Here are 54 books that Up Above the City, Down Beneath the Stars fans have personally recommended if you like
Up Above the City, Down Beneath the Stars.
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It was not hard to grow up Goth in an old farmhouse in Norfolk, one of the most haunted counties in England. Age 11, when the Eighties began, I genuinely believed that ghosts, witches, and a demon dog called Old Shuck stalked this land. John Peel's radio show kept the night terrors at bay and replaced them with the music that became my passion. By 19, I was writing for Sounds and would meet and work with many of the bands and artists who saw me through that dread decade. Forty years on, this is my love letter to a most maligned and misunderstood genre – and why it still matters.
While the Ripper was abroad in Yorkshire, New York was stalked by its own phantom killer, Son of Sam, while its rapidly diminishing police force were otherwise engaged giving out leaflets entitled Welcome To Fear City: A Survival Guide for Visitors.
Abe Beame was Mayor over a burned-out necropolis of demolished buildings, crumbling infrastructure and tripling crime rates, a city President Gerald Ford told to "drop dead". This was the stage on which Lydia Lunch began her assault on the senses and sensibilities of her nation, at the tender age of 16.
Her account of not only surviving but grabbing every last moment of fun to be had in Fear City is rivalled only by mentor Hubert Selby Jr's Last Exit to Brooklyn as the ultimate in New York stories.
“Paradoxia reveals that Lunch is at her best when she’s at her worst . . . [and] gives voice to her sometimes scary, frequently funny, always canny, never sentimental siren song."—Barbara Kruger, Artforum
Lydia Lunch relays in graphic detail the true psychic repercussions of sexual misadventure. From New York to London to New Orleans, Paradoxia is an uncensored, novelized account of one woman’s assault on men.
Lydia Lunch was the primary instigator of the No Wave Movement and the focal point of the Cinema of Transgression. A musician, writer, and photographer, she exposes the dark underbelly of passion confronting the…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
On the day I was born, crucial scenes for both The Exorcist and The Wicker Man were being filmed, forever marking me as a member of the Haunted Generation. The strange, the aberrant, the unsettling, and the obscure have bedevilled me ever since. In search of the wyrd and the eerie, I have stumbled upon many forgotten ghosts and shadowy remembrances.
My writing is marked by the joy and terror of growing up in an odd time that melded the paranormal and the scientific, the cutting edge and the nondescript, all broadcast through grainy waves, picked up by shaky antennas, displayed on staticky televisions, and remembered hazily through nostalgia darkly.
I am a movie, book, and culture fanatic, but the ultimate medium for me is music.
Hauntology and folk horror are both greatly informed by music and have subsequently resulted in music that is informed by the concepts of hauntology and folk horror. I focus a lot on this reciprocal relationship in my book, but no one has explored the connections between the music of the past and the music of the future in greater detail than Rob Young in Electric Eden.
Starting with the revival of folk music in England, this book ranges through psychedelic and acid folk, touching on rock, prog, classical, experimental, and electronic music in a dizzying but exhilarating tour of the weirdos, outcasts, and visionaries that ushered in a new age of music with one foot in rural heritage and the other in futuristic utopian dreams.
A new edition as part of the Faber Greatest Hits - books that have taken writing about music in new and exciting directions for the twenty-first century.
Rob Young's Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music is a seminal book on British music and cultural heritage, that spans the visionary classical and folk tradition from the nineteenth-century to the present day.
'A thoroughly enjoyable read and likely to remain the best-written overview for a long time.' GUARDIAN
'A perfectly timed, perfectly pitched alternative history of English folk music . . . wide-ranging, insightful, authoritative, thoroughly entertaining.' NEW STATESMAN
It was not hard to grow up Goth in an old farmhouse in Norfolk, one of the most haunted counties in England. Age 11, when the Eighties began, I genuinely believed that ghosts, witches, and a demon dog called Old Shuck stalked this land. John Peel's radio show kept the night terrors at bay and replaced them with the music that became my passion. By 19, I was writing for Sounds and would meet and work with many of the bands and artists who saw me through that dread decade. Forty years on, this is my love letter to a most maligned and misunderstood genre – and why it still matters.
Many children of my generation were turned to the dark side by their parents' collections of Dennis Wheatley's glamorously lurid Black Magic novels.
Key to their appeal was the author's assurance that the diabolical deeds described therein were actually being practised today – from the heart of power in London to the most remote village in the land. Phil Baker's enormously entertaining biography makes it clear that Dennis sincerely believed this, and consulted all the leading magicians of his age – including Aleister Crowley – to get the Goat-based goods from the gate.
Not only that, but his own life was steeped in just as much intrigue and danger as any of his novels, including stints as a WWI solider, peacetime purveyor of Napoleon's own brandy, and WWII member of Churchill's secret services.
