Country Music Broke My Brain

Nashville is filled with stars and lovers and writers and dreamers. Nashville is also teeming with lunatics and grifters and dip wads and moochers. Gerry House fits easily into at least half of those categories. Someone would probably have to be brain-damaged or really damn talented to try to entertain professional entertainers over a decades-long radio show in Music City, USA. Fortunately, House is little of both. Host of the nationally syndicated, top-rated morning show, “Gerry House & The Foundation" for more than 25 years, he has won virtually every broadcasting award there is including a place in the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame. Gerry also spent that time deep inside the songwriting and recording world in Nashville. In Country Music Broke My Brain, Gerry tells his stories from the other side of the microphone. He reveals never-aired, never-before published conversations with country music's biggest names—Johnny Cash, Brad Paisley, and Reba McEntire to name a few—and leaves you with his own crazy antics that will either have you laughing or shaking your head in disbelief. With exclusive celebrity stories, humorous trivia and anecdotes, and broadcasting wisdom, this book is a treat for country music fans or for anyone who wants a good laugh.

A delirious collection of short stories from the Latin American master of micro-fiction. A delirious collection of short stories from the Latin American master of microfiction, César Aira–the author of at least eighty novels, most of them barely one hundred pages long–The Musical Brain & Other Stories comprises twenty tales about oddballs, freaks, and loonies. Aira, with his fuga hacia adelante or "flight forward" into the unknown, gives us imponderables to ponder and bizarre and seemingly out-of-context plot lines, as well as thoughtful and passionate takes on everyday reality. The title story, first published in the New Yorker, is the creme de la creme of this exhilarating collection.

Jessica Hopper's music criticism has earned her a reputation as a firebrand, a keen observer and fearless critic not just of music but the culture around it. With this volume spanning from her punk fanzine roots to her landmark piece on R. Kelly's past, The First Collection leaves no doubt why The New York Times has called Hopper's work "influential." Not merely a selection of two decades of Hopper's most engaging, thoughtful, and humorous writing, this book documents the last 20 years of American music making and the shifting landscape of music consumption. The book journeys through the truths of Riot Grrrl's empowering insurgence, decamps to Gary, IN, on the eve of Michael Jackson's death, explodes the grunge-era mythologies of Nirvana and Courtney Love, and examines emo's rise. Through this vast range of album reviews, essays, columns, interviews, and oral histories, Hopper chronicles what it is to be truly obsessed with music. The pieces in The First Collection send us digging deep into our record collections, searching to re-hear what we loved and hated, makes us reconsider the art, trash, and politics Hopper illuminates, helping us to make sense of what matters to us most.

Offers a fresh, inclusive, at times provocative way of listening to country music--one that champions innovation and tradition even as it challenges many of the genre's prevailing assumptions.

In this book based on new interviews, some of country music's greatest stars share personal moments of redemption, inspiration, and heartache related to the music that shaped their lives. Brenda Lee explains how her childhood singing gift raised her entire family out of dire poverty, and Pat Boone speaks about the spiritual influence of his father-in-law, Red Foley. Barbara Pittman talks about her childhood friendship with Elvis Presley, while Little Jimmy Dickens divulges how Hank Williams came to write a song for him and why he never recorded it. Mickey Gilley talks about gladly living in, then gladly escaping, the shadow of his cousin Jerry Lee Lewis, and Hank Thompson reveals how his background in electrical engineering helped revolutionize country music. More stories from Glen Campbell, Don Williams, Johnny Legend, Chris Hillman, and many others explain the inspiration and effect of country music in their lives.

White Soul is an examination of the social, political, and religious foundations that bring rural and urban working-class white people and country music together as a dominant force in 20th century American music. An elitism of the upper class is named, examined, and debunked--with particular focus on the cultural values of working-class people and the "trashy" church that is preferred.