Bücher der Reihe 33 1/3

After his breakthrough with Ziggy Stardust and before his U.S. pop hits "Fame" and "Golden Years" David Bowie produced a dark and difficult concept album set in a post-apocalytic "Hunger City" populated by post-human "mutants." Diamond Dogs includes the great glam anthem "Rebel Rebel" as well a variety of other songs such as one of Bowie's best piano ballads, a Moog-centered tune that sounds like Emerson Lake and Palmer, and a cool funk groove. But it also contains grinding discordant guitar experimentation, a noise collage, a weird repetitive chant, and utterly unique songs that combine lush romantic piano and nearly operatic singing with scratching, grungy guitars, creepy, insidious noises, and dark, pessimistic lyrics that reflect the album's origin as a projected Broadway musical version of Orwell's 1984. In this book Glenn Hendler shows that Diamond Dogs was an experiment with the intimate connection Bowie forged with his audience. Each song on Diamond Dogs shifts the ground under you as you listen, not just by changing in musical style, but by being sung by a different "I" who directly addresses a different "you." Diamond Dogs is the product of a performer at the peak of his powers but uncomfortable with the rock star role he had constructed. All of the album's influences--Orwell, Burroughs, experimental German rock, black American music, 1930s cinema, post-human dystopias, and freak shows--looked to Bowie like ways of escaping not just the Ziggy role, but also the constraints of race, gender, sexuality, and nationality. These are just some of the reasons many Bowie fans rate Diamond Dogs his richest and most important album of the 1970s.

Vs. is the sound of a band on fire. The same confluence of talent, passion, timing, and fate that made "grunge" the world's soundtrack also lit a short fuse beneath Pearl Jam. The band combusted between late 1992 and mid-1994, the span during which they planned, recorded, and supported their sophomore record. The spotlight, the pressure, the pace-it all nearly turned the thriving act to ash.Eddie Vedder, the reluctant public face of the band, responded by lashing out lyrically. Jeff Ament, Mike McCready, and Stone Gossard, who beheld success with varying degrees of anxious satisfaction, attacked their instruments in solidarity. Dave Abbruzzese welcomed the rock-star lifestyle, and left his mark on the record with more than just potent percussion.Vs. roils with fury-and at times, gently steams-over the trappings of fame, human faults, and societal injustice. The record is a thrashing testament to Pearl Jam's urgent creativity and greater-good interests, and the band's logistical calculations behind it drew a career-defining line in the sand. It promised the world that Pearl Jam would neither burn out nor fade away. This book weaves research, little-known details, and band members' memories into a definitive account of how Vs. set them on a path toward enduring integrity and relevance.

In a bar called The Bucket of Blood, a man shoots the bartender four times in the head. In the small town of Millhaven, a teenage girl secretly and gleefully murders her neighbors. A serial killer travels from home to home, quoting John Milton in his victims' blood.Murder Ballads, the ninth studio album from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, is a gruesome, blood-splattered reimagining of English ballads, American folk and blues music, and classic literature. Most of the stories told on Murder Ballads have been interpreted many times, but never before had they been so graphic or profane. Though earning the band their first Parental Advisory warning label, Murder Ballads, released in 1996, brought Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds their biggest critical and commercial success, thanks in part to the award-winning single, "Where the Wild Roses Grow," an unlikely duet with Australian pop singer, Kylie Minogue.Closely examining each of the ten songs on the album, Santi Elijah Holley investigates the stories behind the songs, and the numerous ways these ballads have been interpreted through the years. Murder Ballads is a tour through the evolution of folk music, and a journey into the dark secrets of American history.

A Classic Rock book of 2020"I had to leave town for a little while--" with these words, Elvis Presley truly came home to rock and roll. A little over a month earlier he had staged rock's first and greatest comeback in a television program, forever known as "The '68 Comeback Special." With this show, he resurrected himself--at the age of 33, no less--from the ashes of a career mired in bad movies and soundtracks. So where to go from here? Like a killer returning to the scene of the crime, Elvis came back home to Memphis, where it had all begun. Eschewing the fancier studios of Nashville and Hollywood, he set up shop at the ramshackle American Sound Studio, run by a maverick named Chips Moman with an in-house backing band now known as "The Memphis Boys," and made the music of his life. The resulting work, From Elvis in Memphis, would be the finest studio album of his career, an explosion of mature confidence and fiery inspiration. It was the sound of Elvis establishing himself as a true rock and roll artist--and proving his status as a legend.

So much, popular and scholarly, has been written about the synthesizer, Bob Moog and his brand-name instrument, and even Wendy Carlos, the musician who made this instrument famous. No one, however, has examined the importance of spy technology, the Cold War and Carlos's gender to this critically important innovation. Through a postcolonial lens of feminist science and technology studies, Roshanak Kheshti engages in a reading of Carlos's music within this gendered context. By focusing on Switched-On Bach (the highest selling classical music recording of all time), this book explores the significance of gender to the album's--and, as a result, the Moog synthesizer's--phenomenal success.