"It is not only the Hammer films based on Dennis Wheatley's novels that are full-blooded, sensational entertainment, so was Wheatley's life, brilliantly evoked by Phil Baker. This gripping biography draws out all the comedy from Wheatley's history, from his childhood in a family of wine merchants who were dedicated to social climbing (the scrambling for status never left Wheatley either, even in his 70's he was proudly joining gentlemen's clubs such as White's) to his experiences in World War One. Wheatley's main ambition as a soldier was to join a socially acceptable regiment, but the Westminster Dragoons wouldn't have him…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
It was not hard to grow up Goth in an old farmhouse in Norfolk, one of the most haunted counties in England. Age 11, when the Eighties began, I genuinely believed that ghosts, witches, and a demon dog called Old Shuck stalked this land. John Peel's radio show kept the night terrors at bay and replaced them with the music that became my passion. By 19, I was writing for Sounds and would meet and work with many of the bands and artists who saw me through that dread decade. Forty years on, this is my love letter to a most maligned and misunderstood genre – and why it still matters.
No other book captures the darkness at the dawn of the Thatcher decade with such verisimilitude as David Peace's conjuring of its premier bogeyman, the Yorkshire Ripper, in the third of his Red Riding Quartet.
Perhaps that's because the author used his Goth record collection to transport him back to the places where these crimes were committed, at the time of his West Yorkshire youth. Songs like Siouxsie and the Banshees' 'Night Shift' and The Sisters of Mercy's 'Fix' summon back that fearful terrain, where 'cow' was a term of endearment for a woman and the use of hammers to the head a familiar sign of domestic abuse.
Detectives are revealed to be as deadly as their quarry, priests give benediction with nine-inch-nails and stone angels turn their heads away.
Nineteen Eighty Three's three intertwining storylines see the Quartet's central themes of corruption and the perversion of justice come to a head as BJ, the rent boy from Nineteen Seventy Four, the lawyer Big John Piggott - who's as near as you get to a hero in Peace's world - and Maurice Jobson, the senior cop whose career of corruption and brutality has set all this in motion, find themselves on a collision course that can only end in a terrible vengeance.
Nineteen Eighty Three is an epic tale which concluded an extraordinary body of work confirming Peace as the…
I am J.R. Hoyle Chair of Music at the University of Sheffield, UK, elected life member of the Academy for Mozart Research at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and current President of the Royal Musical Association, and I have been writing about Mozart’s life and music for more than 25 years. Across five monographs, my interests have broadened from Mozart’s piano concertos, to stylistic issues in his Viennese instrumental music, to biographical, philological, reception- and performance-related topics in the Requiem and the last decade of his life in general, and (most recently) to a comparative study of his and contemporary Joseph Haydn’s reception in the long nineteenth century.
This is the first substantial biography of Mozart, published in 1798. It was written by a Czech author, Franz Niemetschek, who probably knew Mozart personally and who certainly attended musical events at which Mozart participated in Prague in 1787 and 1791.
While its tone is hagiographical, it contains important insights on Mozartian aesthetics, as well as invaluable recollections of Mozart in action.
Franz Xaver Niemetschek was born in 1766 in what is now the Czech Republic and came from a musical family, which gave him a deep appreciation and admiration for Mozart's genius. In 1798 he published his biography on Mozart, with a touching dedication to Haydn, the only one written by an eyewitness, and authorized by Mozart's widow Constanze. It is one of the earliest specimens of musical biography which, compared with other branches of biography, was still in its infancy even in the later part of the 19th century. In this sense, it is an important document of music history.…
I am J.R. Hoyle Chair of Music at the University of Sheffield, UK, elected life member of the Academy for Mozart Research at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and current President of the Royal Musical Association, and I have been writing about Mozart’s life and music for more than 25 years. Across five monographs, my interests have broadened from Mozart’s piano concertos, to stylistic issues in his Viennese instrumental music, to biographical, philological, reception- and performance-related topics in the Requiem and the last decade of his life in general, and (most recently) to a comparative study of his and contemporary Joseph Haydn’s reception in the long nineteenth century.
This is without doubt the greatest Mozart biography of the twentieth century, building directly on the foundation of the nineteenth century’s most important biography (by Otto Jahn).
Abert’s momentous work, exhaustive, incisive, well informed and opinionated in turn, is expertly translated and edited in this eminently readable volume.
Hermann Abert's classic biography, first published in German more than eighty years ago and itself based on the definitive mid-nineteenth century study by Otto Jahn, remains the most informed and substantial biography of Mozart in any language. The book is both the fullest account of the composer's life and a deeply skilled analysis of his music. Proceeding chronologically from 1756 to 1791, the book interrogates every aspect of Mozart's life, influences, and experience; his personality; his religious and secular dimensions; and the social context of the time. In "a book within a book," Abert also provides close scrutiny of the…
A fake date, romance, and a conniving co-worker you'd love to shut down. Fun summer reading!
Liza loves helping people and creating designer shoes that feel as good as they look. Financially overextended and recovering from a divorce, her last-ditch opportunity to pitch her firm for investment falls flat. Then…
Ever since childhood, I’ve wondered about people who led inventive, innovative lives. How did they get their inspiration? Where did their ideas come from? How did they take that inspiration and change the world? I found information, but not the answers I was looking for, at the library. When I became an elementary library teacher, new forms of biographies – beautiful picture book biographies about people of all kinds – became available. My students loved them and so did I, and I became inspired to write for children. I’m excited that my first two picture book biographies, which received starred reviews, are out in the world – with more coming your way!
