Stars don't stand still in the sky : music and myth
We call them stars. Film, television, theater, and literature each has its own stellar figures, but the rock star holds a specially bright place in the cultural firmament. Stars Don't Stand Still in the Sky is the first multidisciplinary book to discuss both popular music and the process by which it has been mythologized by its audience, its chroniclers, and its analysts.Stars Don't Stand Still in the Sky assembles musicians, music critics, scholars, and industry people to take up the mythology of one of our most popular, enduring, and universal cultural forms. Renowned music scholar Greil Marcus sets the terms of the volume in his introduction: "When I call this myth, I don't mean that it's necessarily a false story, only that it's a big story, a grand story, with room in it". Popular music, by both affirming and challenging economic, technological, and social structures, has helped to create cultural narratives and at least the perception of community. Movements in music and musical styles are filtered through the beliefs of the society in which they are created and heard, reflecting and often reinforcing the stories and representations of that culture -- the rebels, the sex gods and goddesses, the heroines and heroes.