How to Write Songs for Fun and (maybe) Profit : an Introduction to the Art and Business of Songwriting by One Struggling Singer-songwriter for the Aid and Comfort of Other Strugglers
How to Write Songs for Fun and (maybe) Profit : an Introduction to the Art and Business of Songwriting by One Struggling Singer-songwriter for the Aid and Comfort of Other Strugglers
Ray Charles: Man and Music is a complete biography of this seminal singer/pianist who has been active on the American music scene since the mid-'50s. Originally published in 1995 by Penguin Books, and universally hailed as the definitive biography, this new edition will bring Charles's life up to date, covering the last 7 years of his life.There are only a few legendary singers who have developed mass audiences while pursuing their own artistic visions: Sinatra is one; Ella Fitzgerald another. Ray Charles undoubtedly belongs in this pantheon of major musical stars. Ray Charles: Man and Music begins with Charles's impoverished childhood in Greenville, Florida, where tragedy struck early when the young Charles went blind at age 6 and was orphaned at age 14. Driven by his enormous talent and determination, Charles landed work playing some of the toughest juke joints in the state, fought heroin addiction, and finally landed a recording contract with Atlantic Records. Unlike other R&B singers, Charles took control of his career from its earliest days, moving on from his gospel-soul stylings of the mid-'50s to break through musical barriers, recording two country albums in the late '50s (at a time when the black presence in country music was barely felt), pure jazz, and then the powerful pop hits of the '60s. Famed music journalist Michael Lydon - a founding editor of Rolling Stone - is uniquely qualified to document Charles's career, having interviewed Charles and followed the star's performances since the 1960s. Originally published in 1995, and universally hailed as the definitive biography, this new edition brings Charles's life up to date, covering the last 7 years of his life. It coincides with the release of a made-for-TV movie starring Jamie Fox as Charles, currently in production by Taylor Hackford. Charles has also issued a new CD recently and remains active as a touring artist throughout the world.
Jazz Guitar Styles is an instruction book designed for the guitarist who already knows the fundamentals but wishes to explore the "classic" style of swing-era guitar. It offers a clear, concise introduction to the basics of jazz guitar, built on the student's basic knowledge of forming chords and basic picking patterns. Jazz Guitar Styles opens this world to any guitarist who has a basic knowledge of guitar technique and willingness to learn.
Erudite, inspirational, and concise, Michael Lydon offers a celebration of the craft of writing that will serve as a guidebook for aspiring writers and avid readers. A musician and former Newsweek reporter who was a founding editor of Rolling Stone, Lydon calls writing "a visible word music, more like singing than drawing", and indeed his own prose rings with a rhythm and lyricism that exemplifies his view. With enthusiasm and great warmth, he asks a question central to all writers and readers: "What makes writing good?" and for his answers he taps sources that range from the Bible to Raymond Chandler, Shakespeare to Nabokov, Dickens to the New York Times. What makes Lydon's study both remarkable and refreshing, however, is his conscious attempt to present an antidote to postmodern literary theory which tries to erase the presence of the author and negate the existence of an external reality. In contrast, Lydon describes in engaging, readable terms his own discovery that authors are very much alive and that reality is out there to be captured in their writing.
Flashbacks is an eyewitness account of '60s rock as it was being made. Michael Lydon-the first editor of Rolling Stone and a participant in the rock revolution-enjoyed unique access to the people and events when rock was new. His profiles of the founding fathers and mothers of '60s rock are unique in that they are based on first-hand interviews and on-the-spot reporting. This collection includes the first piece written on the Monterey Pop Festival of 1967 (written only 48 hours after the festival, and never before published); an account of the Rolling Stones's U.S. tour of December 1969; Janis Joplin's dramatic rise and equally dramatic fall; The Grateful Dead at home in their communal house in San Francisco and on stage at Winterland; and much more.
