Reinventing Pink Floyd

Reinventing Pink Floyd
Author: Bill Kopp
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2018-02-09
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1538108283

In celebration of the 45th anniversary of The Dark Side of the Moon, Bill Kopp explores the ingenuity with which Pink Floyd rebranded itself following the 1968 departure of Syd Barrett. Not only did the band survive Barrett’s departure, but it went on to release landmark albums that continue to influence generations of musicians and fans. Reinventing Pink Floyd follows the path taken by the remaining band members to establish a musical identity, develop a songwriting style, and create a new template for the manner in which albums are made and even enjoyed by listeners. As veteran music journalist Bill Kopp illustrates, that path was filled with failed experiments, creative blind alleys, one-off musical excursions, abortive collaborations, general restlessness, and—most importantly—a dedicated search for a distinctive musical personality. This exciting guide to the works of 1968 through 1973 highlights key innovations and musical breakthroughs of lasting influence. Kopp places Pink Floyd in its historical, cultural, and musical contexts while celebrating the test of fire that took the band from the brink of demise to enduring superstardom.

Reinventing Bach

Reinventing Bach
Author: Paul Elie
Publisher: Union Books
Total Pages: 731
Release: 2013-04-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1908526416

Johann Sebastian Bach – celebrated pipe organist, court composer and master of sacred music – was also a technical pioneer. Working in Germany in the early eighteenth century, he invented new instruments and carried out experiments in tuning, the effects of which are still with us today. Two hundred years later, a number of extraordinary musicians have utilised the music of Bach to thrilling effect through the art of recording, furthering their own virtuosity and reinventing the composer for our time. In Reinventing Bach, Paul Elie brilliantly blends the stories of modern musicians with a polyphonic account of our most celebrated composer’ s life to create a spellbinding narrative of the changing place of music in our lives. We see the sainted organist Albert Schweitzer playing to a mobile recording unit set up at London’ s Church of All Hallows in order to spread Bach’ s organ works to the world beyond the churches, and Pablo Casals’ s Abbey Road recordings of Bach’ s cello suites transform the middle-class sitting room into a hotbed of existentialism; we watch Leopold Stokowski persuade Walt Disney to feature his own grand orchestrations of Bach in the animated classical-music movie Fantasia – which made Bach the sound of children’ s playtime and Hollywood grandeur alike – and we witness how Glenn Gould’ s Goldberg Variations made Bach the byword for postwar cool. Through the Beatles and Switched-on Bach and Gö del, Escher, Bach – through film, rock music, the Walkman, the CD and up to Yo-Yo Ma and the iPod – Elie shows us how dozens of gifted musicians searched, experimented and collaborated with one another in the service of a composer who emerged as the prototype of the spiritualised, technically savvy artist.

Unknown Legends of Rock 'n' Roll

Unknown Legends of Rock 'n' Roll
Author: Richie Unterberger
Publisher: Backbeat Books
Total Pages: 436
Release: 1998
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780879305345

Profiles rock musicians from the 1950s to the 1990s who never made it big, including the Collins Kids, Graham Bond, Duffy Powder, the Remains, Nick Drake, Sandy Denny, Martin Newell, and the Free Spirits

In The Pink

In The Pink
Author: Nick Sedgwick
Publisher:
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2017
Genre: Rock groups
ISBN: 9781527219618

Dirty Little Secrets of the Record Business

Dirty Little Secrets of the Record Business
Author: Hank Bordowitz
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2007
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1569763917

For disgruntled music fans wondering why music played on the radio is not only worse now than in the past but also not nearly as revelatory as it once was, this book presents a detailed discussion of how the record business fouled its own livelihood. This insightful dissection covers numerous aspects of the industry's failures and shortcomings, including why stockholders play an important role, how radio went from an art to a science and what was lost in that change, how the record companies alienated their core audience, why file sharing might not be the bogeyman that the record industry would have people think, technology's effects on what and how music is heard, and dozens of other reasons that add up to the record industry's current financial and artistic woes. With eye-opening observations culled from extensive interviews, this expose offers insights into how this multi-billion-dollar industry is run and why it's losing so much money.

Stick It!

Stick It!
Author: Carmine Appice
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2016-05-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1613735553

Carmine Appice has enjoyed a jaw-dropping rock-and-roll life—and now he is telling his scarcely believable story. Appice ran with teenage gangs in Brooklyn before becoming a global rock star in the Summer of Love, managed by the Mob. He hung with Hendrix, unwittingly paid for an unknown Led Zeppelin to support him on tour, taught John Bonham to play drums (and helped Fred Astaire too), and took part in Zeppelin's infamous deflowering of a groupie with a mud shark. After enrolling in Rod Stewart's infamous Sex Police, he hung out with Kojak, accidentally shared a house with Prince, was blood brothers with Ozzy Osbourne and was fired by Sharon. He formed an all-blond hair-metal band, jammed with John McEnroe and Steven Seagal, got married five times, slept with 4,500 groupies—and, along the way, became a rock legend by single-handedly reinventing hard rock and heavy metal drumming. His memoir, Stick It!, is one of the most extraordinary and outrageous rock-and-roll books of the early twenty-first century.