In 1958, an anonymous group of overworked and under-budgeted BBC employees set out to make some new sounds for radio and TV. They ended up changing the course of 20th-century music. For millions of people, the work of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was the first electronic music they had ever heard. Sampling, loops, and the earliest synthesizers-long before audiences knew what they were-made up the groundbreaking scores for news programs, auto maintenance shows, and children's programming. They also produced the Doctor Who theme, one of the first electronic music masterpieces. The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and others borrowed from them. A generation of musicians raised on BBC programming-Aphex Twin, Portishead, and Prodigy among them-took these once-alien sounds and carried on the Workshop's legacy. Ignored for decades by music historians, the Workshop is now recognized as one of the most influential forebears of electronica, psychedelia, ambient music, and synth-pop.

On Ice-T's 1991 classic O.G. Original Gangster, he introduced his all-Black hardcore band Body Count with lead guitarist Ernie C, bringing them on the first-ever Lollapalooza tour that summer. The next year, Body Count's self-titled debut album, rounded out by rhythm guitarist D-Roc the Executioner, bassist Mooseman, and drummer Beatmaster V, made them the most incendiary band in the world, confronting white supremacy and police brutality with pulverizing songs that shattered musical boundaries. Body Count's rage and shock humor sparked nationwide protests and boycotts, including death threats, censure from the federal government, a spot on the FBI National Threat list, and a denunciation by the President of the United States. The album was removed from stores and remains banned to this day, but decades later Body Count are performing to theirbiggest audiences and greatest acclaim, pulling off one of the most remarkable comebacks in punk or metal history.Drawn from years of research and dozens of new interviews, this is the story of a band of high school friends who revolutionized modern music, brought explosive live performances, and raised questions America's lawmakers didn't want to answer, overcoming some of the country's most powerful forces to reshape the world's cultural conversation.

The Go-Go's debut album Beauty and the Beat was released on July 8, 1981. The album spent six weeks in the number one spot on the Billboard charts, produced two hit singles and sold more than two million copies making it one of the most successful debut albums of all time. Beauty and the Beat made the Go-Go's the first, and to date only, female band to have a number one album who not only wrote their own songs, but also played their own instruments.Beauty and the Beat is a ground-breaking album, but the Go-Go's are often overlooked when we talk about influential female musicians. The Go-Go's were a feminist band and Beauty and the Beat a call to arms that inspired generations of women. The band embraced the DIY spirit of Riot Grrrl before there was a Bikini Kill or a Bratmobile. Girls making music on their own terms didn't start with Courtney Love or Beyoncé or Billie Eilish, it started with the Go-Go's. It started with Beauty and the Beat.While they may have controlled their music, the Go-Go's couldn't control the misogyny of the music industry, media and fans. The sexist and tired stereotypes the Go-Go's experienced 40 years ago still exist today. The legacy of Beauty and the Beat is both a celebration of how the record inspired countless girls to make art and music on their own terms, but also a painful reminder of how little has changed in how female musicians are marketed, manipulated, and discarded.

Depeche Mode's 101 is, at first glance, a curious thing: a live double-album by a synth band. A recording of its "Concert for the Masses," 101 marks the moment when doomy, cultish, electronic Depeche Mode, despite low American album sales and a lack of critical acclaim, declared they had arrived and ascended to the rare air of stadium rock. On June 18, 1988, 65,000 screaming, singing Southern Californians flocked to Pasadena's Rose Bowl to celebrate DM's coronation. The concert also revealed the power of Southern California radio station and event host KROQ, which had turned Los Angeles into DM's American stronghold through years of fervent airplay. KROQ's innovative format, which brought "new music" to its avid listeners, soon spread across the country, leading to the explosion of alternative rock in the 1990s.Eight years after its founding in Basildon, Essex, Depeche Mode, rooted in 1970s Krautrock, combined old-fashioned touring, well-crafted songs, and the steadfast support of KROQ to dominate Southern California, the United States, and then the world, kicking open the doors for the likes of Nirvana in the process. 101 is the hidden-in-plain-sight hinge of modern music history.

Following the success of their instantly iconic double LP, London Calling, The Clash set out to do something "triply outrageous." Named after the Nicaraguan rebels who successfully overthrew an authoritarian dictator, Sandinista! consists of 36 songs across six sides of vinyl, showcasing their politics and musical prowess through genres ranging from hip hop, reggae, jazz, gospel, calypso, and punk. Despite being considered one of the greatest albums of all-time, critics and fans have spent over 40 years debating whether the album would be better as a 12-track LP. This book entertains that idea and considers what is lost or gained in the process.

The Isley Brothers' 3+3, dissects The Isleys' 50-year-old undisputed masterwork, an album that firmly established their music dynasty on a global scale, as well as heralding the boldest run of genre-defiant albums of their 65-year career. The 1973 watershed was their first multiplatinum release and is significant as a rare, crossover record by a Black act that struck a chord with urban, rock and pop consumers, despite the schisms between audiences due to bias-driven media and industry marketing.The book looks at the album from all angles: From The Isleys' early career to their influence on rock and rollers both Black and White, from the twists and turns of having national hits without national recognition, onto their decision to form T-Neck Records and the group's challenges navigating a music industry that racially codified music and hampered Black artists from universal acclaim and compensations--and finally a summation of the decades following The Isley's run and its ups and downs, with a fast-forward to where the group is now after 65 years.