There are undercurrents and peripheral taste preferences that are a defining part of our individual and collective cultural experience. Music is no exception. George Plasketes adapts the iconic "A-side/B-side" dichotomy from the 45 r.p.m. for use as a unique conceptual, critical, historical, and cultural framework for exploring and threading together a variety of popular music and media texts. The profiles and perspectives focus on the peripheries; on texts which might be considered "B-sides"”overlooked, underappreciated, and unsung cases, creators, patterns and productions that have unassumingly, but significantly, marked popular culture, music and media during the past 40 years. The underappreciated yet enduring contributions of a variety of creative individuals in music, television and film are a centerpiece of this volume: actress Doris Day's son, Terry Melcher, a 1960s music producer whose imprint is on the surf, country blues, garage pop and most importantly the folk rock genre; Hans Fenger's kid chorus cover project, a musical variation of "outsider art" that became representative of the tribute wave that began in the 1990s and continues today; versatile guitarist virtuoso Ry Cooder's extensive film soundtrack work; World Music "missionary efforts" of American artists beyond Paul Simon's Graceland, including Neil Diamond's precursor with Tap Root Manuscript in the 1970s and the exotic adventures of Henry Kaiser and David Lindley in Madagascar and Norway”to name just a few examples. These B-sides represent undercurrents, but they resonate as overtones in the mainstream of music and culture, many as historical hinges. Collectively, these B-sides are an A-side antidote of outskirt observations, individual snapshots of artists, artifacts and rituals, genres and generations, producers and musical productions in television, film and video. They constitute an important connect-the-dots cultural chronicle with a multi-layered context”social, legal, historic, economic, technological, generational, aesthetic”for interpreting the interrelations between creators and institutions, the music market place, the production of culture and important connections between the peripheral and the popular.
Warren Zevon was one of the most original songwriters to emerge from the prolific 1970s Los Angeles music scene. Beyond his most familiar song—the rollicking 1978 hit “Werewolves of London”—Zevon’s smart, often satirical songbook is rich with cinematic, literary, and comic qualities; dark narratives; complex characters; popular culture references; and tender, romantic ballads of parting and longing. Warren Zevon: Desperado of Los Angeles is the first book-length, critical exploration of one of popular music’s most talented and tormented antiheroes. George Plasketes provides a comprehensive chronicle of Zevon’s 40-year, 20-record career and his enduring cultural significance. Beginning with Zevon’s classical training and encounters as a youth with composers Robert Craft and Igor Stravinsky, Plasketes surveys Zevon’s initiation into the 1960s through the Everly Brothers, the Turtles, and the film Midnight Cowboy. Plasketes then follows Zevon from his debut album with Asylum Records in 1976, produced by mentor Jackson Browne, through his successes and struggles from a Top Ten album to record label limbo during the 1980s, through a variety of music projects in the 1990s, including soundtracks and scores, culminating with a striking trio of albums in the early 2000s. Despite his reckless lifestyle and personal demons, Zevon made friends and alliances with talk show host David Letterman and such literary figures as Hunter S. Thompson and Carl Hiaasen. It was only after his death in 2003 that Zevon received Grammy recognition for his work. Throughout this book, Plasketes explores the musical, cinematic, and literary influences that shaped Zevon’s distinctive style and songwriting themes and continue to make Zevon’s work a telling portrait of Los Angeles and American culture.
Covering”the musical practice of one artist recording or performing another composer's song”has always been an attribute of popular music. In 2009, the internet database Second Hand Songs estimated that there are 40,000 songs with at least one cover version. Some of the more common variations of this "appropriationist" method of musical quotation include traditional forms such as patriotic anthems, religious hymns such as Amazing Grace, Muzak's instrumental interpretations, Christmas classics, and children's songs. Novelty and comedy collections from parodists such as Weird Al Yankovic also align in the cover category, as does the "larcenous art" of sampling, and technological variations in dance remixes and mash-ups. Film and television soundtracks and advertisers increasingly rely on versions of familiar pop tunes to assist in marketing their narratives and products. The cover phenomenon in popular culture may be viewed as a postmodern manifestation in music as artists revisit, reinterpret and re-examine a significant cross section of musical styles, periods, genres, individual records, and other artists and their catalogues of works.The cover complex, with its multiple variations, issues, contexts, and re-contextualizations comprises an important and rich popular culture text. These re-recordings represent artifacts which embody artistic, social, cultural, historical, commercial, biographical, and novel meanings. Through homage, allusion, apprenticeship, and parody, among other modes, these diverse musical quotations express, preserve, and distribute popular culture, popular music and their intersecting historical narratives. Play it Again represents the first collection of critical perspectives on the many facets of cover songs in popular music.
