Victory Disc

This time the search for a rare record ensnares our hero in a mystery with its roots stretching back to the Second World War. Three young RAF airmen played in a legendary band called the Flare Path Orchestra. When a precious record of their music turns up in the most unexpected place the Vinyl Detective finds himself hired to track down the rest of their highly sought-after recordings. But, as he does so, he finds that the battles of the last World War aren't over yet--and can still prove lethal.

The Andrews Sisters, the legendary singing trio of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s are the most successful female singing group in history and were the world's top selling group until the Beatles arrived. Of the 605 songs they recorded, 113 charted. They also made 18 movies, appeared regularly on radio and television, and entertained three generations of GIs. Based on extensive research, unpublished letters, and interviews with family, friends, and colleagues, this book documents not only the lives and work of the Andrews Sisters but also the popular culture spanned by their long careers. The book contains a complete discography of their released, unreleased, and solo recordings, including recording dates, record numbers, and accompaniment. Also included are a filmography and documentation of their radio and television appearances.

The Expected-Outcome Model of Two-Player Games deals with the expected-outcome model of two-player games, in which the relative merit of game-tree nodes, rather than board positions, is considered. The ambiguity of static evaluation and the problems it generates in the search system are examined and the development of a domain-independent static evaluator is described. Comprised of eight chapters, this book begins with an overview of the rationale for the mathematical study of games, followed by a discussion on some previous artificial intelligence (AI) research efforts on game-trees. The next section opens with the definition of a node's expected-outcome value as the expected value of the leaves beneath it. The expected-outcome model is outlined, paying particular attention to the expected-outcome value of a game-tree node. This model was implemented on some small versions of tic-tac-toe and Othello. The book also presents results that offer strong support for both the validity of the expected-outcome model and the rationality of its underlying assumptions. This monograph is intended for specialists in AI and computer science.

Featuring 100 photographs of Frank Sinatra working with orchestras and arrangers, listening to playbacks, and, of course, singing, this book tells the whole story of how he created the Sinatra sound and translated the most intense personal emotions into richly worked-out songs of unrivalled expressiveness. One of the thrills of listening to Sinatra is wondering how he did it—and this book explains it all, bringing the dedicated fan and the casual music lover alike into the recording studio to witness the fascinating working methods he introduced and mastered in his quest for recorded perfection. Revealed is how, in addition to introducing and perfecting a unique vocal style, Sinatra was also his own in-studio producer—personally supervising every aspect of his recordings, from choosing the songs and arrangers to making minute adjustments in microphone placement.

Emerging out of the American punk rock scene of the early 1980s, straightedge youth have held their ground and made important inroads on the broader terrain of American youth culture for the last twenty-five years. Known primarily for their militant opposition to drinking, drug use, and casual sex, as well as for their commitment to vegetarian and vegan lifestyles, straightedge youth have received little scholarly attention, and then primarily through studies focused on the larger subcultural framework of punk rock. Robert T. Wood presents the first theoretical and in-depth treatment of the straightedge culture. Drawing on interviews with founding members and current straightedge youth, content analysis of the music lyrics, and straightedge "zines," Wood places the movement within the context of contemporary subcultural theory and the framework of cultural studies. Identifying straightedge as a movement whose cultural boundaries have transformed over time, Wood explores the ways in which the group members’ diverse and often contradictory self-understanding has contributed to the movement’s evolution. Wood details the complexities of the subculture from its origins in Washington, D.C., through the emergence of schismatic straightedge factions and the adoption of animal rights and vegetarian agendas. This book offers an excellent introduction for those interested in the sociology of punk rock and its subcultures and will be an invaluable resource for sociologists and straightedge adherents.

In Soundscapes of Liberation, Celeste Day Moore traces the popularization of African American music in postwar France, where it signaled new forms of power and protest. Moore surveys a wide range of musical genres, soundscapes, and media: the US military's wartime records and radio programs; the French record industry's catalogs of blues, jazz, and R&B recordings; the translations of jazz memoirs; a provincial choir specializing in spirituals; and US State Department-produced radio programs that broadcast jazz and gospel across the French empire. In each of these contexts, individual intermediaries such as educators, producers, writers, and radio deejays imbued African American music with new meaning, value, and political power. Their work resonated among diverse Francophone audiences and transformed the lives and labor of many African American musicians, who found financial and personal success as well as discrimination in France. By showing how the popularity of African American music was intertwined with contemporary structures of racism and imperialism, Moore demonstrates this music's centrality to postwar France and the convergence of decolonization, the expanding globalized economy, the Cold War, and worldwide liberation movements.

Suddenly, popular music resembles an alien landscape. The great common ground of 45s, LPs, and even compact discs is rapidly falling by the wayside to be replaced by binary bits of sound. In the 21st century, radical advances in music technology threaten to overshadow the music itself. Indeed, today the generations divide over how they listen to the music, not what kinds of music they enjoy.Playback is the first book to place the staggering history of sound reproduction within its larger social and cultural context. Concisely told via a narrative arc that begins with Edison's cylinder and ends with digital music, this is a history that we have all directly experienced in one way or another. From the Victrola to the 78 to the 45 to the 33 1/3 to the 8track to the cassette to the compact disc to MP3 and beyond (not to mention everyone from Thomas Edison to Enrico Caruso to Dick Clark to Grandmaster Flash to Napster CEO Shawn Fanning), the story of Playback is also the story of music, and the music business, in the 20th century.