ABOUT RAR: For those of
you new to this site, "RAR" is Rick Alan Rice, the publisher
of the RARWRITER Publishing Group websites.
Use this link to visit the
RAR music page, which features original music
compositions and other.
ATWOOD - "A Toiler's Weird Odyssey of Deliverance"-AVAILABLE
NOW FOR KINDLE (INCLUDING KINDLE COMPUTER APPS) FROM
AMAZON.COM.Use
this link.
CCJ Publisher Rick Alan Rice dissects
the building of America in a trilogy of novels
collectively calledATWOOD. Book One explores
the development of the American West through the
lens of public policy, land planning, municipal
development, and governance as it played out in one
of the new counties of Kansas in the latter half of
the 19th Century. The novel focuses on the religious
and cultural traditions that imbued the American
Midwest with a special character that continues to
have a profound effect on American politics to this
day. Book One creates an understanding about
America's cultural foundations that is further
explored in books two and three that further trace
the historical-cultural-spiritual development of one
isolated county on the Great Plains that stands as
an icon in the development of a certain brand of
American character. That's the serious stuff viewed
from high altitude. The story itself gets down and
dirty with the supernatural, which inATWOOD
- A Toiler's Weird Odyssey of Deliveranceis the
outfall of misfires in human interactions, from the
monumental to the sublime.The
book features the epic poem"The
Toiler"as
well as artwork by New Mexico artist Richard
Padilla.
Elmore Leonard
Meets Larry McMurtry
Western Crime
Novel
I am offering another
novel through Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing service.
Cooksin is the story of a criminal syndicate that sets its
sights on a ranching/farming community in Weld County, Colorado,
1950. The perpetrators of the criminal enterprise steal farm
equipment, slaughter cattle, and rob the personal property of
individuals whose assets have been inventoried in advance and
distributed through a vast system of illegal commerce.
It is a ripping good yarn, filled
with suspense and intrigue. This was designed intentionally to
pay homage to the type of creative works being produced in 1950,
when the story is set. Richard Padilla
has done his usually brilliant work in capturing the look and feel of
a certain type of crime fiction being produced in that era. The
whole thing has the feel of those black & white films you see on
Turner Movie Classics, and the writing will remind you a little
of Elmore Leonard, whose earliest works were westerns.
Use this link.
EXPLORE THE KINDLE
BOOK LIBRARY
If you have not explored the books
available from Amazon.com's Kindle Publishing
division you would do yourself a favor to do so. You
will find classic literature there, as well as tons
of privately published books of every kind. A lot of
it is awful, like a lot of traditionally published
books are awful, but some are truly classics. You
can get the entire collection of Shakespeare's works
for two bucks.
Amazon is the largest,
but far from the only digital publisher. You can
find similar treasure troves atNOOK
Press(the
Barnes & Noble site),Lulu,
and others.
60 Years of Best Songs
BY RAR
In my household we have a diversity of
opinion about which decades have yielded the best popular music.
Each feels distinctly different from the next. I'm a '60s and
'80s guy, while my wife is more '60s and '70s. My 19-year old
and his friends are 1990s leaning, while my 21 year old and her
friends are pretty much 21st Century types. Thank goodness for
Sirius Satellite Radio and digital connections for our devices,
which allow these fights to manifest in sonic form on our car
radios.
I find the New Musical
Express (NME) to be about as good a source as there
is for cataloging popular music - they've been doing it since
1949 - and they keep an interesting list of what their
contributors consider the top 100 songs from each decade. This
is, of course, entirely subjective, but NME's good work provides
a handy reference for getting a high altitude view of
significant hits from each decade, which in turn allows some
measure for the analysis of how popular music has evolved over
time.
The 1960s were the first full Pop/Rock decade, stocking our
collective shelves with Surf Rock, British Invasion Rock, Folk
Rock, and Rhythm & Blues. In the 1970s, music splintered further
into genre forms, including an eclectic brew that ranged from
Metal, Glitter and Punk Rock to Country and Jazz Rock; and, of
course, it gave us Disco. The 1980s rode in on an age of
MTV-inspired Hair Rock, but New Wave helped to further develop
Alternative Rock, and we experienced the first wave of Rhythm
and Poetry (Rap) Music. The 1990s expanded Rap to become Hip-Hop
and a revised form of R&B, and Rock turned Grunge. The first
decade of the 21st Century gave us Beyonce,
Taylor Swift, and Lady Gaga. The
second decade or the 21st Century has, thus far, given us
Adele, all of which may indicate a trend of some kind, the most
apparent being that music has become a thing that is mostly
being purchased by women. Let that sink in, just a bit, as you
look over these videos of top singles (1960s-2000s), which are a
little testosterone heavy. Things, in our world, have changed,
though the winds swirling around Pop music these days seem a
little insignificant. Check out
LADY GAGA: BAROMETER IN HORSE LATITUDES.
Those Top 10 records all reference
singles, and they are more about NME's subjective opinion
regarding quality or cultural importance than rankings based
entirely on sales
numbers.
Provided below are videos of the tunes that NME has selected
as the top 10 from each period. It's good for discussion
purposes, and it will likely stir some memories.- RAR
Click on the decades listed below to
go to the NME website to see the full list of 100 top songs per
decade.
The CCJ at RARWRITER provides a steady stream of news
feeds from a variety of sources. Use this link to visit the
Music News page.
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