The legion of fans who refuse to believe that Elvis Presley died August 16, 1977 has been a major force behind the ever-expanding, elusive, and enduring Elvis myth during the past seventeen years. This network of fervent true believers engages in activities that include a melange of sightings and conspiracy theories. Mass media coverage of these phenomena has evolved from the underground grass-roots level to widespread publicity with social, religious, commercial, and ideological underpinnings. In True Disbelievers, R. Serge Denisoff and George Plasketes examine the implications of various accounts and several perspectives on Elvis Presley's death and transfiguration. Denisoff and Plasketes also analyze the various media that those who doubt Elvis's death use to popularize their positions, including television, magazines, and books. They review the work of others who have written on the subject, such as Gail Brewer-Giorgio and Major Bill Smith, and raise provocative, yet valid questions about the phenomenon they describe. True Disbelievers takes a pointed look at the music industry as well, and how it has used and commercially benefitted by the continuing belief that Elvis lives. They examine common strands in the many reports of Elvis sightings since Presley's reported death. Denisoff and Plasketes describe the Elvis phenomenon in serious, objective as well as empathetic terms, placing it in the context of studies of cult figures and their followers. True Disbelievers contains a great deal of fascinating information about America's popular culture and the power and influence of the media in modern society. It will be of significant interest to communication studiesscholars,sociologists,professionals in the music and media industries, and those interested in popular culture.
Was Al Gore only half-kidding at the 1992 Democratic Convention when he compared Bill Clinton to "the King?" Why does Elvis's name and image still pop up in so many movies, television shows, and songs? From black velvet paintings, comic books, and postage stamps to impersonators, movie characters, and sports stars, Images of Elvis Presley in American Culture, 1977--1997 provides a surprisingly broad vista from which to view American popular culture. An insightful exploration of America's overwhelming and enduring cultural fascination with the expanding and elusive Elvis myth, this book combines historical, textual, and sociocultural analysis with a wide range of resource materials to examine the many images of Elvis in American culture. Focusing on the period following his death in 1977 up to the present, Elvis Presley in American Culture, 1977--1997 informs and entertains popular readers and academicians in American studies, popular culture, radio/television/film, sociology, music, and 20th-century American history. Elvis fans ("Elfans") and collectors of Elvis Presley materials and memorabilia also need to add this perspective-enhancing book to your personal libraries. Author George Plasketes shows us how representations, reflections, responses, and references to Elvis in art, artifacts, film, video, television, music, performance, literature, memorabilia, and alleged sightings, continue to make American culture a "mystery terrain" of endless "Elvistas." The repetition of these images is a link to our cultural identity. Elvis Presley in American Culture, 1977--1997 provides the necessary critical analysis and the resource guide to the various representations of Elvis during the past 20 years, to give readers an engaging and informative way to pursue and interpret the expansive and ever-evolving Elvis myth and its importance to American popular culture.
Denisoff and Plasketes also analyze the various media that those who doubt Elvis's death use to popularize their positions, including television, magazines, and books. They review the work of others who have written on the subject, such as Gail Brewer-Giorgio and Major Bill Smith, and raise provocative, yet valid questions about the phenomenon they describe. True Disbelievers takes a pointed look at the music industry as well, and how it has used and commercially benefitted by the continuing belief that Elvis lives. They examine common strands in the many reports of Elvis sightings since Presley's reported death. Denisoff and Plasketes describe the Elvis phenomenon in serious, objective as well as empathetic terms, placing it in the context of studies of cult figures and their followers.
The legion of fans who refuse to believe that Elvis Presley died August 16, 1977 has been a major force behind the ever-expanding, elusive, and enduring Elvis myth during the past seventeen years. This network of fervent true believers engages in activities that include a melange of sightings and conspiracy theories. Mass media coverage of these phenomena has evolved from the underground grass-roots level to widespread publicity with social, religious, commercial, and ideological underpinnings. In True Disbelievers, R. Serge Denisoff and George Plasketes examine the implications of various accounts and several perspectives on Elvis Presley's death and transfiguration.
The cover phenomenon in popular culture may be viewed as a postmodern manifestation in music as artists revisit, reinterpret and re-examine a significant cross section of musical styles, periods, genres, individual records, and other artists and their catalogues of works. The cover complex, with its multiple variations, issues, contexts, and re-contextualizations comprises an important and rich popular culture text. These re-recordings represent artifacts which embody artistic, social, cultural, historical, commercial, biographical, and novel meanings. Through homage, allusion, apprenticeship, and parody, among other modes, these diverse musical quotations express, preserve, and distribute popular culture, popular music and their intersecting historical narratives. Play it Again represents the first collection of critical perspectives on the many facets of cover songs in popular music.
