Serge Gainsbourg

Serge Gainsbourg PDF Author: Sylvie Simmons
Publisher: Da Capo Press, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
The first biography in English of the priapic pop genius, drawing on new interviews to capture the debauched heart of the chain-smoking French cultural icon

Serge Gainsbourg

Serge Gainsbourg PDF Author: Sylvie Simmons
Publisher: Da Capo Press, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Get Book

Book Description
The first biography in English of the priapic pop genius, drawing on new interviews to capture the debauched heart of the chain-smoking French cultural icon

I'm Your Man

I'm Your Man PDF Author: Sylvie Simmons
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 0771080425
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 588

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Book Description
The definitive biography of one of the most emigmatic, beloved, and celebrated artists of our time. Leonard Cohen's extensive and successful recent worldwide tour has demonstrated that his popularity across generations and borders has never been greater. Cohen's life is one of singular mystique. This major in-depth biography is the book Cohen's fans have been waiting for. Acclaimed writer/journalist Sylvie Simmons has interviewed more than 100 figures from Cohen's life and work, including his main muses; the women in his life -- from Suzanne and Marianne to Rebecca de Mornay and Anjani Thomas; artists such as Rufus Wainwright, Nick Cave, David Crosby, Judy Collins, and Philip Glass; his record producers; his closest friends, from childhood to adulthood; and many of the spiritual figures who have influenced his life. Cohen, notoriously private, has granted interviews himself. Thoroughly researched and thoughtful, penetrating and lively, fascinating and revealing of stories and facts never read before, I'm Your Man offers new perspectives on Cohen and his life. It will be one of the most talked-about books of the season, and for years to come.

Serge Gainsbourg

Serge Gainsbourg PDF Author: Olivier Julien
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501365673
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
Serge Gainsbourg is arguably the Francophone songwriter whose contribution to the international appeal of French popular music has been the most significant in the post-war era. Sampled by Beck, De La Soul, Massive Attack and Fatboy Slim, remixed by Howie B. and David Holmes, translated by Mick Harvey, and covered by Iggy Pop, Donna Summer, Portishead, Madeleine Peyroux, the Pet Shop Boys and Franz Ferdinand, his music has crossed borders in a way no other modern French-language singer-songwriter's has. The interdisciplinary approach of Serge Gainsbourg: An International Perspective engages in a dialogue between musicology, film and media studies, literature, cultural studies, gender studies, and more, revealing the broad scope of Gainsbourg's impact in and outside of France, from the late 1950s through today. Bringing together a large selection of scholars from across the world, this collection of 26 chapters emphasizes his unique position in French culture, covering issues such as his musical influences and collaborations, esthetics and form, his experimentations with disciplines other than music (mainly film and literature), not to mention the conversation at play between high art and mass culture in this artist's multifaceted body of work.

Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson

Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson PDF Author: Darran Anderson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1623565979
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
Outside his native France, the view of Serge Gainsbourg was once of a one-hit wonder lothario. This has been slowly replaced by an awareness of how talented and innovative a songwriter he was. Gainsbourg was an eclectic, protean figure; a Dadaist, poète maudit, Pop-Artist, libertine and anti-hero. An icon and iconoclast. His masterpiece is arguably Histoire de Melody Nelson, an album suite combining many of his signature themes; sex, taboo, provocation, humour, exoticism and ultimately tragedy. Composed and arranged with the great Jean-Claude Vannier, its score of lush cinematic strings and proto-hip hop beats, combined with Serge's spoken-word poetry, has become remarkably influential across a vast musical spectrum; inspiring soundtracks, indie groups and electronic artists. In recent years, the album's reputation has grown from cult status to that of a modern classic with the likes of Beck, Portishead, Mike Patton, Air and Pulp paying tribute. How did the son of Jewish Russian immigrants, hounded during the Nazi Occupation, rise to such notoriety and acclaim, being celebrated by President François Mitterand as "our Baudelaire, our Apollinaire"? How did the early chanson singer evolve into a musical visionary incorporating samples, breakbeats and dub into his music, decades ahead of the curve? And what are the roots and legacy of a concept album about a Rolls Royce, a red-haired Lolita muse, otherworldly mansions, plane crashes and Cargo Cults?

Neil Young

Neil Young PDF Author: Sylvie Simmons
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 9781841953175
Category : Rock musicians
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In 1966, Neil Young drove a battered funeral car two thousand miles from his native Toronto to Los Angeles to seek his fortune in the music business. Nearly forty years of continuous writing and performing later, he is firmly established as one of the most influential and idiosyncratic singer-songwriters of his generation. His restless and innovative spirit ensures that he is one of the few rock veterans as vital in his old age as he was in his youth. Simmons provides fresh insights into Young's life so far. She also uncovers new facts about his friendship with Charles Manson, and closely examines his schizophrenic eighties output and musical return to form as the "Godfather of Grunge" in the nineties.

