Ween's Chocolate and Cheese

Ween's Chocolate and Cheese PDF

Author: Hank Shteamer

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2011-03-31

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 0826431178

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An in-depth study of a pivotal moment in Ween's development, as they became one of the world's most endearing, and enduring, cult bands.

Sigur Rós's ( )

Sigur Rós's ( ) PDF

Author: Ethan Hayden

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2014-08-28

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 162356168X

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Words like "inspiring," "expansive," and "moving" are regularly used to describe Sigur Rós's ( ), and yet the only words heard on the record itself are a handful of meaningless nonsense syllables. The album has no title-or rather, its title is no title: just an empty pair of parentheses. The intention being that listeners will fill in the parentheses with their own title, their own interpretation of the sounds on the record. The CD sleeve consists of twelve pages that are essentially blank, lacking song titles, liner notes or production credits. Instead, it contains only semi-translucent frosted images of abstract natural scenes (tree branches, clouds, etc.), on which the listener is free to inscribe their own notes-or no notes at all. And then there are the lyrics, sung in a deliberately unintelligible tongue called "Hopelandic" which the band invites listeners to interpret freely. Ethan Hayden's book doesn't try to fill in the gaps between the album's parentheses, but instead explores the ways in which listeners might attempt to do so. Examining the communicative powers of asemantic language, the book asks whether music can bring sense to nonsense. What happens to the voice when it stops singing conventional language: does it simply become another musical instrument, or is it somehow more "human"? What role does space play on ( )? And how do we interpret music that we cannot possibly understand, but feel very deeply that we do?

They Might Be Giants' Flood

They Might Be Giants' Flood PDF

Author: S. Alexander Reed

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2013-11-28

Total Pages: 95

ISBN-13: 1623568293

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For a few decades now, They Might Be Giants' album Flood has been a beacon (or at least a nightlight) for people who might rather read than rock out, who care more about science fiction than Slayer, who are more often called clever than cool. Neither the band's hip origins in the Lower East Side scene nor Flood's platinum certification can cover up the record's singular importance at the geek fringes of culture. Flood's significance to this audience helps us understand a certain way of being: it shows that geek identity doesn't depend on references to Hobbits or Spock ears, but can instead be a set of creative and interpretive practices marked by playful excess-a flood of ideas. The album also clarifies an historical moment. The brainy sort of kids who listened to They Might Be Giants saw their own cultural options grow explosively during the late 1980s and early 1990s amid the early tech boom and America's advancing leftist social tides. Whether or not it was the band's intention, Flood's jubilant proclamation of an identity unconcerned with coolness found an ideal audience at an ideal turning point. This book tells the story.

Flaming Lips' Zaireeka

Flaming Lips' Zaireeka PDF

Author: Mark Richardson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2009-12-24

Total Pages: 122

ISBN-13: 1441111832

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Zaireeka is the anti-headphone and the anti-mp3. It purposely makes the two biggest developments in end-user music in the last 30 years irrelevant. Zaireeka is not mobile. It is not personal. It is not solitary, cannot be easily controlled, and can't easily be consumed in small doses. So another way to think of Zaireeka is as a one-off piece of technology that comes in a highly inconvenient dead-end format. The Flaming Lips' 1997 album Zaireeka is one of the most peculiar albums ever recorded, consisting of four CDs meant to be played simultaneously on four CD players. Approaching this powerful and complex art-rock masterpiece from multiple angles, Mark Richardson's prismatic study of Zaireeka mirrors the structure the work itself. Thoughts on communal listening and the "death of the album" are interspersed with the story of the Zaireeka's creation (with assistance from Wayne Coyne) and an in-depth analysis of the music, leading to a complete picture of a record that proved to be a watershed for both the band and adventurous music fans alike.

Sleeveface

Sleeveface PDF

Author:

Publisher: Artisan Books

Published: 2008-01-01

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9781579653798

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Combines head-shot photographs from vinyl record sleeves with inventive poses to create a hilarious series of more than two hundred images from around the globe, in a colorful volume that pays tribute to the international Internet craze. Original.

Gimme Indie Rock

Gimme Indie Rock PDF

Author: Andrew Earles

Publisher: Voyageur Press (MN)

Published: 2014-09-15

Total Pages: 403

ISBN-13: 0760346488

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"Music journalist Andrew Earles provides a rundown of 500 landmark albums recorded and released by bands of the indie rock genre"--

Dream Brother

Dream Brother PDF

Author: David Browne

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2011-11-15

Total Pages: 617

ISBN-13: 0062111957

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When Jeff Buckley drowned at the age of thirty in 1997, he not only left behind a legacy of brilliant music -- he brought back haunting memories of his father, '60s troubadour Tim Buckley, a gifted musician who barely knew his son and who himself died at twenty-eight. Both father and son made transcendent music that mixed rock, jazz, and folk; both amassed a cadre of obsessive, adoring fans. This absorbing dual biography -- based on interviews with more than one hundred friends, family members, and business associates as well as access to journals and unreleased recordings -- tells for the first time the intriguing, often heartbreaking story of these two musicians. It offers a new understanding of the Buckleys' parallel lives -- and tragedies -- while exploring the changing music business between the '60s and the '90s. Finally, it tells the story of a father and son, two complex, enigmatic men who died searching for themselves and each other.

Plant-Thinking

Plant-Thinking PDF

Author: Michael Marder

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2013-02-19

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 0231161255

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The margins of philosophy are populated by non-human, non-animal living beings, including plants. While contemporary philosophers tend to refrain from raising ontological and ethical concerns with vegetal life, Michael Marder puts this life at the forefront of the current deconstruction of metaphysics. He identifies the existential features of plant behavior and the vegetal heritage of human thought so as to affirm the potential of vegetation to resist the logic of totalization and to exceed the narrow confines of instrumentality. Reconstructing the life of plants "after metaphysics," Marder focuses on their unique temporality, freedom, and material knowledge or wisdom. In his formulation, "plant-thinking" is the non-cognitive, non-ideational, and non-imagistic mode of thinking proper to plants, as much as the process of bringing human thought itself back to its roots and rendering it plantlike.