Vopli Vidopliassova’s Tantsi

Vopli Vidopliassova’s Tantsi PDF

Author: Maria Sonevytsky

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2023-04-20

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1501363131

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Rock 'n' roll may not have toppled the USSR, but it definitely rumbled through its foundations. Unlike the often-saccharine pop music sanctioned by the Soviet state, Ukrainian punk musicians of the 1980s Kyiv underground adapted ideologies of rock to roast the absurdities of late Soviet life, to articulate new ways of being Ukrainian, and to celebrate the cathartic pleasures of collective gatherings organized around musical performances. This book tells the story of Tantsi (Dances) a 1989 semi-official cassette release by the now-legendary Ukrainian punk band Vopli Vidopliassova, known to fans simply as VV (pronounced “Ve-Ve”). Their disruptive musical sounds, ironic lyrics, use of language, and propulsive performances toyed with the distinctions between official and unofficial Soviet culture. VV's Tantsi exemplifies how Soviet musical cultures existed within an ecosystem of contradictions as entrenched state infrastructures collided with emergent youth subcultures on the quicksand of late Soviet life. Today, Tantsi continues to invite us to dance while we laugh (or cry) at the absurdities of everyday life.

Shonen Knife’s Happy Hour

Shonen Knife’s Happy Hour PDF

Author: Brooke McCorkle Okazaki

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2021-01-14

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 1501347969

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Shonen Knife-an all-female punk trio from Osaka, Japan-cultivated a global fan base that has included the likes of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore. Their 1998 album Happy Hour, filled with tunes about delicacies ranging from sushi to banana chips, encapsulates the band's charming fusion of cuteness with punk rock cool. Tracing histories of food and josei rock in Japan, McCorkle Okazaki outlines the ways Shonen Knife has, over the last forty years, consistently used seemingly straightforward songs about food to comment on gender stereotypes in popular culture.

The Front Lawn's Songs from the Front Lawn

The Front Lawn's Songs from the Front Lawn PDF

Author: Matthew Bannister

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2023-04-06

Total Pages: 129

ISBN-13: 1501390112

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The Front Lawn is a multi-award-winning, much-loved New Zealand duo-turned-trio made up of Don McGlashan, Harry Sinclair and, eventually, Jennifer Ward-Lealand. A 1980s variety act, The Front Lawn was part of an Aotearoa/New Zealand alternative tradition of duos that combine music, comedy, theatre and film. Their debut album Songs from The Front Lawn (1989) distilled McGlashan and Sinclair's theatrical stage show and their groundbreaking short films, Walkshort and The Lounge Bar, while also thrusting the band into the burgeoning New Zealand indie scene. The album is a snapshot of '80s New Zealand, a turbulent, creative period for indie music, indie film and musical theatre, celebrating local identity in new ways. Starting with a social and cultural background of New Zealand in the late 1970s, the book covers McGlashan and Sinclair's upbringing on Auckland's North Shore, early artistic influences and overseas experiences leading to the formation of the group. Much attention is paid to the duo's philosophy, early performances, the process of recording the album – including The Front Lawn's collaboration with Wellington avant-garde/cabaret group Six Volts and the addition of Jennifer Ward-Lealand as the group's third member – and analysis of each of the album's 10 songs. In parting, Matthew Bannister discusses the group's second and final album, More Songs from The Front Lawn, as well as the individual members' subsequent artistic careers

Massada's Astaganaga

Massada's Astaganaga PDF

Author: Lutgard Mutsaers

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2022-10-06

Total Pages: 113

ISBN-13: 1501372599

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This book explores an album of popular music with a remarkable significance to a violent wave of postcolonial tensions in the Netherlands in the 1970s. Several “actions” were claimed by a small number of first-generation descendants of ca. 12,500 reluctant migrants from the young independent state of Indonesia (former Dutch East Indies). Transferred in 1951, this culturally coherent group consisted of ex-Royal Dutch Colonial Army personnel and their families. Their ancient roots in the Moluccan archipelago and their protestant-christian faith defined their minority image. Their sojourn should have been temporary, but frustratingly turned out to be permanent. At the height of strained relations, Massada rose to the occasion. Astaganaga (1978) is a telling example of the will to negotiate a different diasporic Moluccan identity through uplifting contemporary sounds.

Ed Kuepper's Honey Steel's Gold

Ed Kuepper's Honey Steel's Gold PDF

Author: John Encarnação

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2023-08-10

Total Pages: 137

ISBN-13: 1501373374

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Ed Kuepper's history as a rock pioneer with The Saints and Laughing Clowns means that his albums of the early 1990s represent a remapping of the singer-songwriter concept. His classic Honey Steel's Gold shares a looseness with blues and folk recordings of the 1940s and 1950s, capturing performances that take detours, stretch and contract, wax and wane, such as the album's hit “The Way I Made You Feel." Honey Steel's Gold is a landscape to be immersed in, to get lost in. It provides a space not where questions are answered but where we might stop and get a drink; an environment that provides solace, but not platitudes; where we can share a wry smile about the downsides of the human condition rather than attempt the illusion of blocking them out completely. This study incorporates a consideration of Kuepper's iconoclastic career, at odds with the music industry and the grunge era into which the album was released. Beyond the apparent facts, though, there is interpretation, speculation, and attempts to meet Honey Steel's Gold on its own terms in some imaginary place.

