NPR Great Read of 2016 From the acclaimed author of Rip It Upand Start Again and Retromania—“the foremost popular music critic of this era (Times Literary Supplement)—comes the definitive cultural history of glam and glitter rock, celebrating its outlandish fashion and outrageous stars, including David Bowie and Alice Cooper, and tracking its vibrant legacy in contemporary pop. Spearheaded by David Bowie, Alice Cooper, T. Rex, and Roxy Music, glam rock reveled in artifice and spectacle. Reacting against the hairy, denim-clad rock bands of the late Sixties, glam was the first true teenage rampage of the new decade. In Shock and Awe, Simon Reynolds takes you on a wild cultural tour through the early Seventies, a period packed with glitzy costumes and alien make-up, thrilling music and larger-than-life personas. Shock and Awe offers a fresh, in-depth look at the glam and glitter phenomenon, placing it the wider Seventies context of social upheaval and political disillusion. It explores how artists like Lou Reed, New York Dolls, and Queen broke with the hippie generation, celebrating illusion and artifice over truth and authenticity. Probing the genre’s major themes—stardom, androgyny, image, decadence, fandom, apocalypse—Reynolds tracks glam’s legacy as it unfolded in subsequent decades, from Eighties art-pop icons like Kate Bush through to twenty-first century idols of outrage such as Lady Gaga. Shock and Awe shows how the original glam artists’ obsessions with fame, extreme fashion, and theatrical excess continue to reverberate through contemporary pop culture.
Offers interviews with the artists and groups behind electronica music, including Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Bjork, Kraftwerk, and others, along with background and technical details on the equipment they use.
Ambitious and groundbreaking, Electric Shock tells the story of popular music, from the birth of recording in the 1890s to the digital age, from the first pop superstars of the twentieth century to the omnipresence of music in our lives, in hit singles, ringtones and on Spotify. Over that time, popular music has transformed the world in which we live. Its rhythms have influenced how we walk down the street, how we face ourselves in the mirror, and how we handle the outside world in our daily conversations and encounters. It has influenced our morals and social mores; it has transformed our attitudes towards race and gender, religion and politics. From the beginning of recording, when a musical performance could be preserved for the first time, to the digital age, when all of recorded music is only a mouse-click away; from the straitlaced ballads of the Victorian era and the ‘coon songs’ that shocked America in the early twentieth century to gangsta rap, death metal and the multiple strands of modern dance music: Peter Doggett takes us on a rollercoaster ride through the history of music. Within a narrative full of anecdotes and characters, Electric Shock mixes musical critique with wider social and cultural history and shows how revolutionary changes in technology have turned popular music into the lifeblood of the modern world.
We are in the embrace of territorial shock today. Globalization with its migrants, foot-loose firms, cyber-war and surging income inequality induces political instability and longing for a `saviour'. This book puts such events in a historical perspective. New social trends collide with territorial principles (closure, identity, governance) that always have been taken for granted. Should we invest the new monarchs with the same authority as the pope (16th century) or accept other classes as co-citizens (19th century)? The answers implied a moral shift and so do our problems with globalization.
From December 1957 through October 1959, Chicago TV viewers were held in thrall by "Marvin," the ghoulishly hilarious host of WBKB-TV's late-night horror film series Shock Theatre. Marvin and his lady friend "Dear" (her face ever hidden from the camera) introduced thousands of Chicagoland youngsters to such classic Universal chillers as Frankenstein, Dracula and The Wolf Man. This history of Shock Theatre focuses on the series and its creator, Marvin himself--in real life, the multi-talented Terry Bennett, whose wife Joy played "Dear." Terry's son Kerry Bennett provides an affectionate foreword, while celebrated horror host Count Gore De Vol (Dick Dyszel) supplies the afterword. Included are dozens of photos and vintage advertisement reproductions, as well as two appendices featuring a resume of Terry Bennett's career and a list of films telecast during his two-year Shock Theatre run.
From the bestselling author of Sugar Shock!—the book that Mehmet Oz said "spills the beans" on the shocking impact of sugar and simple carbohydrates—comes Beyond Sugar Shock, the first book to provide a simple, practical, mind-body-spirit plan to help readers break free of their sugar or carb addiction. For the millions of people who suffer with problems such as low libido, excess weight, overpowering fatigue, and many other unexplained ailments, Beyond Sugar Shock provides a step-by-step, six-week program to gently guide readers to a healthier life. In this friendly, compassionate book, they’ll find: • A playful, but serious Sugar Shock Quiz to help readers learn about their personal sugar addiction. • Easy, tried-and-true techniques that Connie used—and that her clients and Sugar Freedom Now participants now use—to successfully quit her sugar habits. • Dozens of easy tips and tactics to stomp out carb cravings. • Simple meal plans, tasty recipes, and a food/lifestyle pyramid that shows readers how to let go of quickie carbs and nonfoods (the Standard American Diet or SAD) and instead enjoy real, wholesome, health-giving nutrition. • Entertaining, interactive "adventurcises" (adventurous exercises) such as "Do Sugary Soul Searching," "Party with the Produce," and "Snatch the E-Z Vitamins." • Affirmations to refresh, rejuvenate, and renew the mind, body, and spirit. • Remarkable success stories with before-and-after photos. In Beyond Sugar Shock, readers will find out that letting go of their sugar or carb addiction is much simpler than it seems—and it can even be fun! And once they’ve addressed their addiction, readers will not only look and feel better, but will also experience an overpowering sensation of joyous freedom and a sweeter, balanced life.
In this unique collection, theologians born and formed during the Cold War offer their insights and perspectives on theological relationships with such musical artists and groups as Joy Division, U2, Nick Cave, and John Coltrane. These essays demonstrate that one's personal music preferences can inform and influence professional interests.
People spent the twentieth century obsessed with the future. We created technologies that would help connect us faster, gather news, map the planet, and compile knowledge. We strove for an instantaneous network where time and space could be compressed. Well, the future's arrived. We live in a continuous now enabled by Twitter, email, and a so-called real-time technological shift. Yet this "now" is an elusive goal that we can never quite reach. And the dissonance between our digital selves and our analog bodies has thrown us into a new state of anxiety: present shock.