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- Awe inspiring photography from the master of nature.
- Beautiful
- Absolutely superb
- When I had lost all hope ...
- So Beautiful it brings tears to your eyes
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Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration with Nature
Andy Goldsworthy
Manufacturer: Harry N. Abrams
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Binding: Hardcover
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Goldsworthy, Andy
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Andy Goldsworthy's Rivers & Tides
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Passage
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Time
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Stone
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Wood
ASIN: 0810933519 |
Amazon.com
Scottish artist Andy Goldsworthy uses a seemingly infinite array of purely natural materials, from snow and ice to leaves, stone, and twigs in the creation of his one-of-a-kind sculptures. Unlike such artists as Christo and Michael Hiezer, whose works leave definite marks on the landscape, Goldsworthy's approach is to interrupt, shape, or in some other way temporarily alter or work with nature to produce his fragile, mutable pieces. To create "Broken Icicle," for example, Goldsworthy was only able to work on the sculpture in the early morning, when temperatures were below freezing. As with most of his works, ultimately, the materials used to create this piece returned to their natural state, leaving no trace of the artwork's existence save for the stunning photos in this book.
Customer Reviews:
Awe inspiring photography from the master of nature........2007-09-17
This is classic Andy at his finest. A must have for your coffee table, bookshelf or any tucked away corner or your home. Fantastic intro book to get anyone to know Andy and his work. A great gift. Pick up a few for yourself.
Beautiful.......2007-07-30
This is a beautiful and original look at nature as art. Gorgeous photos and well put together, insightful commentary by the artist.
Absolutely superb.......2007-07-12
I cannot reccomend this book enough. It is one of the freshest and most unique photo / art books I have ever seen. Goldsworthy's ideas are rock solid and the book will amaze anyone with even the slightest desire to see good art.
When I had lost all hope ..........2007-05-12
I have tried to find Andy Goldsworthy's 'Ice and Sno' for quite a few years without any luck. I had already given up on ever finding it again at a reasonable price when this new title appeared. This books contains photographs of Andy's many and various creations, including quite a few in ice and snow. I am really happy with it!
So Beautiful it brings tears to your eyes.......2007-05-03
Some of the work is so beautiful I could cry. Some delight, some amaze, some leave you reflective. It makes you want to go out and experiment in the world yourself or take a walk. It is truly an amazing book.
Book Description
Greil Marcus, author of Mystery Train, widely acclaimed as the best book ever written about America as seen through its music, began work on this new book out of a fascination with the Sex Pistols: that scandalous antimusical group, invented in London in 1975 and dead within two years, which sparked the emergence of the culture called punk. "I am an antichrist!" shouted singer Johnny Rotten--where in the world of pop music did that come from? Looking for an answer, with a high sense of the drama of the journey, Marcus takes us down the dark paths of counterhistory, a route of blasphemy, adventure, and surprise.
This is no mere search for cultural antecedents. Instead, what Marcus so brilliantly shows is that various kinds of angry, absolute demands--demands on society, art, and all the governing structures of everyday life--seem to be coded in phrases, images, and actions passed on invisibly, but inevitably, by people quite unaware of each other. Marcus lets us hear strange yet familiar voices: of such heretics as the Brethren of the Free Spirit in medieval Europe and the Ranters in seventeenth-century England; the dadaists in Zurich in 1916 and Berlin in 1918, wearing death masks, chanting glossolalia; one Michel Mourre, who in 1950 took over Easter Mass at Notre-Dame to proclaim the death of God; the Lettrist International and the Situationist International, small groups of Paris--based artists and writers surrounding Guy Debord, who produced blank-screen films, prophetic graffiti, and perhaps the most provocative social criticism of the 1950s and '60s; the rioting students and workers of May '68, scrawling cryptic slogans on city walls and bringing France to a halt; the Sex Pistols in London, recording the savage "Anarchy in the U.K." and "God Save the Queen."
