90s to the present. 

An avant-garde pop album rich with tension and fear, 1980’s Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) marked a pivotal point in David Bowie’s career. Standing at the bleeding edge of the new decade between the experimental Berlin Trilogy (Low, Heroes, and Lodger) and 1983’s wildly successful...

'Fabulous... What a ghost story! A ripping read.' IAIN SINCLAIR, author of London Orbital 'Vividly celebrates Bowie as not just a chameleonic visionary, but a nomadic one, a creature informed by place and circumstance" STUART MACONIE 'Bowieland will make you want to take your very own pilgrimage...