|
|
|
Bill Graham Presents: My Life Inside Rock And Out
As a child, Bill Graham fled Europe to escape Hitler's armies. He grew up on the streets of New York and in the dining rooms of the hotels in the Catskills After failing as an actor, he headed for San Francisco right before the Summer of Love where he founded the Fillmore and launched the rock icons of a generation--Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, Jefferson Airplane, Cream, the Grateful Dead, and more. He was a complex, caring, compassionate whirlwind of energy who rock stars either loved--or hated.In his own voice and those of the people who knew him--Jerry Garcia, Keith Richards, Grace Slick, Ken Kesey, Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, and Carlos Santana--we hear Bill's story as well as the scoop on the major events in rock for more than three decades, ending with his tragic death in a 1991 helicopter crash. Gritty, moving, funny, and always fascinating, Bill Graham Presents is the inside story of the explosive and unforgettable man who created the business of rock. .
Price: $12.97
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
The Librettist of Venice: The Remarkable Life of Lorenzo Da Ponte--Mozart's Poet, Casanova's Friend, and Italian Opera's Impre
The operatic life of the librettist for Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro.In 1805, Lorenzo Da Ponte was the proprietor of a small grocery store in New York. But since his birth into an Italian Jewish family in 1749, he had already been a priest, a poet, the lover of many women, a scandalous Enlightenment thinker banned from teaching in Venice, the librettist for three of Mozart’s most sublime operas, a collaborator with Salieri, a friend of Casanova, and a favorite of Emperor Joseph II. He would go on to establish New York City’s first opera house and be the first professor of Italian at Columbia University. An inspired innovator but a hopeless businessman, who loved with wholehearted loyalty and recklessness, Da Ponte was one of the early immigrants to live out the American dream. In Rodney Bolt’s rollicking and extensively researched biography, Da Ponte’s picaresque life takes readers from Old World courts and the back streets of Venice, Vienna, and London to the New World promise of New York City. Two hundred and fifty years after Mozart’s birth, the life and legacy of his librettist Da Ponte are as astonishing as ever. .
Price: $6.99
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan
A perfect mirror of its time, "The Ed Sullivan Show" ran from 1948 to 1971, echoing this period’s every chapter: the birth of television, the conformist 1950s, the dawn of the rock era – featuring a hip-shaking Elvis and the Beatles’ U.S. debut – and finally, the tumultuous late 1960s. Through it all, Sullivan presented his signature mix of highbrow and corn pone, Borsht Belt and Middle America, from Fred Astaire to Richard Pryor, Walt Disney to Janis Joplin. He was the variety show producer as curator of national culture. Like his show, Sullivan’s life was a mirror of its time, and IMPRESARIO, the first major biography of this iconic showman, tells his story as an engaging narrative. From his birth in a Jewish-Irish ghetto in Harlem to his career as a Broadway gossip columnist, his years in the sweat-and-sawdust vaudeville circuit, his stint in Hollywood and his struggles in television, the man behind the scenes is revealed: mercurial and tyrannical, yet also charming and deeply sentimental – this introvert who hungered for a mass audience was defined by his contradictions. The pucker-faced showman who was so uncomfortable in the spotlight’s glare took dictatorial control of his show’s every aspect, shaping it down to the last punch line. He proved so gifted at this that some 40 million viewers watched year after year, making Sullivan an unofficial Minister of Culture. Yet paradoxically, his supposedly staid Sunday night variety show proved to be an agent of social change, especially when Sullivan gave the ultimate subversive force – rock ‘n’ roll – his hallowed stamp of approval. Impressively researched – including interviews with top performers like Joan Rivers, George Carlin, and Carol Burnett – IMPRESARIO tells the story of a pioneering showman who both shaped and reflected American culture at the birth of the modern media age..
Price: $5.99
[Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley
A meticulously researched biography, this story profiles "The Colonel" Tom Parker, the man behind Elvis Presley, in a compelling new light. Filled with startling material found in never-before-seen documents, including Parker's army records, psychiatric evaluations, and police reports, this investigation challenges even the most familiar aspects of the Presley saga. Parker, who handled every aspect of Elvis Presley's career and much in his personal life, is revealed as an overwhelmingly selfish man who sought to hide his own illegal alien status rather than further the art of a great musician. Astonishing and impeccably written, this entertaining book proves that the only figure in American popular culture as fascinating as Elvis Presley is Colonel Tom Parker, the man who shaped Elvis, and in turn shaped music history. .
Price: $10.38
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Diaghilev's Ballets Russes
In the history of twentieth-century ballet, no company has had so profound and far-reaching an influence as the Ballets Russes. Under the direction of impresario extraordinaire Serge Diaghilev (1872–1929), the Ballets Russes radically transformed the nature of ballet—its subject matter, movement idiom, choreographic style, stage space, music, scenic design, costume, even the dancer's physical appearance. From 1909 to 1929, it nurtured some of the greatest choreographers in dance history—Fokine, Nijinsky, Massine, and Balanchine—and created such classics as Les Sylphides, Firebird, Petrouchka, L'Après-midi d'un Faune, Les Noces, and Apollo. Diaghilev brought together some of the leading artists of his time, including composers Stravinsky, Debussy, and Prokofiev; artists Picasso, Braque, and Matisse, and poets Hoffmansthal and Cocteau. Diaghilev's Ballets Russes is the most authoritative history of the company ever written and the first to examine it as a totality—its art, enterprise, and audience. Combining social and cultural history with illuminating discussions of dance, drama, music, art, economics, and public reception, Lynn Garafola paints an extraordinary portrait of the company that shaped ballet into what it is today. .