Czeslaw Niemen's Niemen Enigmatic

Czeslaw Niemen's Niemen Enigmatic PDF

Author: Mariusz Gradowski

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2022-01-13

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 1501372696

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Niemen Enigmatic is the fourth album in the career of Czeslaw Niemen, arguably one of the greatest Polish musicians of all time (from pop and rock to jazz-rock and avant-garde). The book asks how significant was this album? How enduring is its popularity? Has the popularity and meanings changed over time? It does this by unpacking its production, which was unprecedented in the history of the Polish popular music due to its large number of musicians with varied backgrounds, including progressive rock, mixing jazz, rock and soul with classical music. It also examines its appeal to different segments of Polish population, and failure to reach foreign audiences, despite Niemen himself privileging this album, especially its centrepiece, Bema pamieci zalobny rapsod (Mournful Rhapsody in Memoriam of Bem aka A Funeral Rhapsody in Memory of General Bem aka Mourner's Rhapsody), in his attempt to make a career abroad.

Screamfeeder's Kitten Licks

Screamfeeder's Kitten Licks PDF

Author: Ben Green

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2024-01-25

Total Pages: 137

ISBN-13: 1501393316

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Released in 1996, Kitten Licks catapulted Brisbane indie-rock three-piece Screamfeeder into the '90s alternative-rock boom alongside Powderfinger, silverchair, You Am I and Regurgitator. International tours, regular festival shows, and TV appearances followed. And yet, commercial success for Screamfeeder was comparatively short-lived. By the end of the decade, the band's outlook was bleak: at a career standstill and unable to record new music. Today, both Screamfeeder and Kitten Licks endure as fiercely loved cult icons. In its vitality and idiosyncrasy, Kitten Licks captures a moment of cresting change for a band, a city and a national scene, while continuing to delight and inspire those who discover it anew. This book tells the story of Kitten Licks in the words of those who lived it, and who still do. How it was made, how it was swept up into '90s mythology and what the journey tells us about the fickle nature of music production in Australia, namely: how to survive it.

John Farnham's Whispering Jack

John Farnham's Whispering Jack PDF

Author: Graeme Turner

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2022-03-10

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 150138208X

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The album examined in this book transformed the singer John Farnham from a faded teen pop star into the most popular solo rock performer in Australia, in a career that has lasted for more than 30 years. Whispering Jack remains the top-selling album by an Australian artist in Australia, and constitutes the turning point in Farnham's bid to achieve credibility as an adult contemporary musician. The first single from the album, 'You're the Voice,' has achieved such iconic status that it is routinely referred to as Australia's unofficial national anthem. The book examines the album, its context and that history in order to recover a crucial conjuncture in the development of Australian rock and popular music, one that has previously been ignored in Australian popular music studies.

Los Rodríguez's Sin Documentos

Los Rodríguez's Sin Documentos PDF

Author: Héctor Fouce

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2022-10-06

Total Pages: 135

ISBN-13: 1501357905

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Sin Documentos is a landmark album in Spanish popular culture and continues to maintain considerable popularity more than two decades after its release. The characteristic guitar riff of the title song, a kind of rumba-rock, still occupies a place at every party in Spain. Los Rodríguez's success came after a decade characterized by the rise and fall of local-language punk and new wave bands. By the time Sin Documentos appeared, however, rock journalism was fascinated by the thriving indie scene, where the bands were singing in English and had turned to grunge and noise rock. This book evaluates the influence of Latin American pop-rock in the modernization of Spanish popular music from the 1950s, despite the Anglophilia of Spanish rock scenes, especially in the 1990s. Through interviews with members of the band and members of the record label DRO, analysis of the media coverage of the album and a cultural analysis of its meanings, it delves into the cultural trends of Spain throughout the 1990s and beyond.

Kylie Minogue's Kylie

Kylie Minogue's Kylie PDF

Author: Adrian Renzo

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2023-01-12

Total Pages: 137

ISBN-13: 1501382993

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Kylie Minogue's self-titled debut album produced hits, controversy and a perfect mainstream storm. The then soap and children's television star 'crossed over' to music with hit writer/producers SAW - and the shamelessly commercial approach of all involved saw the 'real' music industry get its back up. This book interrogates the way that commercial pop albums are remembered in both the popular music press and in academic research. Is there a way of dealing with 'mainstream' pop without denigrating the music and (just as importantly) without validating it according to the terms of a 'high art' canon? This text sheds light on the way that notions of 'mainstream' and 'other' play out in a local context-specifically, Australia and New Zealand music on a global stage.