Although the Sex Pistols shape the beginning and the end of the story, Lipstick Traces is not a book about music; it is about a common voice, discovered and transmitted in many forms. Working from scores of previously unexamined and untranslated essays, manifestos, and filmscripts, from old photographs, dada sound poetry, punk songs, collages, and classic texts from Marx to Henri Lefebvre, Marcus takes us deep behind the acknowledged events of our era, into a hidden tradition of moments that would seem imaginary except for the fact that they are real: a tradition of shared utopias, solitary refusals, impossible demands, and unexplained disappearances. Written with grace and force, humor and an insistent sense of tragedy and danger, Lipstick Traces tells a story as disruptive and compelling as the century itself.
Customer Reviews:
a primer for the uninitiated.......2006-05-30
a close, "academic" reading of L.T. would render great many imperfections-factitious or otherwise. However, this is a freely associative account offered as post-structural fodder. When written in ('90) there was little stateside interest in situationism/lettrism/fluxus et. and scholars of the a.garde (i can only think of a handful) were slow to consider art/lit. movements beyond the hegelian arc. yes I had read "society of the spectacle" , knew of the lettrists work, dada, lautremont bla bla-all very predictable stuff for those in the "avant know"-but what I found alluring about L.T. was its anti-academic, messy essence- a welcome shift from hackneyed scholasticism.
A Catalog of Style Leaps........2006-02-11
I agree that this book is a page turner. A great balance of text and contexts. If you are intrigued by it's subject matter (Pistols/Dada/etc..) you'll have a hard time putting it down.
Reeling, heady, and fun.......2005-11-21
Don't start this one looking for a textbook - or anything bland, well-researched, and scholarly. The writing style fits well with the Punk idea - Marcus is clearly quite intelligent and well-read, but you can't possibly forget that he's a journalist at heart. The book is sensationalist at times, but that's allowed - I don't think he means for it to be read like a research paper. It's really long and free-associative, so it can be exhausting to read, but if you have the time and the interest it will certainly expand your view of the past century, and maybe change your ideas about the world in general just a little bit.
What do dada, the Orioles, and the Sex Pistols have in common?.......2005-09-13
Very little. But a sometimes interesting stroll through Greil Marcus's random brain farts.
"It's just a bunch of stuff that happened."
-- Homer Simpson
Brilliant, engaging take on a much-covered subject.......2005-07-09
Ludicrously dismissed by punks and academics alike (revealing something that links them: a profound lack of imagination), Lipstick Traces is the most audacious and brilliant book ever written about popular music, one that barely mentions its purported subject (punk rock). In his absurd attack on Marcus, Richard Meltzer quotes some critic's dismissal of LT as a failed version of his (Meltzer's) own The Aesthetics of Rock; in truth, that book itself is more like a failed version of itself, in which brilliant ideas are let down by virtually unreadable prose. What Marcus does is easy to miss at first, but it becomes obvious over the course of the book: he's not just trying to show us the Guy Debord in Johnny Rotten, but the Johnny Rotten in Guy Debord. And so a book devoted almost entirely to obscure artists, barely given a footnote in any "real" history of art or rock or whatever (the Pistols and the Clash aside, none of the punk bands Marcus admires - the Buzzcocks, the Slits, X-Ray Spex, Essential Logic, the Adverts, even Public Image Ltd. - will ever get much time on VH1) becomes unbelievably exciting and visceral.
Marcus doesn't bother writing much about the Sex Pistols themselves, though his descriptions of their records are almost more amazing than the records themselves. The first half of the book is a rambling screed, taking in subjects as unlikely as Adorno and Michael Jackson's Victory Tour. Marcus doesn't dumb down anything he takes on, and he shuttles back and forth between seemingly unrelated topics so often that some readers may be frustrated. Persevere, and you'll find that Marcus's writing, imposing at first, is ultimately vibrant, witty and illuminating. The second half is a much more straightforward account of the "heroes" of Marcus's vision - Tristan Tzara, Michel Mourre, Debord - though he still has room for a lovely meditation on the Orioles' 1948 "It's Too Soon to Know," which he considers the first rock'n'roll record. What's fascinating about this section is that Marcus either digs up information on people you'd never hear of otherwise (Mourre, a deadbeat sometime-surrealist who made headlines around the world by marching into Notre Dame Church dressed as a monk to proclaim the death of God, may be the most intriguing character here) or writes about them in an engaging manner that you wouldn't find in a more traditionally scholarly book. Finally, in the epilogue, Marcus brings it all home, revealing for the first time why he decided to write a book about revolutions that never happened.
