Traces "garage" and "psychedelic" rock from the 50's through the sixties, unfolds the history and the sonic structures of some of rock's core repertoire
Michael Kramer draws on new archival sources and interviews to explore sixties music and politics through the lens of these two generation-changing places--San Francisco and Vietnam. From the Acid Tests of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters to hippie disc jockeys on strike, the military's use of rock music to "boost morale" in Vietnam, and the forgotten tale of a South Vietnamese rock band, The Republic of Rock shows how the musical connections between the City of the Summer of Love and war-torn Southeast Asia were crucial to the making of the sixties counterculture. The book also illustrates how and why the legacy of rock music in the sixties continues to matter to the meaning of citizenship in a global society today. --from publisher description
Update to popular book on legends of rock's golden era Now in its long-awaited second printing, Bob Cianci's Great Rock Drummers of the Sixties, the universally acclaimed history of Sixties rock drummers and drumming, has been reissued in its original form with a revised section that thoroughly updates information on the drummers featured within. This group of rock drummers are arguably the most revered and copied musicians to ever sit behind the kit. All the prominent drummers of the era are spotlighted, including Ringo Starr, Charlie Watts, Keith Moon, Mitch Mitchell, Hal Blaine, and other legends. Long out of print, the original first edition of Great Rock Drummers of the Sixties was published in 1989 and went on to become a collectors' item. This in-demand book is back and better than ever, with a new cover, improved layout, and much more information for anyone interested in the Sixties, its music, and rock drummers.
"Massively entertaining." — Rolling Stone. Rock journalist Ellen Sander (Hit Parader, Vogue) draws upon her professional and personal experiences to chronicle pop culture's highs and lows in the turbulent years from 1962-69. Includes a new Preface and more.
(Limelight). In 1965, Ian Whitcomb's novelty rocker "You Turn Me On" was number eight on the national charts, along with entries from the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys. In 1966 he was nowheresville a certified rock 'n' roll flash in the pan. It is, then, with a survivor's humor that he tells both his and rock's story from its beginnings in the late fifties to 1969, the year of Woodstock and psychedelic dreams of universal peace and love. Here is the saga of the British Invasion, the genesis of folk rock, the blooming of Flower Power, the Summer of Love and the inner workings of the pop music biz, brought to life by a true insider who is also an uninhibitedly acute observer.
If you didn’t experience rock and roll in Minnesota in the 1960s, this book will make you wish you had. This behind-the-scenes, up-close-and-personal account relates how a handful of Minnesota rock bands erupted out of a small Midwest market and made it big. It was a brief, heady moment for the musicians who found themselves on a national stage, enjoying a level of success most bands only dream of. In Everybody’s Heard about the Bird, Rick Shefchik writes of that time in vivid detail. Interviews with many of the key musicians, combined with extensive research and a phenomenal cache of rare photographs, reveal how this monumental era of Minnesota rock music evolved. The chronicle begins with musicians from the 1950s and early 1960s, including Augie Garcia, Bobby Vee, the Fendermen, and Mike Waggoner and the Bops. Shefchik looks at how a local recording studio and record label, along with Minnesota radio stations, helped make their achievements possible and prepared the way for later bands to break out nationally. Shefchik delves deeply into the Trashmen’s emblematic rise to fame. A Minneapolis band that recorded a fluke novelty hit called “Surfin’ Bird” at Kay Bank Studios, the Trashmen signed with Soma Records, topped the local charts in late 1963, and were poised to top the national charts in early 1964. Hundreds of Minnesota bands took inspiration from the Trashmen’s success, as teen dances with live bands flourished in clubs, ballrooms, gyms, and halls across the Upper Midwest. Here are the stories of bands like the Gestures, the Castaways, and the Underbeats, and the triumphs—and tragedies—of the most prominent Minnesota-spawned bands of the late 1960s, including Gypsy, Crow, and the Litter. For the baby boomers who remember it and everyone else who has felt its influence, the 1960s rock-and-roll scene in Minnesota was an extraordinary period both in musical history and popular culture, and now it’s captured fully in print for the first time. Everybody’s Heard about the Bird celebrates how these bands found their singular sound and played for their elated audiences from the golden era to today.
"Rock and roll's most iconic, not to mention wealthy, pioneers are overwhelmingly white, despite their great indebtedness to black musical innovators. Many of these pioneers were insensitive at best and exploitative at worst when it came to the black art that inspired them. Tear Down the Walls is about a different cadre of white rock musicians and activists, those who tried to tear down walls separating musical genres and racial identities during the late 1960s. Their attempts were often naïve, misguided, or arrogant, but they could also reflect genuine engagement with African American music and culture and sincere investment in anti-racist politics. Burke considers this question by recounting five dramatic incidents that took place between August 1968 and August 1969, including Jefferson Airplane's performance with Grace Slick in blackface on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Jean-Luc Godard's 1968 film, Sympathy for the Devil, featuring the Rolling Stones and Black Power rhetoric, and the White Panther Party at Woodstock. Each story sheds light on a significant but overlooked facet of 1960s rock-white musicians and audiences casting themselves as political revolutionaries by enacting a romanticized vision of African American identity. These radical white rock musicians believed that performing and adapting black music could contribute to what in the Black Lives Matter era is sometimes called "white allyship." This book explores their efforts and asks what lessons can be learned from them. As white musicians and activists today still attempt to find ethical, respectful approaches to racial politics, the challenges and victories of the 1960s can provide both inspiration and a sense of perspective"--
Comedian Robin Williams said that if you remember the '60s, you weren't there. This encyclopedia documents the people, places, movements, and culture of that memorable decade for those who lived it and those who came after. Encyclopedia of the Sixties: A Decade of Culture and Counterculture surveys the 1960s from January 1960 to December 1969. Nearly 500 entries cover everything from the British television cult classic The Avengers to the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. The two-volume work also includes biographies of artists, architects, authors, statesmen, military leaders, and cinematic stars, concentrating on what each individual accomplished during the 1960s, with brief postscripts of their lives beyond the period. There was much more to the Sixties than flower power and LSD, and the entries in this encyclopedia were compiled with an eye to providing a balanced view of the decade. Thus, unlike works that emphasize only the radical and revolutionary aspects of the period to the exclusion of everything else, these volumes include the political and cultural Right, taking a more academic than nostalgic approach and helping to fill a gap in the popular understanding of the era.
Get ready to break on through to the other side as critically-acclaimed playwright and journalist Jonathan Leaf reveals the politically incorrect truth about one of the most controversial decades in historythe 1960s.