The Third Bardo’s 1967 song “Five Years Ahead of My Time,” a musical gem by the psychedelic garage band from New York is the eponym for this book, as the many garage bands of the 1960s laid the foundations for American Rock music. The word “garage” in this context actually describes their foremost place of […]
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Category: B. R. Music
Movies, Songs, and Electric Sound: Transatlantic Trends by Charles O’Brien (2019)
Sound film changed many ideas and experiences of watching motion pictures; certain aspects that concern the use of songs, musical story lines and content of films from 1930 onward are evaluated here. Author O’Brian selected a corpus of roughly 500 feature films (including musical films) from France, the US, England and Hollywood’s greatest rival at […]
Musik im klassischen Film noir by Janina Müller (German) (2019)
Janina Müller’s study (“Music in classic film noir”) takes a close look at the scores of mostly the popular films noir and a few rather unknown ones. Here it means studying, juxtaposing and evaluating the scores of several films, while their uniqueness in comparison with standard Hollywood movies is questioned. As there is hardly one […]
Music Wars: Money, Politics, and Race in the Construction of Rock and Roll Culture, 1940-1960 by Joh...
“One way to interpret American society in the second half of the twentieth century, for good or ill, is to see it as the triumph of rock and roll culture,” argues John C. Hajduk, professor of history at the University of Montana Western in the book at hand. This peculiar culture was a compelling force […]
The Blue Sky Boys by Dick Spottswood (2018)
In 1935, when teenage brothers Earl and Bill Bolick from Catawba County (NC) first performed publicly, they were inspired by the many duets and family band outfits of early country music. Back then, sibling/brothers/sisters duets or entire band families were popular, like the Carter Family, the Delmore Brothers, the Carlisle Brothers, the Monroe Brothers, Mac […]
Popular Music in the Nostalgia Video Game. The Way It Never Sounded by Andra Ivănescu (2019)
Without doubt, video games have become part of popular culture; with some aspects of the game culture also introduced (and marketed) in the non-virtual present in the form of merchandise, costumes, action figures and so forth. It is a huge market – while gaming now has obtained the status of a cultural practice – worth […]
Bill Monroe: The Life and Music of the Blue Grass Man by Tom Ewing (2018)
When Bill Smith Monroe of Rosine, Kentucky, at the age of eight decided to play an instrument like many in his musical family did, nobody imagined he would forever change country music. As singer and instrumentalist he not only revolutionized mandolin playing as he could play the instrument faster than anybody else: he was the […]
Critical Essays on Twin Peaks: The Return by Antonio Sanna (2019)
Finally, while a huge fan community worldwide was hoping for more than two decades for a continuation of the tales of Agent Dale Copper in the Twin Peaks universe, in 2017 Showtime aired the series‘ third season. Twin Peaks The Return, with all episodes co-written by Mark Frost and David Lynch, did not disappoint audiences. […]
The Northern Soul Scene by Sarah E. Raine et al. (eds.) (2019)
Only a few recent local dance scenes gained enough influence on a global scale, so they could be called some sort of movement; with powerful and addictive rhythms, strong horn sections, strings, highly emotional (shouted) lyrics, an overall richly decorated studio sound, a positive outlook (in the lyrics), a genre of late-1960s soul music, played […]