There is little historical connection between any of these figures, but that's the point - all these would-be revolutionaries really shared was a certain tone, and Marcus takes on something of that tone himself. It's the voice of Charlie Chaplin's tramp at the end of "The Great Dictator": someone willing, even for a moment, to address the entire world, to refuse to censor oneself, and to accept whatever consequences may follow.
Book Description
The legions of Bob Dylan fans know that Dylan is not just a great composer, writer, and performer, but a great thinker as well. In Bob Dylan and Philosophy, eighteen philosophers analyze Dylan’s ethical positions, political commitments, views on gender and sexuality, and his complicated and controversial attitudes toward religion. All phases of Dylan’s output are covered, from his early acoustic folk ballads and anthem-like protest songs to his controversial switch to electric guitar to his sometimes puzzling, often profound music of the 1970s and beyond. The book examines different aspects of Dylan’s creative thought through a philosophical lens, including personal identity, negative and positive freedom, enlightenment and postmodernism in his social criticism, and the morality of bootlegging. An engaging introduction to deep philosophical truths, the book provides Dylan fans with an opportunity to learn about philosophy while impressing fans of philosophy with the deeper implications of his intellectual achievements.
Customer Reviews:
Jim Spiegel philosophically rocks!.......2007-02-09
So what do John Calvin, Bob Dylan, and Jim Spiegel all have in common? They all rock out Augustinian style! Yes, that is right. Within this philosophic volume exploring the themes and thought patterns of Bob Dylan, Jim Spiegel explores Bob Dylan's stance on God's sovereignty. How cool is that? You get three great minds converging in one essay in addition to many other essays for the price of less than $[...].
In case any of you are not familiar with Jim Spiegel, he is a professor of philosophy at Taylor University who teaches a wide variety of philosophic disciplines such as epistemology, ethics, history of philosophy from ancient to modern (two different semesters), philosophy of mind, and of course one of his favorite "Taylormade" course aesthetics. Normally, one would have to enroll as a undergraduate student to enjoy the philosophic theatrics of Dr. Spiegel, but here featured within this volume the public is able to catch just a brief glimpse at the Spiegel-geist manifesting himself in one of his favorite topics aesthetics, which, of course, according to the Spiegel definition is the study of rock 'n roll as it emerges out of philosophy.
According to Spiegel, philosophy truly begins with rock 'n roll insofar as Aristotle sketches out the first rough outlines of the rock 'n roll program. Yes, it is true that there is not a single cultural movement that cannot be first attributed to Aristotle. Seriously, if it was not for Aristotle's album de anima where would Thomas Aquinas really be today? I can say this he would not be the most hard-core theologian of the medieval period.
Anyway, Spiegel traces out the theological dilemmas of Bob Dylan within the lyrics of his early and late career. Spiegel points out that Bob Dylan has not always held a consistent Calvinistic position. In some cases, Bob Dylan is overwhelmed with the immediate circumstance and is therefore unable to see God's sovereignty in specific circumstances of his life. This is a position to Spiegel labels as weak sovereignty. In other more positive cases, Dylan is able to rejoice in the fact that God has brought him through troubling circumstance towards a more firm understanding of things. This position Spiegel labels as strong sovereignty. Spiegel notes that the problem with too strong of the view of sovereignty is that sometimes Dylan is unable to see his own participation in the sovereign plan of God.
