Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and Other Moodsong; Revised and Expanded EditionUniversity of Michigan Press, 26 de jan. de 2004 - 349 páginas It's campy, it's cool, empty, intrusive, trite, and treacly. It's Big Brother singing. Call it what you will -- elevator music, Moodsong ® easy listening, or Muzak ®. For a musical genre that was supposed to offend no one, it has a lot of enemies. Musical cognoscenti decry its insipid content; regular folk -- if they notice -- bemoan its pervasiveness; while hipsters and campsters celebrate its retro chic. Mindful of the many voices, Joseph Lanza's Elevator Music sings seriously, with tongue in cheek, the praises of this venerable American institution. Lanza addresses the criticisms of elites who say that Muzak and its ilk are dehumanized, vapid, or cheesy. These reactions, he argues, are based more on cultural prejudices than honest musical appraisal. Says Lanza, today's so-called mood music is the inheritor of a long tradition of mood-altering music stretching back to the ancients; Nero's fiddle and the sirens of Odysseus being two famous examples. Contemporary atmospheric music, Lanza argues, not only serves the same purpose, it is also the inevitable background for our media-dominated age. One of Lanza's premises, to quote Mark Twain, is that this music is "better than it sounds." "This book will have succeeded in its purpose," he writes, "if I can help efface...the distinction between one person's elevator music and another's prized recording." Joseph Lanza is an author, producer, and music historian. His most recent book is Russ Columbo and the Crooner Mystique. |
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Probing the JellO | 1 |
The Canned AvantGarde | 14 |
The Birth of Muzak | 22 |
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Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and Other ... Joseph Lanza Visualização parcial - 2004 |
Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-listening, and Other Moodsong Joseph Lanza Prévia não disponível - 1995 |
Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-listening and Other Moodsong Joseph Lanza Prévia não disponível - 1995 |
Termos e frases comuns
101 Strings acoustic album Alshire background music BEATLES BEATLES SONG BOOK Beautiful Music became BEST Billboard brass broadcast called Capitol CD EMI chorus classical Columbia composer Decca DREAM easy-listening elevator music EMI Studio Enoch Light film Franck Pourcel Frank Chacksfield guitar Hollyridge Strings HUGO WINTERHALTER INSTRUMENTAL VERSIONS jazz John Johnny Douglas Kaempfert Kem Disc Kostelanetz Lawrence Welk Liberty light listening Living LOVE IS BLUE LOVE THEMES lush MAGIC Mantovani Mauriat melody Mercury metarock mood music Mort Garson MOVIE THEMES Music by Muzak musicians Muzak NIGHT Percy Faith Perito Philips pianist piano Polydor popular radio Ranwood Ray Conniff record released rhythm Robert Farnon rock ROMANTIC Ronnie Aldrich Sbarra Schulke score SERENADE Singers soft sound soundtrack space music Squier stations stereo Stimulus Progression STRINGS PLAY style Symphony tape television tempo tunes United Artists violins vocal voices York YOUNG LOVERS