There is an epigram in this book from the Phil Ochs song, "Crucifixion", about the Kennedy assassination, that states: I fear to contemplate that beneath the greatest love, lies a hurricane of hate. On February 11th 1963, the Beatles recorded "There's a Place", a dazzling, unheralded tune which was included on their electrifying debut album, Please Please Me. This song firmly laid the foundation on which a huge utopian dream of the sixties would be built. Within that dream, however, also lay the seeds of a darker vision that would emerge out of the very counterculture that the Beatles and their music helped create. Thus, even as their music attracted adoring fans, it also enticed the murderous ambitions of Charles Manson; and though the Beatles may have inspired others to form bands, their own failed hopes ultimately led to their breakup.
The disillusionment with the sixties, and the hopes associated with the group, would many years later culminate in the assassination of John Lennon and the attempted slaying of George Harrison by deranged and obsessive fans. In this incisive examination, author Kevin Courrier (Dangerous Kitchen: the Subversive World of Zappa, Randy Newman's American Dreams) examines how the Fab Four, through their astonishing music and comically rebellious personalities, created the promise of an inclusive culture built on the principles of pleasure and fulfillment. By taking us through their richly inventive catalogue, Courrier illustrates how the Beatles' startling impact on popular culture built a bond with audiences that was so strong, people today continue to either cling nostalgically to it, or struggle ― and often struggle violently ― to escape its influence.

Artificial Paradise: The Dark Side of the Beatles' Utopian Dream

Biographies & Memoirs

Courrier, Kevin

Arts & Literature

Praeger

In the spring of 1969, the inauspicious release of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band's Trout Mask Replica, a double-album featuring 28 stream-of-consciousness songs filled with abstract rhythms and guttural bellows, dramatically altered the pop landscape.
 Yet even if the album did cast its radical vision over the future of music, much of the record's artistic strength is actually drawn from the past. This book examines how Beefheart's incomparable opus, an album that divided (rather than) united a pop audience, is informed by a variety of diverse sources. Trout Mask Replica is a hybrid of poetic declarations inspired by both Walt Whitman and the beat poets, the field hollers of the Delta Blues, the urban blues of Howlin' Wolf, the gospel blues of Blind Willie Johnson, and the free jazz of Ornette Coleman. This book illustrates how Trout Mask Replica was not so much an arcane specimen of the avant-garde, but rather a defiantly original declaration of the American imagination.

Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica (33 1/3)

Continuum

There’s a fine line between insanity and pure genius The name Frank Zappa often conjures up the image of a deranged satirist. But for close to thirty years, between 1966 until his untimely death from prostate cancer in 1993, Frank Zappa was one of the most influential, innovative, and controversial musicians in contemporary and popular music (despite little radio airplay). Beginning with his band, the Mothers of Invention, Frank Zappa built a formidable career in rock and roll by combining a wide range of styles, including serious contemporary music, jazz, rhythm and blues, doo-wop, and social and political parody. Yet Zappa was often portrayed as a drug addict (even though he denounced drug use) and a fetishist (despite a normal married life). In Dangerous Kitchen: The Subversive World of Zappa, Kevin Courrier explodes those myths by illuminating the facts about this outrageously gifted composer. Courrier examines how Frank Zappa's emergence in American popular culture during the eclectic and experimental sixties was no accident. Courrier argues that Zappa's musical career which poked fun at middle-class conformity, the hippie sub-culture, disco, the rock industry, and the Reagan era had its roots in the artistic rebellion against Romanticism in the nineteenth century. The book draws links to the musical and cultural antecedents of Frank Zappa's career, including Erik Satie, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Igor Stravinsky, Charles Ives, and Zappa's true hero, Edgard Varese, who was as much a scientific inventor of electronic sounds as he was a dynamic avant-garde composer. This book examines Frank Zappa as a composer, performer, political artist, and American original.

Dangerous Kitchen: The Subversive World of Zappa

Humor & Entertainment

ECW Press

Among his peers, Randy Newman is considered one of the most respected singer-songwriters in contemporary American music. For over 40 years, he has composed a variety of hits for artists as diverse as Judy Collins, Three Dog Night, and Tom Jones. In 1997, Newman caused controversy with the chart-topping Short People,” wrote the stage musical Faust, and became a successful composer for such acclaimed films as The Natural, Avalon, Toy Story, and Monsters Inc. Yet, despite his vast body of work, Newman is still far from being a household name. This book examines why this enigmatic, audacious composer has been so largely unacknowledged and misunderstood by listeners and fans alike. With detailed precision, Courrier delves into the reasons for Newman’s peripheral status on the cultural landscape, suggesting that, at heart, he has always been a musical outsider and built a career in the mainstream by donning a brilliant disguise. This is an illuminating portrait of the artist as a masked man an Artful Dodger taking readers on an equivocal voyage up through the streams and tributaries of a vast and sometimes tragically complex American domain.

Randy Newman's American Dreams

Chronicles the characters, storyline, and cast of the Emmy award-winning television series and includes a synopsis and commentary for each episode

Law & Order: The Unofficial Companion

Arts & Photography

Green, Susan

Performing Arts

Renaissance Books

Whether you tune in each week to see veteran Detective Lennie Briscoe analyze clues with wild-card partner Ed Green in the fist half of the show, or to see Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy invoke justice in the courtroom in the second half, you cannot help but get involved with the most human characters on television. With these powerful characters and socially relevant stories ripped from today's headlines, it is difficult to tell whether you are watching the evening news or one of the most intense dramas ever seen on television. Law &amp; Order: The Unofficial Companion was written with the cooperation of the show's creator and executive producer, Dick Wolf, and features interviews with the stars, producers, and writers. It is the first-ever guide to this popular, Emmy award-winning police drama. You'll get the inside scoop on: -the past and current stars of the show-including Paul Sorvino, Jerry Orbach, Jesse L. Martin, Christopher Noth, S. Epatha Merkerson, Sam Waterston, Carey Lowell, Angie Harmon, and Michael Moriarty-and find out who was fired, who left willingly, and who remains -the show's continued problems with censorship issues and advertiser fallout -the behind-the-scenes anecdotes about cast regulars, including the fights-both verbal and physical-that have peppered the production -how Wolf was forced to increase the estrogen and decrease the testosterone on the show -the detailed history behind the creation and development of the show, and season-by-season critiques of each episode through the entire 1999 season

Law & Order: The Unofficial Companion -- Updated and Expanded

Television

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Courrier, Kevin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.