Musical thoughts & afterthoughts

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Cathay Che

Madonna has called Deborah Harry "the coolest chick in the universe", Andy Warhol named her "my favorite pop star", and Shirley Manson of Garbage said that without her "we'd still be in a state of arrested development in terms of women's forays in the music world". Authorized biographer Cathay Che sums her up as "a '50s bad girl, a '60s freethinker, a '70s punk, an '80s pop star, and a '90s postmodern artist". From her first hit, "In the Flesh", with Blondie in 1976 to the chart-topper "Maria" for their 1999 reunion album, No Exit; from her movies with John Waters and David Cronenberg to hanging out at CGBG, Studio 54, and Warhol's Factory, Che follows Deborah Harry across the worlds of punk, rock, rap, art, film, and fashion.

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Gary Lachman

"This definitive work on the occult's 'great beast' traces the arc of his controversial life and influence on rock-and-roll giants, from the Rolling Stones to Led Zeppelin to Black Sabbath. When Aleister Crowley died in 1947, he was not an obvious contender for the most enduring pop-culture figure of the next century. But twenty years later, Crowley's name and image were everywhere. The Beatles put him on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Rolling Stones were briefly serious devotees. Today, his visage hangs in goth clubs, occult temples, and college dorm rooms, and his methods of ceremonial magick animate the passions of myriad occultists and spiritual seekers. Aleister Crowley is more than just a biography of this compelling, controversial, and divisive figure--it's also a portrait of his unparalleled influence on modern pop culture"--

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Francis Davis

Jazz is more popular than it has been since the early sixties. Every major record label is bringing out jazz reissues and new releases, and dating couples are turning up in the jazz clubs alongside the usual middle-aged male fans. But this popularity comes at a cost: Jazz has become identified with its past, and especially with bebop, the style that first dominated the jazz scene in the forties and fifties. Bebop started out as a daring departure from the conventions of swing, but ironically, many listeners and musicians now experience this style as a comfortable orthodoxy that defines the limits of jazz. In his third collection of essays, Francis Davis shares his insights into this new jazz mainstream: the greatness of its sources, the sterility of performance that follows those sources too closely. He also conveys his listening experiences beyond the mainstream - from the futuristic jazz of the avant-garde to the pre-forties styles that some performers continue to develop, at the risk of being labeled old hat. Finally, Davis leaves behind the boundaries of jazz altogether, pursuing its adventurous spirit into a broader musical territory that includes musical theatre, rock, and rap.

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Linda Granfield

Presents the context for the writing of the famous poem by the Canadian medical officer who attended injured soldiers in Flanders during the First World War.