Price: $16.18
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Impresario: Malcolm McLaren and the British New Wave
Preface by Marcia Tucker and William Olander Malcolm McLaren didn't invent Punk. All he did was envisage it, design it, clothe it, publicize it, and sell it. In the film, "The Great Rock'n Roll Swindle," he appears in a black rubber garment and mask of his own design and whispers the above in a conspiratorial voice. Thus begins the story of how he went on to swindle a fortune from the British music industry. Impresario takes a lively and provocative look at the interface between popular culture as orchestrated by the controversial figure of Malcolm McLaren, the arena of High Culture, and the ever increasing public for both. Essays by Paul Taylor, Jane Withers, Jon Savage, and Dan Graham trace McLaren's career as a pop entrepreneur at 430 Kings Road (the London boutique also known as Let It Rock SEX, and Seditionaries), as the mastermind behind the Sex Pistols, Adam and the Ants, and Bow Wow Wow, which earned him the title, "Svengali of Punk" and as the manipulator of media who turned himself into his own product with the launching of the prescient album Duck Rock and the brilliant pastiche, Fans. The more than 50 illustrations comprise a visual biography of McLaren, encompassing the full range of his work as designer, filmmaker, musician, and cultural theorist. By focusing on McLaren's career as well as on the collaborative and crossover character of his work Impresario challenges and ultimately broadens our accepted notions of art. A publication of The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York Distributed by The MIT Press..
Price: $14.99
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Myself Among Others: A Life In Music
No one has had a better seat in the house than George Wein. The legendary impresario has known the most celebrated figures of music in general and jazz in particular--from Duke Ellington to Ella Fitzgerald to Miles Davis to Frank Sinatra As a founder of the Newport Jazz Festival, the Newport Folk Festival, and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, Wein has brought a dazzling spectrum of musicians to millions of fans, forever changing the musical landscape.In this highly praised memoir, Wein looks back on his life and career, describing his unforgettable relationships--sometimes smooth, sometimes tempestuous--with the great musicians he has known. From what really happened when Charlie Mingus visited the White House...to how Miles Davis and the ensemble that would eventually record the greatest jazz album of all time-- Kind of Blue--came together at Wein's Storyville nightclub...to the day at Newport when Bob Dylan first "went electric," here are the personalities and forces that have shaped the past half-century of popular music. .
Price: $1.46
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Cafe Society: The Wrong Place for the Right People (Music in American Life)
Set against the drama of the Great Depression, the conflict of American race relations, and the inquisitions of the House Un-American Activities Committee, Cafe Society tells the personal history of Barney Josephson, proprietor of the legendary interracial New York City night clubs Cafe Society Downtown and Cafe Society Uptown and their successor, The Cookery. Famously known as "the wrong place for the Right people," Cafe Society featured the cream of jazz and blues performers--among whom were Billie Holiday, boogie-woogie pianists, Big Joe Turner, Lester Young, Buck Clayton, Big Sid Catlett, and Mary Lou Williams--as well as comedy stars Imogene Coca, Zero Mostel, and Jack Gilford, and also gospel and folk singers. A trailblazer in many ways, Josephson welcomed black and white artists alike to perform for mixed audiences in a venue whose walls were festooned with artistic and satiric murals lampooning what was then called "high society." Featuring scores of photographs that illustrate the vibrant cast of characters in Josephson's life, this exceptional book speaks richly about Cafe Society's revolutionary innovations and creativity, inspired by the vision of one remarkable man. .
Price: $19.77
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
It's Sid Bernstein Calling ... The Promoter Who Brought the Beatles to America
It's not every day that you make the most important phone call of your life based on a wish and a hunch. But that's exactly what promoter Sid Bernstein did when, feeling that the time was right for the Beatles to play America, he placed a single call to Brian Epstein and arranged the pop group's history-making event at Carnegie Hall. A year later, Sid presented John, Paul, George and Ringo to a sold-out Shea Stadium. That unforgettable performance, the first concert in a venue that large, changed the face of music. "It's SID BERNSTEIN Calling . . ." is America's premier impresario's exciting ride through the decades with many of the twentieth century's greatest personalities. As a promoter, his extraordinary vision and instinct was evident during rock-and-roll's "British Invasion," when he imported a tidal wave of English bands-the Rolling Stones, Herman's Hermits, Moody Blues, The Kinks and others-to American shores. All the while, Sid, with his incomparable music savvy, was pivotal in the careers of James Brown, Ray Charles, John Denver, Joan Baez, Miles Davis-a veritable Who's Who in the recording industry. Also a rebuilder of dreams, Sid was instrumental in the triumphant comebacks of legends Tony Bennett and Judy Garland. Sid takes us on his professional and personal journey, from high points such as his marriage to Broadway singer Geraldine Gale and appointment as Ambassador from Liverpool, through the incredible low points, like the breakup of his chart-topping group, the Young Rascals and the shocking death of John Lennon. We get an intimate look at Sid and the many celebrities he met along the way: Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Mick Jagger, Ed Sullivan, Barbra Streisand, Paul Newman, Shirley MacLaine, the members of ABBA, even George and Barbara Bush! In "It's SID BERNSTEIN Calling . . ." we're propelled into the world of show business and, through Sid's recollections, get to know some of its biggest stars. We do so gladly, listening with our hearts to this man who was always one step ahead of the beat-paving milestones in entertainment history..
Price: $19.32
[Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
|
|
|