How does it feel to open for the Rolling Stones, to play Carnegie Hall or to sit in with Miles Davis? To perform solo before an arena of screaming, cheering fans? To travel for weeks on end with the same people, sleeping in a different city every night? To craft the perfect track in a high-tech recording studio? To struggle to write a #1 song when you're suffering from writer's block? Based on interviews with more than 100 players, this collection of incredible experiences and revealing truths about the world of the working musician describes all that and more. Bruce Pollock's intimate conversations with such superstars as Bruce Springsteen, Harry Connick Jr., Gene Simmons, Jerry Garcia, Frank Zappa, Carole King, Keith Richards, Bruce Hornsby, Paul Simon, Donald Fagen, John Lee Hooker, Kool Mo Dee, Boyd Tinsley of the Dave Matthews Band, and others are as eye-opening as they are fascinating reading, and offer rare insight into a musician's career, from starting out to making it big.
From the coffeehouses of Greenwich Village to the stage of Woodstock, folksingers became a powerful cultural force in the 1960s. Mixing music and politics, tradition and innovation, romance and righteousness, these men and women were outspoken voices for their generation, each with a story to tell. This collection of profiles and essays by veteran music journalist Bruce Pollock, a Village resident and clubgoer during its heyday, documents the evolution of folk musicians from passing the hat to topping the charts. Artists featured: Dave Van Ronk, Phil Ochs, Richie Havens, Tuli Kupferberg, Melanie, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Eric Andersen, Peter, Paul & Mary, Roger McGuinn, John Sebastian, Peter Tork, Maria Muldaur, Loudon Wainwright III, Janis Ian, The Roches, Harry Chapin, Suzanne Vega, Don McLean and Leonard Cohen, with a cameo by Bob Dylan.
America’s Songs III: Rock! picks up in 1953 where America’s Songs II left off, describing the artistic and cultural impact of the rock ’n’ roll era on America’s songs and songwriters, recording artists and bands, music publishers and record labels, and the all-important consuming audience. The Introduction presents the background story, discussing the 1945-1952 period and focusing on the key songs from the genres of jump blues, rhythm ’n’ blues, country music, bluegrass, and folk that combined to form rock ‘n’ roll. From there, the author selects a handful of songs from each subsequent year, up through 2015, listed chronologically and organized by decade. As with its two preceding companions, America’s Songs III highlights the most important songs of each year with separate entries. More than 300 songs are analyzed in terms of importance—both musically and historically—and weighted by how they defined an era, an artist, a genre, or an underground movement. Written by known rock historian and former ASCAP award winner Bruce Pollock, America’s Songs III: Rock! relays the stories behind America’s musical history.
Discusses the climate of rock music in 1969, from the Beatles to the Grateful Dead, and its relationship with politics, current events, and race relations.
In October 2016, the Swedish Academy finally conceded to a quarter-century's worth of clamorous petitions and sustained lobbying enacted by a chorus of poets, novelists, songwriters, and academics. At long last, Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, his vast corpus spread out like Highway 61 behind him. How is a Dylan debutante to make sense of the song and dance man's six decade career? How might a diehard Dylan fanatic stumble upon something they didn't know they didn't know? Why, with award-winning journalist Bruce Pollock's Bob Dylan FAQ, of course! Bob Dylan FAQ, the latest installment in Backbeat's FAQ series, condenses the life and times of America's premier songster into an addictively vivacious 400-page brick jam-packed with critical analysis, minutiae, photographs, ephemera, and period history. Every aspect of Dylan's life and career, from his ever-expanding discography, touring history, fallow periods, literary and visual artistic efforts, peers, influences, and legacy to his devoted fanbase and their, is explored. Best of all, the book's structure invites perusing at any random point, as each chapter serves as a freestanding article on its subject. Dive into Dylanana with Bob Dylan FAQ!
The Rock Song Index, Second Edition, is a new version of a well-received index to the classic songs of the rock canon, from the late '40s through the end of the 20th century. The study of the history of rock music has exploded over the last decade; all college music departments offer a basic rock-history course, covering the classic artists and their songs.
(Book). On February 13, 1914, a group of the nation's most distinguished and popular songwriters gathered together in New York City to support the mission of ASCAP, a new organization for publishers and songwriters. A few years later, ASCAP received its mandate from the Supreme Court to collect royalties for the public performance of copyrighted material. Over the course the next century, ASCAP has been as prominent a force for the advancement and nurture and financial well-being of songwriters as any record label or publishing outfit one would care to name. With a responsive board of directors made up entirely of songwriter/composer and publisher members, ASCAP has defended creators' rights at every turn against those who would seek to devalue music. Today, with copyright under renewed assault, its mission is as resonant and vital as ever, along with its relatively new role as a nurturer of the young artists who represent the future of music. Award-winning music writer Bruce Pollock explores the growth and changes within this complex society and its relationship to emerging technologies, in the context of 100 years of an ever-evolving music business, to see how ASCAP has become, for those who hope to make a living making music, now more than ever, "a friend in the music business.
Eugene Maybloom is the best rock and roll piano man on the New Jersey shore, but even after he gets his first big break the road to success is filled with struggles.
Drawing on the experiences and wisdom of more than one hundred artists in the fields of rock, jazz, and hip-hop music, this informative study captures the world of the professional musician as seen through the eyes of such notables as Bruce Springsteen, Carole King, Keith Richards, Paul Simon, Kool Mo Dee, and Harry Connick, Jr., among others. Original.
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