Mary Wells: The Tumultuous Life of Motown's First Superstar 

by  Peter Benjaminson

"Complete with never-before-revealed details about the sex, violence, and drugs in her life, this biography reveals the incredibly turbulent life of Motown artist Mary Wells. Based in part on four hours of previously unreleased and unpublicized deathbed interviews with Wells, this account delves deeply into her rapid rise and long fall as a recording artist, her spectacular romantic and family life, the violent incidents in which she was a participant, and her abuse of drugs. From tumultuous affairs, including one with R&B superstar Jackie Wilson, to a courageous battle with throat cancer that climaxed in her gutsiest performance, this history draws upon years of interviews with Wells’s friends, lovers, and husband to tell the whole story of a woman whose songs crossed the color line and whose voice captivated the Beatles. " ***link is valid for 7 days

Mary Wells: The Tumultuous Life of Motown's First Superstar

The Routledge History of Social Protest in Popular Music by Edited by Jonathan C. Friedman

"The major objective of this collection of 28 essays is to analyze the trends, musical formats, and rhetorical devices used in popular music to illuminate the human condition. By comparing and contrasting musical offerings in a number of countries and in different contexts from the 19th century until today, The Routledge History of Social Protest in Popular Music aims to be a probing introduction to the history of social protest music, ideal for popular music studies and history and sociology of music courses." ***download link is valid for 7 days

The Routledge History of Social Protest in Popular Music

"American folk music has long presented a problematic conception of authenticity, but the reality of the folk scene, and its relationship to media, is far more complicated. This book draws on the fields of media archaeology, performance studies, and sound studies to explore the various modes of communication that can be uncovered from the long American folk revival. From Alan Lomax's cybernetic visions to Bob Dylan's noisy writing machines, this book retrieves a subterranean discourse on the concept of media that might help us to reimagine the potential of the networks in which we work, play, and sing."

***download link is valid for 7 days

American Folk Music as Tactical Media

bRead & Butter - Cultural Seeds

"Nick Cave is now widely recognized as a songwriter, musician, novelist, screenwriter, curator, critic, actor and performer. From the band, The Boys Next Door (1976-1980), to the spoken-word recording, The Secret Life of the Love Song (1998), to the recently acclaimed screenplay of The Proposition (2005) and the Grinderman project (2008), Cave's career spans thirty years and has produced a comprehensive (and sometimes controversial) body of work that has shaped contemporary alternative culture. Despite intense media interest in Cave, there have been remarkably few comprehensive appraisals of his work, its significance and its impact on understandings of popular culture. In addressing this absence, the present volume is both timely and necessary. Cultural Seeds brings together an international range of scholars and practitioners, each of whom is uniquely placed to comment on an aspect of Cave's career. The essays collected here not only generate new ways of seeing and understanding Cave's contributions to contemporary culture, but set up a dialogue between fields all-too-often separated in the academy and in the media. Topics include Cave and the Presley myth; the aberrant masculinity projected by The Birthday Party; the postcolonial Australian-ness of his humour; his interventions in film and his erotics of the sacred. These essays offer compelling insights and provocative arguments about the fluidity of contemporary artistic practice."
Cultural Seeds Essays on the Work of Nick Cave

Paolo Monti (1908 - 1982)

Paolo Monti (11 August 1908, in Novara – 29 November 1982, in Milan)^[1] was an Italian photographer, considered to be one of Italy's greatest.^[2][3] He is known for his architectural photography.^[4]

In his early period, Monti experimented with abstractionism as well as with effects such as blurring and diffraction. In 1953, he became a professional photographer. He mainly worked with architecture reproductions which were used by magazines and book editors for illustration. Starting from 1966, Monti catalogued historic centers of Italian cities.^[3]

Contents

• 1Life and work
• 2Publications
• 3Exhibitions
• 4Collection
• 5Gallery
• 6References

Life and work[edit]

Monti, self-portrait, 1954

Monti was born in Novara. His father was a banker and amateur photographer from Val d'Ossola. His family moved several times as his father was transferred between small towns. He attended Bocconi University in Milan and graduated in Economics in 1930, then worked for a few years in the Piedmont region. His father died in 1936 and shortly afterwards Paolo married Maria Binotti.^[5]

From 1939 to 1945 he lived in Mestre near Venice, then moved to Venice proper where he worked at the Regional Agricultural Cooperative and continued his hobby of photography.^[5]

He helped found the club La Gondola in 1947 which shortly became a feature of the international avant-garde photography movement. In 1953 Monti became a professional photographer, working mainly with magazines in the field of architecture and design. He helped illustrate over 200 volumes on cities and regions, architects and artists.^[5]

Starting in about 1965 he photographed illustrations for the history of Italian literature and also photographed Apennine valleys including the region of Emilia-Romagna. Later his photography related to Italian art history. After 1980 he concentrated on photographically documenting the heritage of Novara,^[1] Lake Orta and Val d'Ossola.^[5] For this work, in 1981 he was awarded a national Umberto Zanotti Bianco Prize. Monti died in Milan on 29 November 1982.^[1]

The Paolo Monti's archive has been declared of notable historical interest by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities in 2004 and was acquired by the BEIC Foundation in 2008, catalogued and opened to the public.^[6][1]