A collection of 34 essays in which some of the best rock critics of Generation X and Y address allegedly great' albums that they despise. A spirited assault on the pantheon that has been foisted upon this new generation of music critics, a defiant slap in the face to the narrow and hegemonic view of rock history presented by the Baby Boom generation's critics. As a collection of the new generation of rock writers, it is the first of its kind, as well as the first and only anthology devoted solely to critiquing rock and roll's most sacred cows.'
Congratulations! You are the owner of an authentic Idol from The American Idol Company. This Idol was made for the sole purpose of worship and reverence in exchange for blessings and protection. To use this Idol in any other way could result in damage, injury, and/or the cancellation of warranty. We at The American Idol Company wish you success and satisfaction in your spiritual journey. In an America where militias, doomsday cults and self proclaimed Prophets are as commonplace as gas stations and fast food restaurants, The American Idol Company is born. Operating under the belief that scandal and controversy will increase sales, the company founders manage to insult everyone from the Pope to the Ayatollah, inspire a generation, and come dangerously close to starting World War 3. “A hilarious, fantastic and crazy adventure that had me forgetting Douglas Adams is no longer with us!” ---Robert S. Wilson, Bram Stoker Award-nominated editor and author of the Empire of Blood and Ray Garret/Lifeline series.
During the late 1960s, throughout the 1970s, and into the 1980s, New York City poets and musicians played together, published each other, and inspired one another to create groundbreaking art. In "Do You Have a Band?", Daniel Kane reads deeply across poetry and punk music to capture this compelling exchange and its challenge to the status of the visionary artist, the cultural capital of poetry, and the lines dividing sung lyric from page-bound poem. Kane reveals how the new sounds of proto-punk and punk music found their way into the poetry of the 1960s and 1970s downtown scene, enabling writers to develop fresh ideas for their own poetics and performance styles. Likewise, groups like The Fugs and the Velvet Underground drew on writers as varied as William Blake and Delmore Schwartz for their lyrics. Drawing on a range of archival materials and oral interviews, Kane also shows how and why punk musicians drew on and resisted French Symbolist writing, the vatic resonance of the Beat chant, and, most surprisingly and complexly, the New York Schools of poetry. In bringing together the music and writing of Richard Hell, Patti Smith, and Jim Carroll with readings of poetry by Anne Waldman, Eileen Myles, Ted Berrigan, John Giorno, and Dennis Cooper, Kane provides a fascinating history of this crucial period in postwar American culture and the cultural life of New York City.
Deida explores the most important issues in men's lives--from career and family to women and intimacy to love and spirituality--to offer a practical guidebook for living a masculine life of integrity, authenticity, and freedom.
In this fascinating, informative, and entertaining collection, internationally acclaimed, award-winning author Colm Tóibín turns his attention to the intricacies of family relationships in literature and writing. In pieces that range from the importance of aunts (and the death of parents) in the English nineteenth-century novel to the relationship between fathers and sons in the writing of James Baldwin and Barack Obama, Colm Tóibín illuminates not only the intimate connections between writers and their families but also, with wit and rare tenderness, articulates the great joy of reading their work. In the piece on the Notebooks of Tennessee Williams, Tóibín reveals an artist "alone and deeply fearful and unusually selfish" and one profoundly tormented by his sister's mental illness. Through the relationship between W.B. Yeats and his father, or Thomas Mann and his children, or J.M. Synge and his mother, Tóibín examines a world of family relations, richly comic or savage in its implications. In Roddy Doyle's writing on his parents we see an Ireland reinvented. From the dreams and nightmares of John Cheever's journals Tóibín makes flesh this darkly comic misanthrope and his relationship to his wife and his children.The majority of these pieces were previously published in the Londron Review of Books, the New York Review Review of Books, and the Dublin Review. Three of the thirteen pieces have never appeared before.
AS the twentieth century breathes its very last, with Britpop at its zenith, twenty-seven-year-old A&R man Steven Stelfox is slashing and burning his way through London’s music industry. Blithely crisscrossing the globe in search of the next megahit—fueled by greed and inhuman quantities of cocaine—Stelfox freely indulges in an unending orgy of self-gratification. But the industry is changing fast and the hits are drying up, and the only way he’s going to salvage his sagging career is by taking the idea of “cutthroat” to murderous new levels.
The Icons came from the sky. They belong to an inhuman enemy. They ended our civilization, and they can kill us. Most of us. Dol, Ro, Tima, and Lucas are the four Icon Children, the only humans immune to the Icon's power to stop a human heart. Now that Los Angeles has been saved, things are more complicated - and not just because Dol has to choose between Lucas and Ro, the two great loves of her life. As she flees to a resistance outpost hidden beneath a mountain, Dol makes contact with a fifth Icon Child, if only through her visions. When Dol and the others escape to Southeast Asia in search of this missing child, Dol's dreams, feelings and fears collide in an epic showdown that will change more than just four lives -- and stop one heart forever. In this riveting sequel to Icons, filled with nonstop action and compelling romance, bestselling author Margaret Stohl explores what it means to be human and how our greatest weakness can be humanity's strongest chance at survival.
Artist and musician Ric Clayton has been at the flashpoint of several cultural movements originating in Venice, California. His illustrations for thrash punk band Suicidal Tendencies are instantly recognizable around the world. Clayton was in the mix just as punk and metal cross-pollinated in the early 80s, but he also stood at the crossroads of the Dogtown skating scene and cholo culture in Los Angeles. Impossibly, Clayton embodied and portrayed all of these movements simultaneously in his artwork. In Welcome to Venice you'll enjoy a generous serving of this riveting artist's output.
While his gravel-voiced, bohemian cataloging of America's underbelly has won him a dedicated following, Tom Waits's restless, idiosyncratic experimentation has led to comparisons with Ledbelly and Kurt Weill. Terry Staunton offers an authoritative overview of Waits's influence on his contemporaries, detailed biographical information, and an extensive discography.
