This book focuses on the 'dark side' of popular music by examining the ways in which popular music has been deployed in association with violence. Cloonan and Johnson address the physiological and cognitive foundations of sounding/hearing and provide a historical survey of examples of the nexus between music and violence, from (pre)Biblical times to the late nineteenth century. The book also concentrates on the emergence of technologies by which music can be electronically augmented, generated, and disseminated. The authors investigate the implications of this nexus both for popular music studies itself, and also in cultural policy and regulation, the ethics of citizenship, and arguments about human rights.
This collection of essays provides indispensable studies of the monumental 1973 album, The Dark Side of the Moon, from a variety of musical, cultural, literary and social perspectives. The development and change of the songs is considered closely, from the earliest recordings through to the live, filmed performance at London's Earls Court in 1994. The album is placed within the context of developments in late 1960s/early 1970s popular music, with particular focus on the use of a variety of segues between tracks which give the album a multidimensional unity.
Audible Best Seller of 2017 Inc. 11 Great Business Books New York Magazine Best Psychology Books LinkedIn's 12 Books on Leadership to Read Two mavericks in the field of positive psychology deliver a timely message Happiness experts have long told us to tune out our negative emotions and focus instead on mindfulness, positivity, and optimism. Researchers Todd Kashdan, Ph.D., and Robert Biswas-Diener, Dr. Philos., disagree. Positive emotions alone are not enough. Anger makes us creative, selfishness makes us brave, and guilt is a powerful motivator. The real key to success lies in emotional agility. Drawing upon extensive scientific research and a wide array of real-life examples, The Upside of Your Dark Side will be embraced by business leaders, parents, and everyone else who’s ready to put their entire psychological tool kit to work.
A fun exploration of the darker side of the natural world reveals the fascinating, weird, often perverted ways that Mother Nature fends only for herself. It may be a wonderful world, but as Dan Riskin (cohost of Discovery Canada’s Daily Planet) explains, it’s also a dangerous, disturbing, and disgusting one. At every turn, it seems, living things are trying to eat us, poison us, use our bodies as their homes, or have us spread their eggs. In Mother Nature Is Trying to Kill You, Riskin is our guide through the natural world at its most gloriously ruthless. Using the seven deadly sins as a road map, Riskin offers dozens of jaw-dropping examples that illuminate how brutal nature can truly be. From slothful worms that hide in your body for up to thirty years to wrathful snails with poisonous harpoons that can kill you in less than five minutes to lustful ducks that have orgasms faster than you can blink, these fascinating accounts reveal the candid truth about “gentle” Mother Nature’s true colors. Riskin’s passion for the strange and his enthusiastic expertise bring Earth’s most fascinating flora and fauna into vivid focus. Through his adventures— which include sliding on his back through a thick soup of bat guano just to get face-to-face with a vampire bat, befriending a parasitic maggot that has taken root on his head, and coming to grips with having offspring of his own—Riskin makes unexpected discoveries not just about the world all around us but also about the ways this brutal world has shaped us as humans and what our responsibilities are to this terrible, wonderful planet we call home.
In this engrossing, provocative, and intimate memoir, a young journalist reflects on her childhood in the heartland, growing up in an increasingly isolated meditation community in the 1980s and ’90s—a fascinating, disturbing look at a fringe culture and its true believers. When Claire Hoffman’s alcoholic father abandons his family, his desperate wife, Liz, tells five-year-old Claire and her seven-year-old brother, Stacey, that they are going to heaven—Iowa—to live in Maharishi’s national headquarters for Heaven on Earth. For Claire’s mother, Transcendental Meditation—the Maharishi’s method of meditation and his approach to living the fullest possible life—was a salvo that promised world peace and enlightenment just as their family fell apart. At first this secluded utopia offers warmth and support, and makes these outsiders feel calm, secure, and connected to the world. At the Maharishi School, Claire learns Maharishi’s philosophy for living and meditates with her class. With the promise of peace and enlightenment constantly on the horizon, every day is infused with magic and meaning. But as Claire and Stacey mature, their adolescent skepticism kicks in, drawing them away from the community and into delinquency and drugs. To save herself, Claire moves to California with her father and breaks from Maharishi completely. After a decade of working in journalism and academia, the challenges of adulthood propel her back to Iowa, where she reexamines her spiritual upbringing and tries to reconnect with the magic of her childhood. Greetings from Utopia Park takes us deep into this complex, unusual world, illuminating its joys and comforts, and its disturbing problems. While there is no utopia on earth, Hoffman reveals, there are noble goals worth striving for: believing in belief, inner peace, and a firm understanding that there is a larger fabric of the universe to which we all belong.