Spiegel then brings out what he calls compatiblism. This is a view that wholeheartedly understands God wonderful and sovereignly good plan without negating individual moral responsibility. Admittedly, Dylan does not always achieve this balanced understanding, but there are rare glimpses of sovereignly enabled freedom within the thoughtful lyrics of his songs. If you enjoy reading Spiegel's article, make sure to check out some of his books on Amazon such as: How to Be Good in a World Gone Bad, The Benefits of Providence: A New Look at Divine Sovereignty, and Hypocrisy: Moral Fraud and Other Vices
Fun stimulating pastiche.......2006-10-09
I picked this book up on a whim - interesting title, attractive cover - and I skimmed a bit in the library. I am glad I took it home. I think you are likely to be a bit disapointed if you are looking for a book about Bob Dylan - and certainly there are plenty of others to choose from. As the Introduction to the book says, Dylan's work is used as a starting off point to look, with a philosophical perspective, at various themes in Dylan's work as a way of introducing philosphical concepts and methods to a broader audience. I don't get the impression that the idea is to be definitive, rather these generally easy to read essays are thought provoking and a rather fun way to learn about philosophy. While I have read all of the Platonic dialogues, I do not know very much about current trends in philosophy. I have particularly enjoyed the material in this book which touches on Post Modern philosophy, specifically as it relates to the Enlightenment ideals. There are a number of authors and sources which I plan to have a closer look at. In this way, as a fun introduction to what can only be described as a frequently stodgy subject (at least in its academic form) I highly recommend this book. You may not agree with all of the opinions expressed within, but they are nevetheless quite stimulating. After all, it is still fun to think - isn't it? ;) And what better excuse do you need to dust off some of your old Dylan LP's and give them another spin? Enjoy!
fascinating.......2006-07-06
highly recomended for any serious Dylan fan. book is easy to read and well worth it. there are some briliant insights that i have never read anywhere else.
Good here and there.......2006-06-24
As a Dylan freak, I thought I would eat this book up like...well, food; I was sadly mistaken. Many of these 'essays' on Dylan's work read like high school term papers (and I am a high schooler, thus I know the general workmanship on said papers!).
They are joyless and often pander to the reader--because, while not everybody understands Camus and Kierkeegarde (I'm not sure if I spelled it right, and am too lazy to check), anybody could make the conclusion that in Dylan's romantic songs (like Don't Think Twice, It's All Right, or Tangled Up In Blue) he is sad, because the love meant everything to him in his life.
It's not hard to read meaning into Dylan's music, but in doing such, this book misses what I feel to be Dylan's point--that everyone should have their own philosophy and be an individual leader. In reading this and writing this, readers are disobeying Dylan's statement: Don't follow leaders.
So, I wouldn't recommend spending the outrageous $ on this book unless you really like people to tell you what they think Bob Dylan was thinking. And since even Zimmy himself can't quite express all his thoughts on life, this book does a poor job.
A Shameless Pamphlet/ A Waste of Pulp.......2006-03-16
This book is emphatically NOT for any one who is serious about Bob. It's just another of the plethora of attempts to capitalize on the man's genius by attaching their name to a title. For a clue, this is part of a series entitled 'Popular Culture & Philosophy'. It is the publisher's 17th volume which should illuminate their priorities. Here's a sampling of some of their earlier efforts: 'Seinfeld &...', 'Superheros &...','The Atkins Diet &...'. If that hasn't wetted your mouth yet, here's what's in preparation: 'Harley-Davidson &...', 'Poker &...'. Get my gest. If a bunch of predictable babblers from Tin Pan Alley is your idea of a good read get this book quick. If however you are like me and think of Dylan as 'complete unto' himself and are sickened by all these sychophants trying to grab a piece of him simply to elevate their own 'position & place', keep this silly offering far far away from your real Dylan books.
Book Description
Is it possible to be a committed Christian and a rock superstar? Can political activists make good music? Do hugely successful rock bands really care about AIDS and poverty in Africa, or is it just another image-enhancing schtick? U2 and Philosophy ponders these and other seeming dichotomies in the career of the Irish supergroup. For over two decades, U2 has been one of the biggest acts in rock music. They’ve produced over a dozen platinum and multiplatinum records and won 15 Grammy Awards. Critics everywhere have praised the band’s thoughtful, complex lyrics and the artistry of their music. At the same time, Bono, the group’s lead singer, has dedicated himself to political and social causes, blurring the line between rock star and respected statesman. Offering fresh insight into the band’s music and activism, these thought-provoking essays allows fans to discover philosophy through the eyes of U2, and rediscover U2 through the eyes of philosophers.
