Author: Paul Slade Publisher: Soundcheck Books ISBN: 099294807X Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 151
Book Description
The Gory Stories Behind The Murder Ballads Cheerfully vulgar, revelling in gore, and always with an eye on the main chance, murder ballads are tabloid newspapers set to music, carrying word of the latest ‘orrible murders to an insatiable public. Victims are bludgeoned, stabbed or shot in every verse and killers often hanged, but the songs themselves never die. Instead, they mutate – morphing to suit local place names as they criss cross the Atlantic and continue to fascinate each generation’s biggest musical stars. Paul Slade traces this fascinating genre’s history through eight of its greatest songs. Stagger Lee’s “biographers” alone include Duke Ellington, James Brown, Bob Dylan, Dr John, The Clash and Nick Cave. No two tell his story in quite the same way. Covering eight classic murder ballads, including “Knoxville Girl”, “Tom Dooley” and “Frankie & Johnny”, Slade investigates the real-life murder which inspired each song and traces its musical development down the decades. Billy Bragg, The Bad Seeds’ Mick Harvey, Laura Cantrell, Rennie Sparks of The Handsome Family and a host of other leading musicians add their own insights.
Author: Dave Soria Publisher: Z2 Comics ISBN: 9781940878379 Category : Comics & Graphic Novels Languages : en Pages : 120
Book Description
Murder Ballads is a truly unique package, AGraphic Novel with an an accompanying soundtrack by Dan Auerbach and RobertFinley. It deftly weaves the music into an narrative that is a meditation onmusic, race, obsession, and how far someone will go to see their vision becomereal, Murder Ballads follows the fall and reinvention of Nate Theodore, thedead-broke and deadbeat owner of a failed record label who is on a cross-countrydrive in the dead of winter with his wife Mary, fleeing the wreckage of theirbusiness and heading towards the destruction of their marriage. But Nate isgiven an unexpected chance to redeem himself when, during an unscheduled detour,he "discovers" Donny and Marvell Fontweathers,two African-American brothers who play a singular version of doom-laden countryblues. Convinced that the brothers arethe key to his salvation, Nate's desperate to make an album with the brothersbefore someone else finds out about them-but he needs money. Money he doesn'thave and can't get through any conventional means. So he persuades Donny andMarvell to join him in a crazy scheme: they'll undertake a minor crime spree toraise the funds needed to produce their record. Naturally, complications arisefor this wannabe modern-day Alan Lomax and his soon-to-be stars, and just likein the murder ballads the Fontweathers Brothers play, the body count starts togrow.. Music contributed by Dan Auerbach andRobert Finley."
Author: Erik Kriek Publisher: Fantagraphics Books ISBN: 1683960114 Category : Comics & Graphic Novels Languages : en Pages : 138
Book Description
The murder ballad holds a rock-solid position in US roots music and the Great American Songbook for decades. Telling the stories of sometimes true and often not-so-true-crimes and other horrific events, they are raw stories full of unrequited love, betrayal, life, and death. The song form stems from the Anglo-Saxon ballad tradition, where stories were orally passed on to a mostly illiterate population. Dutch cartoonist Erik Kriek was inspired by five old and new murder ballads — including songs by modern masters such as Nick Cave, Steve Earle, and Gillian Welch — and used them as a launching point for five special and ruthless graphic narratives that dig deep into the darkness of Americana, in which guns and religion maintain an uneasy balance.
Author: Jake Adam York Publisher: ISBN: Category : Poetry Languages : en Pages : 92
Book Description
Poetry. "Rather than introspection, sensationalism, or mere entertainment, remembering becomes an act of engagement, one that propels the poet toward a fierce intellectual and moral reckoning. And we in turn are held rapt by the lyric enactments of this poet who takes dangerous materials into his hands; who stubbornly pulls at the poisonous sumac obscuring a furnace's ruins; who probes old wound, transfiguring them into new patterns. MURDER BALLADS is wondrous and essential reading, a compelling debut" Jane Satterfield."
