Music : Rock

Presents an analysis of cyberculture and its popular cultural productions. This work begins with a Foucaultian model of cyberculture as a discursive formation, and explains how some key concepts (such as virtuality, speed, and connectivity) operate as a conceptual architecture network linking technologies to information and individual subjects. more...

Price: $95.00

Rock 'n' roll music in all of its forms has had as profound an effect on American culture as any art form ever. Its impact on the 1960s helped to end the war in Vietnam, and assuage the guilt of that war on the American psyche. In this highly original and engaging book, respected music journalist Mark Kemp shows how rock music helped a generation of Southerners finally come to grips with its past. He masterfully blends his own background growing up in the South with the stories of the Allman Brothers, REM, and many other musicians into a seamless narrative. As kids Kemp and his friends listened to rock from England, from LA, from New York, not realizing until later that these white musicians in Europe and the United States were incorporating into their own music the rhythms and styles of black blues masters from Kemp's part of the world, men such as Robert Johnson, Willie Dixon, and Chuck Berry. The musical influence came full circle when white Southerners like the Allman Brothers, the Charlie Daniels Band, and Lynyrd Skynyrd started playing rock 'n' roll. Kemp argues that the music and the sense of community derived from these bands (and many others, like R.E.M., the B-52s, and the Dave Matthews Band) have helped heal the racial guilt experienced by many white people who came of age in the 1970s and 80s in the South. Kemp describes his youthful ambivalence about his home: "I loved the land that surrounded me but hated the history that haunted that land." Southern rock from the 1960s through the present has offered a different identity than the pervasive shame that many white Southerners grew up with. Mark Kemp has written a book that will get major attention for both its strong writing and fascinating thesis, a book of enduring power that could rank among the best music books of all time. more...

Price: $17.99

Examines the life and times of Jerry Garcia, capturing the psychedelic world of the musician and songwriter, his relationship with members of the Grateful Dead, his battle with drug addiction, and his lasting influence on popular music. more...

Price: $15.95

We're Here for a Good Time — ''Raise a Little Hell'' — ''The Boys in the Bright White Sportscar'' — all Canadian anthems — all recorded by Trooper. The Globe and Mail calls them ''honest-to-God Canadian legends.'' The Toronto Sun lauds the ongoing strength of their ''Boomer/Gen X cachet.'' They have sold millions of albums, have travelled tens of thousands of miles, and, for thirty years, have borne first-hand witness to an amazing era in popular music: ''sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll'' and the long hard road where careers are made and broken. Ra McGuire, Trooper's charismatic leader, singer, and songwriter, still travels that road, performing 100 shows a year from Tofino to Torbay and everywhere in between. Famous for his quick wit and sometimes too-candid stage banter, McGuire has always had a knack for keeping audiences on the edge of their seats. In Here for a Good Time: On the Road with Trooper — Canada's Legendary Rock Band, he reveals the peaks and valleys of his life on the road and the joys and challenges of being a fifty-something rock star at large in the country he knows like the back of his hand. more...

Price: $16.95

This volume examines the powerful ways in which identity can be shaped by rock music. Through the music, imagery and discourse surrounding one of the most innovative and commercially successful rock bands ever, Susan Fast probes such issues as constructions of gender and sexuality, the creation of myth and the use of ritual, the appropriation of Eastern musics and the blues, the physicality of the music, and the use of the body in performance. The band's influence is examined through socially-situated musical analysis, as well as an ethnographic study of Led Zeppelin fans. Fast draws on academic and journalistic writing as well as a new interview with band member John Paul Jones. Specific pieces examined include "Dazed and Confused," "Kashmir," "Stairway to Heaven," and "Whole Lotta Love."  more...

Price: $60.00