There is hardly another active English musician who can look back on a catalog of great music and social comment like Paul Weller, former front man of significant bands of the 1970s, 1980s and well-known solo artist of the 2000s, and also as a political voice addressing important issues. On roughly 160 pages author Andrew […]
You are browsing archives for
Tag: Working Class
The Kinks: Songs of the Semi-Detached by Mark Doyle (2020)
For all of those Kinks fans interested in a biography or personal history of the Davies brothers: this book will not satisfy you. However, as there is no lack of either Ray Davies or Kinks biographies, this title has something else, something better to offer. Centered around the idea of conceptual pairs that differ tremendously […]
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 […]
Youth Subcultures in Fiction, Film and Other Media… by N. Bentley, B. Johnson and A. Zieleniec (eds.
With emphasis on “Teenage Dreams,” three loosely designed subdivisions – literary fictions, representations on screen, critical theory and representations in other media – approach the huge body of demonstrations of subcultures in popular culture in the title at hand. Already the very idea of subcultures is strongly connected to modes of narration: “One of the […]
The British Blues Network: Adoption, Emulation, and Creativity by Andrew Kellett (2017)
After WWII, with the British Empire finally devoid of its former power and importance, young British blues enthusiasts invented their own vision of a new country, they – metaphorically – chose as their preferred home country an idealized (American) life, namely in creating the very personal America with lots of possibilities and adventure. As all […]
Quadrophenia and Mod(ern) Culture by Pamela Thurschwell (ed.) (2018)
Now, this is probably the best book on Mod culture so far. If not, it is the one with the best academic approach to it and a real understanding of the subculture that goes beyond pure distanced sociological writing and simplifying banalities (that are used too often in other publications on the topic). The British […]
The Kinks: A Thoroughly English Phenomenon by Cary Fleiner (2017)
Apart from a few stylistic irritations (like some explorations in country rock in the early 1970s), the musical output of the Kinks always was famous for particularly one thing: it was English, very much so. And it enlarged on aspects of everyday life in Britain “…such as work play, buying a house, driving a car, […]
The Who and Philosophy by Rocco Gennaro and Casey Harison (eds.) (2016)
According to the editors, this is the first study of some philosophical aspects that are connected with the rock band The Who (while there already are many books that deal with meaning and criticism in the lyrics and works of other famous pop stars). Naturally, all the authors share a common admiration for the band […]
Class, Crime and International Film Noir: Globalizing … by Dennis Broe (2014)
There are many different approaches to the analysis of film noir, since film studies today deal with almost any facet, be it technical, stylistic or director specific. Dennis Broe, however, has the emphasis on the social-cultural and most of all the working-class aspects of these films. He locates the origins of film noir to a […]