Author: David John Brennan Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
In 1798, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were engaged in a top secret experiment. This was not, as many assume, the creation of a book of poetry. A book emerged, to be sure--the landmark Lyrical Ballads. But in Murder Ballads, David John Brennan posits that the two poets were in fact pursuing far different ends: to birth from their poems a singular, idealized Poet. Despite their success, such Frankensteinian pursuits proved rife with consequence for the men. Doubts and questions plagued them: What does it mean to be a poet if your work is not your own? Who is best fit to lay claim to a parcel of poetic property that was collaboratively crafted and bequeathed to a fictitious Poet? How does one kill a Poet born of one's own hand? Blending critical examination with jocular playlets-in-verse featuring the authors of the two books in baffled conversation, Murder Ballads reopens a 200-year-old cold case that never received a proper investigation: Who was the first true Author of Lyrical Ballads, and how exactly did he die?
Author: John Hornor Jacobs Publisher: JournalStone ISBN: 1950305406 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 243
Book Description
A terrifying collection of horror and crime noir from the author of Southern Gods and A Lush and Seething Hell. Featuring ten tales, two never before in print, Murder Ballads and Other Horrific Tales is an exciting glimpse into the dark territories of the human heart. These are coming-of-age stories. Stories of love and loss, grief and revenge. Survival and redemption. From old gods to malevolent artificial intelligences, vampires to zombies to ghosts, Jacobs exposes our fears and worst imaginings. CONTAINS THE SEQUEL TO SOUTHERN GODS "Jacobs demonstrates masterful control of his eclectic themes and frequently propels them into unexpected and pleasingly original territory... Offers plenty to keep genre fans hooked." --Publishers Weekly
Author: Janet Beard Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1982151579 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
"A provocative new novel by the nationally bestelling author of THE ATOMIC CITY GIRLS, about nine generations of one family in Eastern Tennessee whose women, in eerie echoes of the notorious Appalachian murder ballads made famous by singers, over more than a century, have been traumatized by acts of violence"--
Author: Santi Elijah Holley Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 1501355163 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 152
Book Description
In a bar called The Bucket of Blood, a man shoots the bartender four times in the head. In the small town of Millhaven, a teenage girl secretly and gleefully murders her neighbors. A serial killer travels from home to home, quoting John Milton in his victims' blood. Murder Ballads, the ninth studio album from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, is a gruesome, blood-splattered reimagining of English ballads, American folk and blues music, and classic literature. Most of the stories told on Murder Ballads have been interpreted many times, but never before had they been so graphic or profane. Though earning the band their first Parental Advisory warning label, Murder Ballads, released in 1996, brought Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds their biggest critical and commercial success, thanks in part to the award-winning single, “Where the Wild Roses Grow,” an unlikely duet with Australian pop singer, Kylie Minogue. Closely examining each of the ten songs on the album, Santi Elijah Holley investigates the stories behind the songs, and the numerous ways these ballads have been interpreted through the years. Murder Ballads is a tour through the evolution of folk music, and a journey into the dark secrets of American history.
Author: Richard Underwood Publisher: ISBN: 9781945049033 Category : Languages : en Pages : 301
Book Description
CrimeSong: True Crime Stories From Southern Murder BalladsCrimeSong plunges readers into a world of violence against women, murders, familicide, suicides, brutal mob action, and many examples of a failed justice system. Although these ballads and stories are set in specific times, cultures, and places, they present universal themes of love, betrayal, jealousy, and madness through true-life tales that are both terrifying and familiar'stories that could be ripped from today's headlines. This compelling investigation of the gripping true crimes behind American ballads dispels myths and legends and brings to life a cast of characters --both loathsome and innocent--shadowy history, courtroom dramas, murders, mayhem, and music. In CrimeSong, law professor and authentic storyteller Richard H. Underwood recreates in engaging and folksy prose the true facts behind twenty-four Southern murder ballads. All of these ballads were composed and eventually written down by simple folk, mostly unknown, who were preserving, in their homespun lyrics, actual, tragic events. Because of Underwood's interest and experience in the law, he has resurrected these stories and shares them with the reader through his old lawyer trifocals. He presents his case studies, documented through contemporary news accounts and court records, as a series of dramas filled with jump-off-the-page real and memorable characters. These stories are sometimes harrowing, but they are always completely readable.CrimeSong includes 90 illustrations, including a map relevant to stories and the original art of a North Carolina artist and a Kentucky artist.