In the 1960s and 1970s, becoming a rock musician was fundamentally different than playing other kinds of music. It was a learned rather than a taught skill. In On Becoming a Rock Musician, sociologist H. Stith Bennett observes what makes someone a rock musician and what persuades others to take him seriously in this role. The book explores how bands form; the backstage and onstage reality of playing in a band; how bands promote themselves and interact with audiences and music prof...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • David Byrne’s incisive and enthusiastic look at the musical art form, from its very inceptions to the influences that shape it, whether acoustical, economic, social, or technological—now updated with a new chapter on digital curation.“How Music Works is a buoyant hybrid of social history, anthropological survey, autobiography, personal philosophy, and business manual”—The Boston GlobeUtilizing h...

Noisy, confrontational, and controversial, industrial music first emerged in the mid-1970s around bands and performance groups that combined avant-garde electronic music with the provocative attitude and abrasive style of punk rock. In Assimilate, S. Alexander Reed provides the first ever critical history of this fascinating and enigmatic genre, charting its trajectory from Throbbing Gristle's founding of the record label Industrial Music in 1976, to its peak in popularity with the success...

The progressive/hard rock band Rush has never been as popular as it is now. A documentary film about the band, Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, which was released in the summer of 2010 has been universally well received. They had a cameo in the movie I Love You Man. Their seven-part song 2112” was included in a version of Guitar Hero” released in 2010. The group even appeared on The Colbert Report.Even legendary trios such as Led Zeppelin, Cream, and The...

There is more to sound recording than just recording sound. Far from being simply a tool for the preservation of music, the technology is a catalyst. In this award-winning text, Mark Katz provides a wide-ranging, deeply informative, consistently entertaining history of recording's profound impact on the musical life of the past century, from Edison to the Internet. Fully revised and updated, this new edition adds coverage of mashups and Auto-Tune, explores recent developments in file-shari...

This accessible Introduction explores both mainstream and experimental manifestations of electronic music. From early recording equipment to the most recent multimedia performances, the history of electronic music is full of interesting characters, fascinating and unusual music, and radical technology. Covering many different eras, genres and media, analyses of works appear alongside critical discussion of central ideas and themes, making this an essential guide for anyone approaching the ...

Electronic music since 1980 has splintered into a dizzying assortment of genres and subgenres communities and subcultures. Given the ideological differences among academic popular and avant-garde electronic musicians is it possible to derive an aesthetic theory that accounts for this variety? And is there even a place for aesthetics in twenty-first-century culture? This book explores genres ranging from techno to electroacoustic music from glitch to drone music and from dub to drones and m...

More than any rock artist since The Beatles, Radiohead's music inhabits the sweet spot between two extremes: on the one hand, music that is wholly conventional and conforms to all expectations of established rock styles, and, on the other hand, music so radically experimental that it thwarts any learned notions. While averting mainstream trends but still achieving a significant level of success in both US and UK charts, Radiohead's music includes many surprises and subverted expectations, ...

"A solid, scholarly analysis of the power, meaning, musical structure, and sociopolitical contexts of the most popular examples of heavy metal." — Library JournalDismissed by critics and academics, condemned by parents and politicians, and fervently embraced by legions of fans, heavy metal music continues to attract and embody cultural conflicts that are central to society. In Running with the Devil, Robert Walser explores how and why heavy metal w...

The groundbreaking Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (Continuum; September 2004; paperback original) maps the aural and discursive terrain of vanguard music today. Rather than offering a history of contemporary music, Audio Culture traces the genealogy of current musical practices and theoretical concerns, drawing lines of connection between recent musical production and earlier moments of sonic experimentation. It aims to foreground the various rewirings of musical composit...

What do expert drummers do? Why do they do it? Is there anything creative about it? If so, how might that creativity inform their practice and that of others in related artistic spheres? Applying ideas from cultural psychology to findings from research into the creative behaviors of a specific subset of popular music instrumentalists, Bill Bruford demonstrates the ways in which expert drummers experience creativity in performance and offers fresh insights into in-the-moment interactional p...

Now in its fifth edition, this popular A–Z student reference book provides a comprehensive survey of key ideas and concepts in popular music culture, examining the social and cultural aspects of popular music.Fully revised with extended coverage of the music industries, sociological concepts and additional references to reading, listening and viewing throughout, the new edition expands on the foundations of popular music culture, tracing the impact of digital technology and changes...