If you want to read about Status Quo and Stockhausen, you’re in luck next week. Otherwise, not so much.
Status Quo In The 1980s: Decades
By Greg Harper
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Status Quo are a British institution — a multi-million selling band of epic proportions. And while their career was in its heyday during the 1970s and early ’80s, the hits kept coming — along with breakups, lawsuits, lineup changes, substance abuse and a high-profile, highly successful comeback after calling it a day in 1984. While much has been written about the ‘glory years,’ Quo’s difficult but triumphant struggle through the 1980s is a much more exciting story with twists, turns and a sense of peril that feels like it could go either way. This is a celebration of Quo’s music at its most vulnerable and experimental, at a time when the band lost old fans, gained new ones and made some of the most varied and creative recordings of their career. No stone has been left unturned, with several members of the band contributing stories and anecdotes from their own perspectives that should leave even the most knowledgeable of fans feeling like they’ve learned something.”
Understanding Stockhausen
By Robin Maconie
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “This collection of essays addresses technical developments in telecommunications and sound recording that have guided the direction of musical aesthetics in the post-1950 era. Such information is readily available online but may appear counterintuitive to many who find its priorities difficult to grasp from a musical perspective. The author hopes to draw attention to the place of ideas of communication and flight in western tradition. This element begins with Varèse and his ‘noble noise’, traverses the arrival of Information Theory and its influence, examples of early computer music, and ends with a defence of the sublime logic of Stockhausen’s singing helicopters and tornados.”