I love this book because it shows how a musical icon discovered and developed his own personal style.
Juan García Esquivel had a passion for music but no formal training. Without knowing the typical ways of arranging notes, Esquivel was free to experiment–and that made his work so unique that anyone hearing his music knew right away that he was the composer.
I think this book is great for showing the value of thinking differently. I also love the joyful illustrations inspired by ancient Mexican art.
Juan Garcia Esquivel was born in Mexico and grew up to the sounds of mariachi bands. He loved music and became a musical explorer. Defying convention, he created music that made people laugh and planted images in their minds. Juan's space-age lounge music--popular in the fifties and sixties--has found a new generation of listeners. And Duncan Tonatiuh's fresh and quirky illustrations bring Esquivel's spirit to life.
I have loved music since childhood. I grew up on a farm in Western Pennsylvania. My loving, hard-working parents gave my three brothers and me the best life possible. I began singing at our little Chewton Christian Church when asked to do so. Piano lessons began, and for 12 years, my sweet teacher, Joann Thurston, taught me piano, but I realized my true love was singing. She always allowed me to sing as well as play the piano. I attended Westminister College, majoring in elementary education with a music minor. Following graduation, my first job was teaching music to 1500 schoolchildren in Blacksburg, Virginia.
The author, Mike Venezia, believes in having fun. If you want to introduce children to composers and music, make it fun for them. While reading the delightful, imaginative story about Aaron Copland play compositions such as Rodeo, Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, and Fanfare for the Common Man.
Mike Venezia has a very interesting, engaging way of introducing art, inventions, and period photography. Visual images bring his numerous children’s classical music books alive. He makes his composers become real people, like you and me.
Ever since childhood, I’ve wondered about people who led inventive, innovative lives. How did they get their inspiration? Where did their ideas come from? How did they take that inspiration and change the world? I found information, but not the answers I was looking for, at the library. When I became an elementary library teacher, new forms of biographies – beautiful picture book biographies about people of all kinds – became available. My students loved them and so did I, and I became inspired to write for children. I’m excited that my first two picture book biographies, which received starred reviews, are out in the world – with more coming your way!
I love this energetic book about experimental composer Charles Ives for its liveliness, beautiful language, and glorious sounds! It’s also an important example of staying true to yourself and following your own path.
Before he became a composer, young Charles Ives’s life was full of noise–glorious noise! Influenced by his father, a music educator and bandleader, Ives experimented with sound. Like John Cage, he faced ridicule and criticism, and faced roadblocks to having his music performed.
The extraordinary story of the composer Charles Ives.
"Sometimes little Charlie lay in his crib just listening. He heard his mother’s long dress as she moved around his room. He heard big clocks and little clocks. He heard wagons and horse hooves. He heard dogs and crickets and the church bell next door."
Charlie listened all through his boyhood, and as he grew into a man, he found he wanted to re-create in music the sounds that he heard every day. But others couldn’t hear what Charlie heard. They didn’t hear it as music – only as noise. In this…
“Rowdy” Randy Cox, a woman staring down the barrel of retirement, is a curmudgeonly blue-collar butch lesbian who has been single for twenty years and is trying to date again.
At the end of a long, exhausting shift, Randy finds her supervisor, Bryant, pinned and near death at the warehouse…
I've been a working journalist for 50 years, and as a child of TV, especially in the 1960s, I grew up with some of the most memorable TV themes ever written. I started writing about TV in the 1980s, and since moving to Los Angeles in 1986, have used every opportunity to meet and interview all of my favorite composers of movie and TV music. The result is this book, which looks at the history of TV themes and, in a larger sense, music written for TV generally. Every genre of TV, from crime to sitcoms, westerns to adventure, has had fun, often compelling, and truly memorable music, and I've tried to celebrate it here.
Bernard Herrmann is revered as one of the movies' greatest composers.
Imagine starting your Hollywood career with music for Citizen Kane!
He enjoyed a very productive 10-year relationship with director Alfred Hitchcock, which produced such masterpieces as Vertigo, Psycho, and North by Northwest; he also worked with Francois Truffaut on Fahrenheit 451, composed the original Twilight Zone theme, and capped his career with music for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.
Yet he could be cantankerous and difficult, antagonizing both friends and colleagues with his temperamental behavior and insistence upon the highest standards of music and drama.
I love the fact that Smith writes as well about the music as he does about the composer, and the reader walks away knowing lots about both.
No composer contributed more to film than Bernard Herrmann, who in over 40 scores enriched the work of such directors as Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Francois Truffaut, and Martin Scorsese. In this first major biography of the composer, Steven C. Smith explores the interrelationships between Herrmann's music and his turbulent personal life, using much previously unpublished information to illustrate Herrmann's often outrageous behavior, his working methods, and why his music has had such lasting impact. From his first film ("Citizen Kane") to his last ("Taxi Driver"), Herrmann was a master of evoking psychological nuance and dramatic tension through music, often…