The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture

The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture PDF Author: Tom Brown
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113595030X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
The biographical film or biopic is a staple of film production in all major film industries and yet, within film studies, its generic, aesthetic, and cultural significance has remained underexplored. The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture fills this gap, conceptualizing the biopic with a particular eye toward the "life" of the genre internationally. New theoretical approaches combine with specially commissioned chapters on contemporary biographical film production in India, Italy, South Korea, France, Russia, Great Britain, and the US, in order to present a selective but well-rounded portrait of the biopic’s place in film culture. From Marie Antoinette to The Social Network, the pieces in this volume critically examine the place of the biopic within ongoing debates about how cinema can and should represent history and "real lives." Contributors discuss the biopic’s grounding in the conventions of the historical film, and explore the genre’s defining traits as well as its potential for innovation. The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture expands the critical boundaries of this evolving, versatile genre.

The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's

The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's PDF Author: Steven Lee Beeber
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 1569762287
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Based in part on the recent interviews with more than 125 people —among them Tommy Ramone, Chris Stein (Blondie), Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Group), Hilly Kristal (CBGBs owner), and John Zorn—this book focuses on punk's beginnings in New York City to show that punk was the most Jewish of rock movements, in both makeup and attitude. As it originated in Manhattan's Lower East Side in the early 1970s, punk rock was the apotheosis of a Jewish cultural tradition that found its ultimate expression in the generation born after the Holocaust. Beginning with Lenny Bruce, &“the patron saint of punk,&” and following pre-punk progenitors such as Lou Reed, Jonathan Richman, Suicide, and the Dictators, this fascinating mixture of biography, cultural studies, and musical analysis delves into the lives of these and other Jewish punks—including Richard Hell and Joey Ramone—to create a fascinating historical overview of the scene. Reflecting the irony, romanticism, and, above all, the humor of the Jewish experience, this tale of changing Jewish identity in America reveals the conscious and unconscious forces that drove New York Jewish rockers to reinvent themselves—and popular music.

That Sweet Enemy

That Sweet Enemy PDF Author: Robert Tombs
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307547981
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 820

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Book Description
That Sweet Enemy brings both British wit (Robert Tombs is a British historian) and French panache (Isabelle Tombs is a French historian) to bear on three centuries of the history of Britain and France. From Waterloo to Chirac’s slandering of British cooking, the authors chart this cross-channel entanglement and the unparalleled breadth of cultural, economic, and political influence it has wrought on both sides, illuminating the complex and sometimes contradictory aspects of this relationship—rivalry, enmity, and misapprehension mixed with envy, admiration, and genuine affection—and the myriad ways it has shaped the modern world. Written with wit and elegance, and illustrated with delightful images and cartoons from both sides of the Channel, That Sweet Enemy is a unique and immensely enjoyable history, destined to become a classic.

The Stylish Life

The Stylish Life PDF Author: Ben Rothenberg
Publisher: TeNeues
ISBN: 9783832732318
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"More than 'just a game', tennis has always been a sociable pursuit where whom and where you play defines the whole experience. An entire culture has developed around the pastime. With its pantheon of legendary players, impeccably manicured courts, and crisp, sporty fashion, tennis epitomizes a relaxed yet active life. From Hollywood stars gracing the stands, luxurious tennis wear, and prestigious tournaments such as Wimbledon, to its myriad depictions in art and popular culture, [this] presents a full spectrum of this posh sport's style and glamour"--Publisher's description.

Too Weird for Ziggy

Too Weird for Ziggy PDF Author: Sylvie Simmons
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781843544227
Category : Rock music
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Sylvie Simmons' fiction debut, Too Weird for Ziggy is a comic, corruscatingly observed collection of linked stories all set in the world of crass A & R men, fans mired in hero-worship and music starts perpetually on the verge of ego tantrum or outright crack up. From a pop goddess named Pussy who has a nervous breakdown and is found hoarding her own her and fingernail clippings to cults utterly devoted to Karen Carpenter that spring up after the singer's image appears on various buildings (including a kebab shop): from a band of crock-rockers whose star-making tour goes horribly wrong when their lead singer starts to grow breasts to an MTV-sponsored siance to raise a dead rock god, Simmons' tales embrace the bizarre world of rock. Too Weird for Ziggy has the devastating humour, punch and hook of a great pop tune.