Friday, September 16 2011
Birds of Fire: Jazz, Rock, Funk and the Creation of Fusion
By mixing different musical and cultural traditions, fusion artists sought to disrupt generic boundaries, cultural hierarchies, and critical assumptions.
Friday, September 9 2011
Rock and Roll Always Forgets: A Quarter Century of Music Criticism
Chuck Eddy is one of today’s most entertaining, idiosyncratic, influential, and prolific music critics. This book features the best, most provocative reviews, interviews, columns, and essays written by this singular critic.
Tuesday, September 6 2011
Next Stop: Marijuanaland
Inside the making of Jonah Raskin’s journey through California’s Emerald Triangle -- one of the main fronts of the global drug war. Raskin not only describes himself as a chronicler of marijuana, but also a smoker who has a medical marijuana card.
Friday, September 2 2011
Close to the Edge: In Search of the Global Hip Hop Generation
Can hip-hop can change the world? From the south side of Chicago to the barrios of Caracas and Havana and the sprawling periphery of Sydney, Sujatha Fernandes grapples with questions of global voices and local critiques, and the rage that underlies both.
Monday, August 29 2011
Wherever He May Roam: Mick Wall Enters Night With a New Rock Bio
Besides writing the harrowing and hilarious drug memoir of his rock life, Paranoid, critic Mick Wall has written biographies on Iron Maiden, Axl Rose, as well as the definitive 2009 Led Zeppelin biography. He talks with PopMatters about his latest book, Enter Night.
Friday, August 26 2011
Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the Future
A up-close account of a city—and a world—at a thrilling and confounding moment in history, in which nothing can be counted as stable, from the sidewalk underfoot to Western assumptions about democracy and progress.
Friday, August 19 2011
Groove Interrupted: Loss, Renewal, and the Music of New Orleans
New Orleans' history is fraught with tragedy and triumph. Both are reflected in the city’s vibrant, idiosyncratic music community. This excerpt tells of but one of the city's musicians captured in this fine book; the somewhat curmudgeonly, terribly talented Gatemouth Brown.
Friday, August 5 2011
Keep on Pushing: Black Power Music from Blues to Hip-Hop
Joining authentic voices with a bittersweet narrative covering more than 50 years of fighting oppression through song, Keep On Pushing defines the soundtrack to revolution and the price the artists paid to create it.
Friday, July 29 2011
Alina Simone’s Indie Rock World Comes Alive in ‘You Must Go and Win’
Ukrainian-born musician Alina Simone traces her bizarre journey through the indie rock world, from disastrous Craigslist auditions with sketchy producers to catching fleas in a Williamsburg sublet. She begins her tale in a strange place called Kharkov.
Thursday, July 28 2011
We Can Be Heroes: Talking ‘Supergods’ with Grant Morrison
Grant Morrison’s ability to make connections between seemingly humdrum events and grandiose ideas becomes infectious. Reading Supergods and immersing in his ideas gives one as much kick as a radioactive spider bite.
Friday, July 22 2011
Are We Not New Wave?: Modern Pop at the Turn of the 1980s
In the early '80s, new wave’s most successful acts -- groups like the Cars, the Police, the Talking Heads, and newcomers the Go-Go’s -- had established themselves among the upper echelon of critically acclaimed and top-selling rock artists.
Monday, July 18 2011
An Honorable Escape: Georgette Heyer Remakes Jane Austen
Repetition -- of plots, characters, editions -- is not a disadvantage in romance book publishing industry. It's the very reason for being, though it must be carefully managed to prevent satiety.
Friday, July 15 2011
A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E.M. Forster
All his life Morgan Forster lived in a world imprisoned by prejudice against homosexuals. He was 16 when Oscar Wilde was sent to prison, and he died the year after the Stonewall riots.
Thursday, July 14 2011
Print-On-Demand and the Future of Independent Publishing, Part 2
PopMatters speaks to major figureheads in the POD industry to determine where it is, what it can do, and most importantly, where it's going ...
Tuesday, July 12 2011
“I Get Recognized at Least Once a Day”: An Interview with Kristen Schaal
She wrote The Sexy Book of Sexy Sex and is the Women's Issues Correspondent on The Daily Show. The upfront female comic sits down to talk to PopMatters about comedy, fame, and so much more ...
Talking Animals and Harsh Realities: An Interview with Kazu Kibuishi
Despite its target audience -- middle grade, or 10-12-year-olds, Amulet has a lot of crossover appeal. But Kibuishi doesn’t consider adult, or even teen readers, during his process -- beyond himself, that is.
Friday, July 8 2011
Bob Marley: The Untold Story
Bob Marley’s story is that of an archetype, which is why it continues to have such a powerful and ever-growing resonance: it embodies, among other themes, political repression, metaphysical and artistic insights, gangland warfare, and various periods in a mystical wilderness.
Wednesday, July 6 2011
Print-On-Demand and the Future of Independent Publishing, Part 1
In part one of this two-part look at the world of Print-On-Demand books, PopMatters speaks to major figureheads in the POD industry to determine where it is, what it can do, and most importantly, where it's going ...
Tuesday, July 5 2011
20 Questions: Simon Van Booy
Simon Van Booy’s Everything Beautiful Began After published this month. It’s a perfect summer novel for romantic intellectuals. Read here on PopMatters who this romantic would take a bullet for.
Friday, July 1 2011
Fire and Rain: The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY and the Lost Story of 1970
David Browne’s Fire and Rain tells the story of four iconic albums of 1970 and the lives, times, and constantly intertwining personal ties of the remarkable artists who made them.