Customer Reviews:
Great idea poorly executed.......2007-03-16
This could've been a great collection, but many of the pieces just aren't very well written. The writers use very few actual examples from U2's songs, and most of the chapters jump all over the place, with subtitles seemingly inserted at random. There are stylistic and spelling inconsistencies, as well as some factual errors (it lists The Unforgettable Fire as released in 1990, when in fact it came out in 1984, for example). While it's not a bad introduction to some key philosophical ideas, students would be better off seeking out a textbook or the original texts, and I don't think the scant references to U2 made any of the essays better. In fact, most of them felt convoluted because they didn't provide enough proof to back up what they were trying to argue.
That said, the chapter on the Joshua Tree and place was fantastic. If the whole book had been that way, I'd be writing a much different review. As it is, though, that chapter just made the others in the book look bad.
Good for those somewhat interested in philosophy, but U2 fans will be disappointed. Those interested in learning more about U2 would be better off searching out U2 at the End of the World or U2 By U2, or simply just listening to U2's music and thinking about it on their own.
A top pick for fans of the group.......2007-02-06
U2 AND PHILOSOPHY: HOW TO DECIPHER AN ATOMIC BAND is a top pick for fans of the group, introducing philosophy in the context of a popular music venue review to make it more understandable to modern audiences. What does U2 have to do with Plato, existentialism, and Nietzsche, among others? This is the perfect pick for a high school collection wishing to introduce students to philosophy without appearing dry or dull in the process!
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Book Description
One of Europe's foremost jazz producers takes us through a world of musical traditions and explores the effects of sound on consciousness.
Customer Reviews:
Sound principles expand horizons.......2007-09-11
Joachim-Ernst Berendt has a great gift for synthesizing informaion. This book is a must read for anyone interested in harmony and understanding our place in the universe as part of the great expression of spirit. It will also appeal to those who prefer more practical information as to how sound and music has transcended and unified while informing those who play as well as the listener. I just love this book! I'm a yoga teacher and a singer and this book really touched me on all levels.
Nada Brahma.......2005-12-27
I read this book a little while ago and it completely transformed the way I perceive the world around me. This book showed me the power that sound has. While the book is primarily concerned with the mysticism of sound, he also relates the world around us to sound, and shows us how reliable and accurate our ears are when compared to our eyes.
Joachim-Ernst Berendt also gives listening tests in some of the chapters to give the reader an opportunity to develop their sense of hearing, which he says is being underused in our predominantly visual western culture.
I am a private detective and ever since reading this book, I have always tried to use sound equipment and techniques on my investigations. Since reading this book I have completely re-evaluated and structured the approach and conduct of my work for the better. Can't recommend it enough.
James Pearson.
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Nadha Bhrama is an excellent esoteric book.......1999-12-04
My intimate partner is a spriritual practitioner of the Way of Adidam. He is also a musician and chanter. He finds this book both exciting and fascinating. I deals with subtle and cosmic aspects of music, sound and the manifest universe. He has wanted it for a long time. I am happy to have finally found it for him.
Book Description
Britain is widely considered the cradle of independent music culture. Bands like Radiohead and Belle and Sebastian, which epitomize indie music's sounds and attitudes, have spawned worldwide fanbases. This in-depth study of the British independent music scene explores how the behavior of fans, artists, and music industry professionals produce a community with a specific aesthetic based on moral values. Author Wendy Fonarow, a scholar with years of experience in the various sectors of the indie music scene, examines the indie music "gig" as a ritual in which all participants are actively involved. This ritual allows participants to play with cultural norms regarding appropriate behavior, especially in the domains of sex and creativity. Her investigation uncovers the motivations of audience members when they first enter the community and how their positions change over time so that the gig functions for most members as a rite of passage. Empire of Dirt sheds new light on music, gender roles, emotion, subjectivity, embodiment, and authenticity.
Customer Reviews:
Fantastic.......2007-09-11
Besides the book being interesting, it was in great shape and delivered rapidly. Thanks very much!
