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Bezig met laden... Everybody Had an Ocean: Music and Mayhem in 1960s Los Angelesdoor William McKeen
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. I love the music of the 60's and was ecstatic when I had a chance to read and review this book. My older brother and cousins helped my get hooked since I was a child of the 70's. This book focuses on California's influence on the small bit of time that made the music of the era what it was. It starts with the surf music of The Beach Boys and Jan and Dean, gives you the background on how Blues and Soul music worked their way into the sound of the times, followed by the changes brought about by the British Invasion. As a die-hard Monkees fan, I was thrilled with the few paragraphs about the band since they are very overlooked in books on the era. It even brings up the end of the 60's peace and love generation by bringing Charles Manson's musical aspirations into parts of the book. The book uses The Beach Boys as it's central focus and the other groups weave in and out as the author plays a game of "6 degrees of separation" with primarily Brian Wilson at its center. I learned quite a few things about these groups and really loved reading the book. In his Author's Note, William McKeen really got my hopes up. He begins the book with an anecdote about hanging out in Dennis Wilson's hotel room, the writes that for years he'd been "stockpiling" stories about the Los Angeles music scene in the 1960s. I thought that this meant that he was going to share previously unpublished tales based upon his own work as a journalist. No such luck. Instead, in Everybody Had an Ocean McKeen shares stories gathered from a lifetime of reading rock 'n' roll memoirs. He recycles the gossipy bits from a wide array of previously-published works, including Brian Wilson's discredited "autobiography" Wouldn't It Be Nice: My Own Story. The bottom line here is that underneath the sunny "fun, fun, fun" on the surface of Southern California in the 1960s, there was a dark undercurrent of "dread," symbolized most obviously by the Manson Family murders. I think this point may have been made before. Nonetheless, if you are looking for a one-volume compendium of stories about The Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, Phil Spector, the Byrds etc., this may be your book. A side note: This book's official publication date is not until April 1, 2017, but it was available for checkout at my local library almost a whole month prior to that. I read the actual book, not a prepub. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Los Angeles in the 1960s gave the world some of the greatest music in rock 'n' roll history: "California Dreamin'" by the Mamas and the Papas, "Mr. Tambourine Man" by the Byrds, and "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys, a song that magnificently summarized the joy and beauty of the era in three and a half minutes. But there was a dark flip side to the fun fun fun of the music, a nexus between naive young musicians and the hangers-on who exploited the decade's peace, love, and flowers ethos, all fueled by sex, drugs, and overnight success. One surf music superstar unwittingly subsidized the kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr. The transplanted Texas singer Bobby Fuller might have been murdered by the Mob in what is still an unsolved case. And after hearing Charlie Manson sing, Neil Young recommended him to the president of Warner Bros. Records. Manson's ultimate rejection by the music industry likely led to the infamous murders that shocked a nation. Everybody Had an Ocean chronicles the migration of the rock 'n' roll business to Southern California and how the artists flourished there. The cast of characters is astonishing--Brian and Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, eccentric producer Phil Spector, Cass Elliot, Sam Cooke, Ike and Tina Turner, Joni Mitchell, and scores of others--and their stories form a modern epic of the battles between innocence and cynicism, joy and terror. You'll never hear that beautiful music in quite the same way. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)781.6609794The arts Music General principles and musical forms Traditions of music Rock {equally instrumental and vocal} History, geographic treatment, biography North AmericaLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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I picked this book up as being of just passing interest; I was never into the surf and car music of the early 60s. But I saw that it was about more than that, so I figured I’d give it a try. I ended up not being able to put it down. It seems like the entire rock music industry was interconnected. It’s well written, entertaining (albeit depressing a lot of the time, but that’s what happened), and apparently well researched. This isn’t a memoir from someone who was there; McKeen is a professor of journalism, so I assume he takes a neutral approach to the material. Five stars. ( )