Maybe one of the reasons why actor Robert Mitchum looked so comfortable and at home in western movies, was the fact that he bred horses, preferred the casual cowboy outfit off the film set, and seemingly simply played himself, whenever he took the part of the cowboy, the Sheriff, the outlaw or the weather-beaten stranger […]
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Category: B. R. Music
Representations of Working-Class Masculinities in Post-War British Culture: The Left Behind by Matth...
When considering his main subjects, author Matthew Crowley emphasizes that there are many different ways to live a certain working-class masculinity, as there never was just one single “traditional” experience or one simple, unified path that would lead to such an experience for every English male working-class person in the mid-20th century. In his study […]
London Life. The Magazine of the Swinging Sixties by Simon Wells (ed.) (2020)
A so far unparalleled team of talented artists, publishing pros and design specialists in their respective fields, like Peter Akhurst, Jean Shrimpton, David Hockney, and regular contributors such as Joe Meek, Eric Burdon, and Marc Bolan for a short while were all connected to England’s probably most advanced magazine of the 1960s, London Life. It […]
Crime and Spy Jazz on Screen Since 1971. A History and Discography by Derrick Bang (2020)
In the second volume of his extensive study on crime and spy movie jazz, author Bang devotes his knowledge to the years 1971 to 2019. His strategy of presenting these scores changes a bit in the present volume, as even though in the early 1970s movies were still shown in movie theaters almost exclusively, just […]
The Social Life of Sound by Sophia Maalsen (2019)
Many publications of the last 30 or so years have dealt with the social life (or interaction) of almost anything from objects, commodities to video games. Here comes one more title, it has the focus on the nature, social abilities and creative power of popular music, or rather, it is on music that was re-discovered, […]
Dreams Unreal: The Genesis of the Psychedelic Rock Poster by Titus O’Brien et al. (2020)
Thanks to a handful of creative poster artists and their large fan groups, many rock concert posters of the late 1960s that today are rightfully considered art, rather than mere advertisements, their most intriguing aspect then and now were the posters’ strong display of psychedelic arrangements, drug-influenced ways of perceiving shapes, names and graphic objects. […]
Heart Full of Soul. Keith Relf of the Yardbirds by David French (2020)
In the southwest of London, in 1962 a young Richmond band called The Metropolis Blues Quartet was starting to become England’s probably most innovative rock band. This band would become the nucleus of a guitar-based outfit that later significantly altered music history and started, among other things, the American psychedelic and garage rock period. The […]
Crime and Spy Jazz on Screen 1950-1970: A History and Discography by Derrick Bang (2020)
The period of American sound film until roughly the mid-1940s was dominated by soundtracks and extradiegetic audio based on mostly sweet string orchestras, allusions to classical compositions and ballads. Then, in the 1950s and 60s, soundtrack composers increasingly used popular music of the decade before for police/detective/spy action productions, which would be in large part […]
I’d Fight the World: A Political History of Old-Time, Hillbilly, and Country Music by Peter La Chape
American political campaigns without music or shows would be an impossibility today. Speaking about the 20th century, neither marching band tunes, nor folk songs or hymns were the musical style employed most by political representatives running for office, but country music, as author La Chapelle proves. He finds many more details of this particular relationship […]