Culture is Art.......2007-07-18
This book is necessary. This is for everyone from the musician to the music lover. It's for the anthropologist and the student. It's for the one who knows music is just in its accessibility to the masses and the one who insists it is popular culture and not fair game for academia. Professor Fonarow's brilliantly conceived piece of work will change your experience of any gig. You will be looking for "the zones" in every venue, redefine your conception of the "groupie," and see a sacred drama on the stage and in the audience. Fonarow allows us to understand the place indie music occupies in one's life and how aesthetics and metaphysics coexist to invite the idea of your music as your community and your culture as art. After reading this book, music will be participatory for you, whether or not you empathize with the indie ethos. The beautiful afterward (one I've read numerous times) is one of the most poetic endings of any ethnography I've ever read.
Jane Goodall of the Indie Rock Show.......2006-12-14
Wendy is the Jane Goodall of the indie rock show. I really enjoyed this anthropological treatment of independent music culture. She definitively describes the impossibly malleable subject of what is Indie. She identifies the zones of audience participation: from the sweaty body on body of the front, to the contemplative middle, to the indifferent bar area, and out to the home parlor of the retired fan.
A guilty pleasure for anyone who knows the scene.
EMPIRE OF DIRT helps define both the genre and experience.......2006-09-24
College-level students of British music won't want to miss EMPIRE OF DIRT: THE AESTHETICS AND RITUALS OF BRITISH INDIE MUSIC. Its analysis blends ethnographic and socio-historic literature on local music communities and genres, comes from a doctor who has worked in the music industry for several major record labels, and offers results from her thirteen-year study of indie rock. From gigs and performances to behavior, norms, and music perceptions from both audience and performer perspective, EMPIRE OF DIRT helps define both the genre and experience of British indie music.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Professor Wendy.......2006-08-16
A brilliant read. It puts the development of modern individuals, from adolescence to adulthood, into a new meaningful perspective, as well as indie music within the greater context of human activity. I especially enjoyed the examples and anecdotes. The chapter on groupies depicts modern gender roles and attitudes that are too often overlooked in mainstream stereotypes. Her examination of musicians is hilarious as well as therapeutic and identifiable for anyone dissatisfied with the status quo. Her writing articulates the subconsciously absorbed culture and rituals with eloquence, humor, and insight. Her observations and discernment enhance the understanding and experience of music and culture. Thank you, Professor Wendy.
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Axial Stones: An Art of Precarious Balance
George Quasha
Manufacturer: North Atlantic Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1556435754
Release Date: 2006-07-24 |
Book Description
George Quasha’s extraordinary sculptures unite natural stones in a state of breathtakingly improbable balance. The stones are not altered physically or bonded in any way; rather, Quasha discovers an unknown axis that brings them into radical alignment. The stones "learn" this state of levity in contrast to their ordinary state of gravity, resulting in a new art form that feels alive with its own individual energy and personality. Here, 37 axial stones are displayed in dazzling full-page color photos. The accompanying text explains not only how the stones were found and eventually came together, but explores the aesthetic, philosophical, spiritual, and practical implications of an art of danger and impermanence. "Action pages" document the process—the repeated setting up, balancing, losing balance, and falling—until the full axial stone is born: a whole being greater and more real than the sum of its parts.
Book Description
The Japanese dry landscape garden has long attracted—and long baffled—viewers from the West. While museums across the United States are replicating these "Zen rock gardens" in their courtyards and miniature versions of the gardens are now office decorations, they remain enigmatic, their philosophical and aesthetic significance obscured. Reading Zen in the Rocks, the classic essay on the karesansui garden by French art historian François Berthier, has now been translated by Graham Parkes, giving English-speaking readers a concise, thorough, and beautifully illustrated history of these gardens.
Berthier's guided tour of the famous garden of Ryoanji (Temple) in Kyoto leads him into an exposition of the genre, focusing on its Chinese antecedents and affiliations with Taoist ideas and Chinese landscape painting. He traces the roles of Shinto and Zen Buddhism in the evolution of the garden and also considers how manual laborers from the lowest classes in Japan had a hand in creating some of its highest examples. Parkes contributes an equally original and substantive essay which delves into the philosophical importance of rocks and their "language of stone," delineating the difference between Chinese and Japanese rock gardens and their relationship to Buddhism. Together, the two essays compose one of the most comprehensive and elegantly written studies of this haunting garden form.