Richard Flusser and the After Dinner Opera Company tells the tale of a little opera company that could. An opera lover since childhood, Richard Flusser founded the After Dinner Opera Company in 1950. Through the thick and thin of fifty years and always on a shoestring, he and his wife Beth, with dozens of talented singers, have produced hundreds of American comic operas, many of them historic debuts: in 1956 the ADO became the first American company to take American operas to Europe. While coping with backstage crises and two growing kids in their East Village home, the Flussers stuck to their dream of bringing American opera to audiences in New York, across the country, and around the world. In doing so, they have championed countless composers and librettists, including Ned Rorem, Seymour Barab, and Gertrude Stein. The book's appendix, listing the seventy-seven American operas produced by the ADO, gives a measure of the Flusser's lasting contribution to American musical theater. A heart-warming and humorous book, Richard Flusser and the After Dinner Opera Company will make inspiring reading for anyone who knows the joys and pains of life devoted to the creative arts. Michael Lydon, a writer and musician, is the author of Richard Flusser and the After Dinner Opera Company and three other books on American music: Rock Folk, Boogie Lightning and Ray Charles: Man and Music. Richard Hall, a noted writer on opera, wrote the introduction to Richard Flusser and the After Dinner Opera Company . His insights into the ADO's half century of achievement, and the fun the Flussers have had along the way, provide an excellent summary of this informative and enjoyable book. From Richard Hall's introduction to Richard Flusser and the After Dinner Opera Company: "We haven't learned to lose money yet. The closest we came was in our 1950 season, when we lost $2.50. I guess we'll have to do better than that if we're going to get a subsidy!" Richard Flusser's black eyes were bright with laughter as he delivered these sentiments. Founder, producer, and director of the After Dinner Opera Company, Flusser has built his group into the oldest permanent floating chamber-opera group in the country--no mean trick for a troupe without a home theater and with a taste for contemporary music. The After Dinner Opera owes its success to its style, which is both exotic and delicate--rather like a banana soufflé--and to its material, which could be described as modestly madcap. The ADO specializes in instant operatic fun, in works that are quaintly mythological, pseudo-folkish, cheerfully sexy. One critic has described its output as "opera of the absurd," and the name suits. In a single evening, the company may bounce through as many as seven short works, each zanier than the one before, none lasting more than twenty minutes. If you think of Harpo Marx in A Night at the Opera, swinging through the air on ropes and dropping the wrong sets behind the tenor, you'll get some idea of the mayhem involved. For all its friskiness, however, the ADO has serious musical ambitions: to provide a testing ground for young composers and help them master their art. Therein lies the chief paradox of its existence: "Are we musical comedy or opera?" Flusser has lived with the paradox for years and cheerfully admits its insolubility. "We manage to offend almost everyone," he says...
Real Writing is a book-length study of modern realism in fiction writing, focusing on and comparing novels by Honore de Balzac, Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, Theodore Dreiser, James Jones, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Throughout author Michael Lydon argues for writing's ability to capture the truth of life in word.
This guide for young performers--actors, singers, musicians, dancers, and variety artists--emphasizes both growing as an artist and the practicalities of business in discussions of teachers, auditions, drugs, money, resumes, agents, and unions
Record label executive, photographer, and author, Michael Alago takes readers through this amazing journey that is his life. Alago grew up in Brooklyn, New York, in a large, spirited, and devoted Puerto Rican family. Through his early passion for music, art, theater, and photography, he soon found himself rubbing elbows with many downtown NYC scene makers, from Stiv Bators to Jean Michel Basquiat, Cherry Vanilla and Wayne County to Deborah Harry and Robert Mapplethorpe. As an underage teenager going to Max's Kansas City, CBGB, and various art galleries, Alago also began running The Dead Boys fan club. A few years later, he became the assistant music director for legendary nightclubs the Ritz and the Red Parrot. At age twenty-four, he began a storied career as an A&R executive at Elektra Records that started with signing Metallica in the summer of 1984, changing the entire landscape of rock 'n' roll and heavy metal. Alago continued to work in A&R for both Palm Pictures and Geffen Records. He was thrilled to executive-produce albums by Cyndi Lauper, Public Image Ltd, White Zombie, and Nina Simone. In the late 1980s, he was diagnosed with HIV, which manifested into full-blown AIDS ten years later. He survived to continue his music career, but in 2005, he left music to pursue his other love: photography. Alago went on to publish three bestselling books: Rough Gods, Brutal Truth, and Beautiful Imperfections with German-based publisher Bruno Gmünder. He has since overcome his longtime addiction to drugs and alcohol. In his clean and sober life, he has reconnected with his family, continues to be a working photographer as well as record producer, and only through the grace of his 12-Step program is he able to live this big, beautiful life. In 2017, a documentary directed by Drew Stone and produced by Michael Alex on Alago's wildly successful career in music was released in theaters and on Netflix, entitled Who the Fuck Is That Guy? The Fabulous Journey of Michael Alago.
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