There is an epigram in this book from the Phil Ochs song, "Crucifixion", about the Kennedy assassination, that states: I fear to contemplate that beneath the greatest love, lies a hurricane of hate. On February 11th 1963, the Beatles recorded "There's a Place", a dazzling, unheralded tune which was included on their electrifying debut album, Please Please Me. This song firmly laid the foundation on which a huge utopian dream of the sixties would be built. Within that dream, however, also lay the seeds of a darker vision that would emerge out of the very counterculture that the Beatles and their music helped create. Thus, even as their music attracted adoring fans, it also enticed the murderous ambitions of Charles Manson; and though the Beatles may have inspired others to form bands, their own failed hopes ultimately led to their breakup. The disillusionment with the sixties, and the hopes associated with the group, would many years later culminate in the assassination of John Lennon and the attempted slaying of George Harrison by deranged and obsessive fans. In this incisive examination, author Kevin Courrier (Dangerous Kitchen: the Subversive World of Zappa, Randy Newman's American Dreams) examines how the Fab Four, through their astonishing music and comically rebellious personalities, created the promise of an inclusive culture built on the principles of pleasure and fulfillment. By taking us through their richly inventive catalogue, Courrier illustrates how the Beatles' startling impact on popular culture built a bond with audiences that was so strong, people today continue to either cling nostalgically to it, or struggle - and often struggle violently - to escape its influence.
Today's parents are increasingly replacing nursery rhymes with the latest pop songs, and fairy tales - now thought too scary for little ones - with cute stories about farmyard animals and talking trains.Until recently, weird tales of fairy curses and flesh-eating ogres were considered suitable bedtime reading. And the strange-sounding and sometimes violent rhymes we learned by rote were often taught to us in school. But have you ever asked yourself what on earth they were about? And what exactly were the morals and lessons we were meant to learn from them?Here Comes a Chopper to Chop Off Your Head delves into the origins of the best-known rhymes and tales to uncover a legacy of folk superstition, rotten royal families, execution, child marriage, cannibalism, and the multitude of other random acts of cruelty that make up any classic treasury.You'll learn about the bloody history of Mary,Mary, Quite Contrary; why Margery Daw, the subject of an innocent-seeming seesaw game, was accused of being a 'dirty slut'; and how pretending to decapitate your little friends to the tune of Oranges and Lemons became an acceptable pastime.You'll also find out about the terrifying events that befell the first Sleeping Beauty when she finally woke up; how Snow White's stepmother really died; and just who the wolf was in Little Red Riding Hood.
Births, deaths and marriages, No1 singles, drug busts and arrests, famous gigs and awards... all these and much more appear in this fascinating 50 year almanac.Using a page for every day of the calendar year, the author records a variety of rock and pop events that took place on a given day of the month across the years.This Day in Music is fully illustrated with hundreds of pictures, cuttings and album covers, making this the must-have book for any pop music fan.
Set in the mid-1970s, this musical odyssey and coming-of-age story follows the adventures of a struggling rock band as they try to make it big. Band leader Daniel Travers' life is a mess and he can't find a way out. His band, the Killjoys, is going nowhere and the amphetamines he's popping are making him crazy. Then out of nowhere, an agent calls with a week-long gig at a hot club in Washington where he was told Jimi Hendrix and Heart got their starts. With an imagined Pete Townshend whispering encouragment, Daniel and the Killjoys are off to a tumultuous week filled with inner-band turmoil, a cheating club owner, bar-brawling bikers, and lots of women.