Reading Zen in the Rocks is fully illustrated with photographs of all the major gardens discussed, making it a handsome addition to the library of anyone interested in gardening, Eastern philosophy, and the combination of the two that the karesansui so superbly represents.
Praise for the French edition:
"A small book of rare depth, remarkably illustrated, on one of the most celebrated and beautiful rock gardens of the monasteries of Kyoto."—L'Humanité
"Through Le Jardin de Ryoanji, Berthier teaches us to read the zen in the rocks, to discover the language offered by the garden at Ryoanji. Enigmatic, poetic, and disconcerting, an enriching journey through a work of art of surprising modernity, Le Jardin de Ryoanji is a work that will interest all the amateurs of Japanese art and Eastern philosophy."—Lien Horticole
Customer Reviews:
Better in the French edition........2000-06-25
A Frenchman explaining Zen and Japanese gardens, translated into English, makes for an international headache. Some good insights, yes. A lot of pseudo-Zen philosophical nonsense, yes. Best read with a glass of wine (French) in hand.
A great book to understand Zen spirit.......2000-06-16
It's a good book on the subject of Zen. It introduces the spirit of Zen in terms of the number and location of rocks. You can't miss it.
Average customer rating:
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Reading Rock and Roll
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0231113994 |
Book Description
Considering the work of such artists as Madonna, George Clinton, U2, Elvis Costello, and Nirvana, the contributors deftly combine the rigors of scholarship with the energy of rock journalism to provide an analysis at once critical, contextualized, and enthusiastic. While a number of scholars have recently turned their attention to rock and pop music, most of their work has focused on providing sweeping cultural contexts for its popularity rather than exploring the music itself. Now, in Reading Rock and Roll, Kevin Dettmar and William Richey have gathered a wealth of erudite, original, and clever writings that perform close readings of rock music -- often with surprising results.
The authors in this volume view rock and roll as having had affinities with postmodernism from its inception. With its mongrel pedigree -- drawing on blues, folk, R and B, and bluegrass -- and its relation to mass media and high-tech modes of production, rock music has been self-conscious and full of irony from the beginning. These essays regularly call attention to the allusiveness and intertextuality of rock and roll, whether it is Kurt Cobain undermining the Beatles, M. C. Hammer stealing from Rick James's "Super Freak," or U2's use of Johnny Cash's legendary voice.
From a careful examination of the roles of addictions and female sexuality in the remakings of Courtney Love and Madonna, to the politics of George Clinton's uses and abuses of language, to the referencing of Elvis Costello in two recent novels and the use of 1970s rock in several recent film soundtracks, these essays are as varied as the artists they consider. Informal and theoretically informed, Reading Rock and Roll is an important investigation of the music that more than any other has defined our century.
Book Description
This vivid ethnography of the musical lives of heavy metal, rock, and jazz musicians in Cleveland and Akron, Ohio shows how musicians engage with the world of sound to forge meaningful experiences of music. Unlike most popular music studies, which only provide a scholar's view, this book is based on intensive fieldwork and hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews. Rich descriptions of the musical life of metal bars and jazz clubs get readers close to the people who make and listen to the music.
Of special interest are Harris M. Berger's interviews with Timmy "The Ripper" Owens, now famous as lead singer for the pioneering heavy metal band, Judas Priest. Owens and other performers share their own experiences of the music, thereby challenging traditional notions of harmony and musical structure. Using ideas from practice theory and phenomenology, Berger shows that musical perception is a kind of practice, both creatively achieved by the listener and profoundly informed by social context.
Books:
- Angry Blonde
- Art of Technique, The: An Aesthetic Approach to Film and Video Production
- Bad Boy of Music.
- Beethoven`s Piano Sonatas: A Short Companion
- Blues People: Negro Music in White America
- But He Was Good to His Mother : The Lives and Crimes of Jewish Gangsters
- Catholicism for Dummies
- Christo & Jeanne-Claude: Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin, 1971-1995 (Jumbo Series)
- Classic Eagles (Authentic Guitar-Tab)
- Costuming from the Hip
Books Index
Books Home
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