Pink Floyd and Philosophy

Pink Floyd and Philosophy
Author: George A. Reisch
Publisher: Open Court
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2011-04-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0812697456

With their early experiments in psychedelic rock music in the 1960s, and their epic recordings of the 1970s and '80s, Pink Floyd became one of the most influential and recognizable rock bands in history. As "The Pink Floyd Sound," the band created sound and light shows that defined psychedelia in England and inspired similar movements in the Jefferson Airplane's San Francisco and Andy Warhol's New York City. The band's subsequent recordings forged rock music's connections to orchestral music, literature, and philosophy. "Dark Side of the Moon" and "The Wall" ignored pop music's ordinary topics to focus on themes such as madness, existential despair, brutality, alienation, and socially induced psychosis. They also became some of the best-selling recordings of all time. In this collection of essays, sixteen scholars expert in various branches of philosophy set the controls for the heart of the sun to critically examine the themes, concepts, and problems—usually encountered in the pages of Heidegger, Foucault, Sartre, or Orwell—that animate and inspire Pink Floyd's music. These include the meaning of existence, the individual's place in society, the interactions of knowledge and power in education, the contradictions of art and commerce, and the blurry line—the tragic line, in the case of Floyd early member Syd Barrett (died in 2006)—between genius and madness. Having dominated pop music for nearly four decades, Pink Floyd's dynamic and controversial history additionally opens the way for these authors to explore controversies about intellectual property, the nature of authorship, and whether wholes—especially in the case of rock bands—are more than the sums of their parts.

The White Book

The White Book
Author: Ken Mansfield
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2007-10-30
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1418576441

Through exclusive photos and personal stories, former US manager of Apple Records and Grammy Award winning producer Ken Mansfield offers a compelling memoir that delves into his life in the 1960s and '70s and his unique partnership with the Beatles and other musicians who orbited their world. As observer, friend, and colleague, Mansfield sat in their recording sessions, partied in their swimming pools, took their irate calls, and publicized their successes. Entertaining, historically accurate, and illuminating a side of the Fab Four known only to a few like Mansfield, The White Book shines fresh light on the true characters behind the cultural phenomena that revolutionized a generation. As the former Head of Apple Records International, Jack Oliver, has said of Ken, "He is one of the few insiders left that bore witness to the highs and lows of those insane days when we ruled the world." "Ken has a unique gift. He can take you in the room and have you sit with the folk he knows and make you one of the gang, part of the plan. and considering these folk include the Beatles, Dolly Parton, Waylon Jennings, the Beach Boys, Roy Orbison, David Cassidy and a whole host more that is some doing. I really enjoyed sitting in on his world and I respect the affection he has for our game, and what he brought to it, will get you." ANDREW LOOG OLDHAM Rolling Stones Manager and Producer "Ken Mansfield brings us a new and closely personal perspective not only on the Beatles, but on a whole cast of musical characters from Brian Wilson to Don Ho. An observant and perceptive man in the centre of the storm; a contradictory man, both ambitious and spiritual, but at the heart of the record industry during its most exciting years and enjoying every minute of it. I lived through those years with Ken and we became friends. It is a pleasure to experience so much of it all again through the accuracy of his story telling and the clarity of his memory." PETER ASHER Peter and Gordon/A&R Chief Apple Records/Producer-Manager (James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Carole King et al) "Journalism is normally a very inexact science. Many of the countless books about the Beatles have been written by researchers-not by people who were actually there. Everyone has experienced reading a book or article where one's own inside knowledge about a particular person or event shows up inaccuracies on the part of the writer that totally distort the truth. This book is an exception-I know because I was there for some of it myself. Ken Mansfield and I unknowingly shared the experience of the famous Apple rooftop session where I was nervously adjusting mikes and cables for the sound recording of that unforgettable day. Ken was not only working for the Beatles through their heyday, he was also their trusted friend. There is no one better equipped to tell the Beatles' story-truthfully-and more importantly-factually, from the inside." ALAN PARSONS Engineer to the Beatles/Pink Floyd, Multi Platinum Producer, Alan Parsons Project "Unlike many people claiming a Beatles connection, Ken Mansfield doesn't have an agenda or try to elevate his role or importance. Ken comes across as a man who knows how lucky he was to be where he was and enjoys sharing his stories with us. Ken was there and that is why The White Book is informative, fresh and entertaining without being ego-driven." BRUCE SPIZER Author, Beatle Historian

World in My Eyes

World in My Eyes
Author: Richard Blade
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 640
Release: 2017-10-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1948080036

Richard Blade’s autobiography is much more than a spotlight on any one decade. Instead, he gives you a jaw-dropping, uncensored insider’s look into the world of music, movies, and television and its biggest stars, starting in the sixties and continuing through to the new century. Richard takes you on a journey that few have experienced: from his early days as a student at Oxford to the wild, lascivious nights of being a disco DJ touring the clubs of Europe, to coming to America and working with Michael Jackson, Barbra Streisand, and Sarah Jessica Parker and finally breaking through into the L.A. radio scene and becoming the number one morning drive personality in California. From his TV and radio shows to his feature films and live gigs, Richard shares stories that have until now remained secret. His unique perspective will take you on the road with Depeche Mode, to Australia with Spandau Ballet, into the recording studio with Morrissey, and onto the main stage at Live Aid with Duran Duran. He opens up about his friendships with Michael Hutchence and George Michael, as well as his passionate love affair with Terri Nunn of Berlin. This is a no-holds-barred look at life, sex, and death, set to a pulsing backbeat of music. For the first time, Richard Blade shares his extraordinary story, allowing us to see the world through his eyes.