Author: Luis Sanchez
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1623569567
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 139
Get Book Here
Book Description
Smile is not merely a great unfinished album, but a living work of art that is all at once expansive, indeterminate, and resolutely pop. In the early 1960s, The Beach Boys rose from the suburbs of Hawthorne, California to become emissaries of a post-war American dream that fused middle-class aspiration and mobility with images of youth. Led by dream master Brian Wilson, their music gave voice to a Southern California mythos and compelled an audience across the nation and beyond to live out their own versions of the fantasy. By 1966, the encroaching counterculture added new dimensions of creative possibility to popular music. Looking to revise and expand, Brian Wilson sought collaboration with a brilliant musician named Van Dyke Parks. Together they began work on Smile, an ambitious album of music that refracted The Beach Boys' naïveté into a visionary exploration of American consciousness. Smile edged so close to greatness it seemed destined to become one of the most significant musical advances of its time. But the story didn't end quite like this. In this book of evocative essays, Sanchez traces the musical journey that transformed The Beach Boys from West Coast surf heroes into America's pop luminaries, and ultimately why Smile represents a tumultuous turning point in the history of popular music.
Author: Domenic Priore
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780867194173
Category : Popular music
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book Here
Book Description
Brian Wilson was on top of the creative world, laying down music that surpassed anything before, during or since this cultural zenith in our history.
Author: David Leaf
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780448146263
Category : Rock groups
Languages : en
Pages : 192
Get Book Here
Book Description
How the Beach Boys created the myth of California in the early sixties.
Author: Marshall Heiser
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501362755
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 257
Get Book Here
Book Description
Once the domain of a privileged few, the art of record production is today within the reach of all. The rise of the ubiquitous DIY project studio and internet streaming have made it so. And while the creative possibilities available to everyday musicians are seemingly endless, so too are the multiskilling and project management challenges to be faced. In order to demystify the contemporary popular-music-making phenomenon, Marshall Heiser reassesses its myriad processes and wider sociocultural context through the lens of creativity studies, play theory and cultural psychology. This innovative new framework is grounded in a diverse array of creative-practice examples spanning the CBGBs music scene to the influence of technology upon modern-day music. First-hand interviews with Jerry Harrison (Talking Heads), Bill Bruford (King Crimson, Yes) and others whose work has influenced the way records are made today are also included. Popular Music, Power and Play is as thought provoking as it will be indispensable for scholars, practitioners and aficionados of popular music and the arts in general.
Author: Marvin Lin
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826423434
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 158
Get Book Here
Book Description
>
Author: Philip Lambert
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472119958
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 303
Get Book Here
Book Description
An international, interdisciplinary exploration of the band that helped define 1960s America
Author: Jon Stebbins
Publisher: Backbeat Books
ISBN: 1458429148
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 398
Get Book Here
Book Description
(Book). A half-century after their first single release, "Surfin'," the Beach Boys continue to define California popular culture and the sunshine-infused sound that will forever be its living soundtrack. But beyond innocent harmonies touting the delights of catching waves and cruising to the drive-in, the Beach Boys are responsible for some of the most sophisticated pop/rock music ever made. Brian Wilson's acclaimed production, the 1966 LP Pet Sounds , was both a creative triumph that inspired The Beatles' best work, and a commercial disappointment that was widely misunderstood by the band's U.S. fans. The Beach Boys followed that with perhaps the greatest three-minute rock single ever, "Good Vibrations," which wowed the critics, was a worldwide number one hit, and ushered Brian Wilson down the path of substance abuse and mental illness. Brian then leapt into the abstract madness of Smile , his epic psychedelic masterpiece that was ultimately scrapped in a 1967 sea of paranoia that nearly drowned the Beach Boys as an act. As the 1970s dawned, the endless summer of nostalgia designated the Beach Boys as its favorite sons. They recorded a critically lauded string of albums even while coping with the knowledge that their creative leader, Brian Wilson, had become a semipermanent recluse and a casualty of his own excess. Still, the Beach Boys continued through controversy, conflict, and death, rising again and again to find more popularity and more commercial peaks into the 1980s and beyond. As the new millennium unfolds, the Beach Boys are still here and continue to be a popular concert attraction and one of rock's most compelling and important stories. In The Beach Boys FAQ , Jon Stebbins explains how the band impacted music and pop culture. This entertaining, fast-moving tome is accompanied by dozens of rare images, making this volume a must-have for fans.
Author: Luis Sanchez
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1623567998
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 139
Get Book Here
Book Description
Smile is not merely a great unfinished album, but a living work of art that is all at once expansive, indeterminate, and resolutely pop. In the early 1960s, The Beach Boys rose from the suburbs of Hawthorne, California to become emissaries of a post-war American dream that fused middle-class aspiration and mobility with images of youth. Led by dream master Brian Wilson, their music gave voice to a Southern California mythos and compelled an audience across the nation and beyond to live out their own versions of the fantasy. By 1966, the encroaching counterculture added new dimensions of creative possibility to popular music. Looking to revise and expand, Brian Wilson sought collaboration with a brilliant musician named Van Dyke Parks. Together they began work on Smile, an ambitious album of music that refracted The Beach Boys' naïveté into a visionary exploration of American consciousness. Smile edged so close to greatness it seemed destined to become one of the most significant musical advances of its time. But the story didn't end quite like this. In this book of evocative essays, Sanchez traces the musical journey that transformed The Beach Boys from West Coast surf heroes into America's pop luminaries, and ultimately why Smile represents a tumultuous turning point in the history of popular music.
Author: Dale Carter
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000395510
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 262
Get Book Here
Book Description
First conceived in 1966 but only completed in 2004, Brian Wilson Presents Smile has been called "the best-known unreleased album in pop music history" and "an American Sergeant Pepper." Reading Smile offers a close analysis of the recording in its social, cultural and historical contexts. It focuses in particular on the finished work’s subject matter as embodied in Van Dyke Parks’ contentious yet little understood lyrics, with their low-resolution, highly allusive portrayals of western expansion’s archetypes, from Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts to Diamond Head, Hawaii. Documenting their multiple references and connotations, it argues that their invocations of national self-definition are part of a carefully crafted vision of American identity, society and culture both in tune and at odds with the times. Critical of the republic’s past practices but convinced that its ideals, values and myths still provided resources to redeem it, the recording is interpreted as a creative musical milestone, an enduring product of its volatile, radical, countercultural times, and an American pop art classic. Of particular relevance to American Studies and popular culture scholars, Reading Smile will also appeal to those interested in 1960s popular music, not least to fans of Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks and the Beach Boys.
Author: Steven Gaines
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0306806479
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 418
Get Book Here
Book Description
The author "reveals the gothic tale of drugs, sex, music, greed, booze, and genius behind the wholesome image of the Beach Boys."--Jacket.
