Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and Other Moodsong; Revised and Expanded EditionUniversity of Michigan Press, 26 de jan. de 2004 - 329 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. |
Conteúdo
1 Probing the JellO | 1 |
Mood Musics Antiquity | 6 |
3 The Canned AvantGarde | 14 |
The Birth of Muzak | 22 |
Mood Music and Early Radio | 31 |
6 Ghosts in the Elevator | 38 |
Background Music in the Movies | 55 |
8 The Moodiest Years on Record | 67 |
The Rise of EasyListening FM | 167 |
12 Violins from Space | 183 |
13 Metarock | 194 |
14 Elevator Noir | 208 |
15 Whos Hearing Things? | 216 |
16 The New Sound of 1984 | 222 |
Channeling the Phantom Band | 230 |
Revised Expanded Annotated and Selective Discography | 243 |
Illustrations | 132 |
The 101 Strings and Mystic Moods Orchestra | 133 |
10 Walls Talk | 148 |
Bibliography | 305 |
317 | |
Outras edições - Ver todos
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 American arrangements Audio background music BEATLES Beautiful Music became Bert Kaempfert Billboard brass broadcast called Capitol choir chorus classical Columbia composer Concerto Decca dream easy-listening elevator music Enoch Light film Franck Pourcel Frank Chacksfield furniture music Gleason guitar harp HITS HUGO WINTERHALTER INSTRUMENTAL FAVORITES jazz Johnny Douglas Kaempfert Kostelanetz Kulka Liberty listening London LOVE IS BLUE LOVE THEMES MAGIC Mantovani Mauriat Melachrino melody Mercury MILLION SELLER mood music MOVIE THEMES Music by Muzak musicians Muzak Mystic Moods Orchestra new-age NIGHT Percy Faith Perito Philips pianist piano Polydor popular radio Ray Conniff record rhythm Robert Farnon rock romantic Satie Schulke score Singers soft SONG BOOK sound soundtrack space music Squier stations stereo Stimulus Progression STRINGS PLAY studio style symphony television tempo Tony Mottola tunes United Artists violins vocal voice Welk York