Warren Zevon was one of the most original songwriters to emerge from the prolific 1970s Los Angeles music scene. Beyond his most familiar song—the rollicking 1978 hit “Werewolves of London”—Zevon’s smart, often satirical songbook is rich with cinematic, literary, and comic qualities; dark narratives; complex characters; popular culture references; and tender, romantic ballads of parting and longing. Warren Zevon: Desperado of Los Angeles is the first book-length, critical exploration of one of popular music’s most talented and tormented antiheroes. George Plasketes provides a comprehensive chronicle of Zevon’s 40-year, 20-record career and his enduring cultural significance. Beginning with Zevon’s classical training and encounters as a youth with composers Robert Craft and Igor Stravinsky, Plasketes surveys Zevon’s initiation into the 1960s through the Everly Brothers, the Turtles, and the film Midnight Cowboy. Plasketes then follows Zevon from his debut album with Asylum Records in 1976, produced by mentor Jackson Browne, through his successes and struggles from a Top Ten album to record label limbo during the 1980s, through a variety of music projects in the 1990s, including soundtracks and scores, culminating with a striking trio of albums in the early 2000s. Despite his reckless lifestyle and personal demons, Zevon made friends and alliances with talk show host David Letterman and such literary figures as Hunter S. Thompson and Carl Hiaasen. It was only after his death in 2003 that Zevon received Grammy recognition for his work. Throughout this book, Plasketes explores the musical, cinematic, and literary influences that shaped Zevon’s distinctive style and songwriting themes and continue to make Zevon’s work a telling portrait of Los Angeles and American culture.
There are undercurrents and peripheral taste preferences that are a defining part of our individual and collective cultural experience. Music is no exception. George Plasketes adapts the iconic "A-side/B-side" dichotomy from the 45 r.p.m. for use as a unique conceptual, critical, historical, and cultural framework for exploring and threading together a variety of popular music and media texts. The profiles and perspectives focus on the peripheries; on texts which might be considered "B-sides"”overlooked, underappreciated, and unsung cases, creators, patterns and productions that have unassumingly, but significantly, marked popular culture, music and media during the past 40 years. The underappreciated yet enduring contributions of a variety of creative individuals in music, television and film are a centerpiece of this volume: actress Doris Day's son, Terry Melcher, a 1960s music producer whose imprint is on the surf, country blues, garage pop and most importantly the folk rock genre; Hans Fenger's kid chorus cover project, a musical variation of "outsider art" that became representative of the tribute wave that began in the 1990s and continues today; versatile guitarist virtuoso Ry Cooder's extensive film soundtrack work; World Music "missionary efforts" of American artists beyond Paul Simon's Graceland, including Neil Diamond's precursor with Tap Root Manuscript in the 1970s and the exotic adventures of Henry Kaiser and David Lindley in Madagascar and Norway”to name just a few examples. These B-sides represent undercurrents, but they resonate as overtones in the mainstream of music and culture, many as historical hinges. Collectively, these B-sides are an A-side antidote of outskirt observations, individual snapshots of artists, artifacts and rituals, genres and generations, producers and musical productions in television, film and video. They constitute an important connect-the-dots cultural chronicle with a multi-layered context”social, legal, historic, economic, technological, generational, aesthetic”for interpreting the interrelations between creators and institutions, the music market place, the production of culture and important connections between the peripheral and the popular.
Was Al Gore only half-kidding at the 1992 Democratic Convention when he compared Bill Clinton to "the King?" Why does Elvis's name and image still pop up in so many movies, television shows, and songs? From black velvet paintings, comic books, and postage stamps to impersonators, movie characters, and sports stars, Images of Elvis Presley in American Culture, 1977--1997 provides a surprisingly broad vista from which to view American popular culture. An insightful exploration of America's overwhelming and enduring cultural fascination with the expanding and elusive Elvis myth, this book combines historical, textual, and sociocultural analysis with a wide range of resource materials to examine the many images of Elvis in American culture. Focusing on the period following his death in 1977 up to the present, Elvis Presley in American Culture, 1977--1997 informs and entertains popular readers and academicians in American studies, popular culture, radio/television/film, sociology, music, and 20th-century American history. Elvis fans ("Elfans") and collectors of Elvis Presley materials and memorabilia also need to add this perspective-enhancing book to your personal libraries. Author George Plasketes shows us how representations, reflections, responses, and references to Elvis in art, artifacts, film, video, television, music, performance, literature, memorabilia, and alleged sightings, continue to make American culture a "mystery terrain" of endless "Elvistas." The repetition of these images is a link to our cultural identity. Elvis Presley in American Culture, 1977--1997 provides the necessary critical analysis and the resource guide to the various representations of Elvis during the past 20 years, to give readers an engaging and informative way to pursue and interpret the expansive and ever-evolving Elvis myth and its importance to American popular culture.
Have you ever had questions about events in some ones life that affected you and you never ask? As we, Mariette and I were returning home from PA one evening and we had visited Barbara Bunting on the old farm, I ask Sis (that's what we call Mariette) "how did Dad find that farm". This 300 acre farm was in the middle of no where, about halfway between Springboro and Albion in rural PA. Sis, being the oldest of us 5 kids, surly would know about the move but she didn't. Another thing I had questions about was Mother and Dads meeting and their courtship in California where they were married. Again she had no idea. As you know, being young children, you were never interest in stuff like that and later you had your own group of friends and still not interested. Then you meet the love of your life and nothing else was important to you. Then kids, job and married life and time slips by and then you lose one parent and a short time later both are gone. They took all the life experiences and stories with them. I had questions for my Father and Mother that can never be answered by them so I have decided to write this book. Have my children ask me those questions, no. Do they want to sit and listen to me tell them my life's stories, no. Will they have questions when we are gone, most likely!
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