George McKay – författare

No Future. Punk is Dead. That is what was sung and said. Yet as we approach 50 years of punk rock, it still endures, and sometime thrives. From 'White riot' to Pussy Riot, Never Mind the Bollocks to Nevermind, DIY to never gonna die, punk rock has marked or stained-it marks or stains-our musical and cultural history and practice. Here key established writers as well as emerging scholars from around the world offer critical views on punk practice and legacy, in a timely re-evaluation of its significance as music, culture, politics, nostalgia, heritage. The handbook looks at pre- and proto-punk forms, the 'high years' of c. 1976-84, the international spread of the music and style, punk media from films to fanzines, as well as a thread that may run through its entire history-the inspiring politics of DIY (Do It Yourself). Crossing and blurring disciplinary boundaries, it presents methodological innovations to offer new ways of understanding punk's significance. The Oxford Handbook of Punk Rock also identifies and explores some of punk's core contradictions: its anti-war messages alongside its (often gendered) violence, its anti-racism alongside its dominant whiteness, its energy and attitudinality as a youth culture for an aging demographic, its intermittent but persistent flirtations with populism and nationalism.

Given the explosion in recent years of scholarship exploring the ways in which disability is manifested and performed in numerous cultural spaces, it’s surprising that until now there has never been a single monograph study covering the important intersection of popular music and disability. George McKay’s Shakin’ All Over is a cross-disciplinary examination of the ways in which popular music performers have addressed disability: in their songs, in their live performances, and in various media presentations.By looking closely into the work of artists such as Johnny Rotten, Neil Young, Johnnie Ray, Ian Dury, Teddy Pendergrass, Curtis Mayfield, and Joni Mitchell, McKay investigates such questions as how popular music works to obscure and accommodate the presence of people with disabilities in its cultural practice. He also examines how popular musicians have articulated the experiences of disability (or sought to pass), or have used their cultural arena for disability advocacy purposes.

Given the explosion in recent years of scholarship exploring the ways in which disability is manifested and performed in numerous cultural spaces, it’s surprising that until now there has never been a single monograph study covering the important intersection of popular music and disability. George McKay’s Shakin’ All Over is a cross-disciplinary examination of the ways in which popular music performers have addressed disability: in their songs, in their live performances, and in various media presentations.By looking closely into the work of artists such as Johnny Rotten, Neil Young, Johnnie Ray, Ian Dury, Teddy Pendergrass, Curtis Mayfield, and Joni Mitchell, McKay investigates such questions as how popular music works to obscure and accommodate the presence of people with disabilities in its cultural practice. He also examines how popular musicians have articulated the experiences of disability (or sought to pass), or have used their cultural arena for disability advocacy purposes.

"The Encyclopedia of Animals" is a lavishly illustrated, authoritative, and comprehensive exploration of the rich and intriguing world of animals. Written by an international team of specialists, spectacularly adorned with a gallery of more than 2,000 color illustrations, and supplemented with distribution maps, detailed and beautifully rendered diagrams, and some of the world's finest wildlife photographs, this volume will become the standard by which all others are measured. Each page is expertly laid out to enhance either browsing or in-depth study. Readers will find detailed coverage of all sorts of animals, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, and invertebrates. "The Encyclopedia" includes an introductory overview of animal evolution, biology, behavior, classification, habitats, and current conservation issues. An extensive encyclopedic survey of the animals follows, with special attention given to endangered and vulnerable species. All information is completely up-to-date, with the most recent scientific and conservation data.Elegant graphics put a broad selection of information at readers' fingertips, including classification information, scientific and common names, distribution maps for all animal groups, conservation panels that focus on threatened species, accurate and detailed anatomical drawings, and illustrations of multiple species. Each section is color coded for easy identification of animal groups. Feature pages explore topics of particular interest and provide insights into animal behavior. With its expansive scope, richly detailed information, and inviting design, this will be the ideal reference for a broad range of uses. This title is completely up-to-date, with the most recent scientific information and conservation data. It includes a gallery of more than 2,000 illustrations. It features authoritative text contributed by a team of international specialists. It includes lavish color photographs from leading wildlife photographers. It also includes distribution maps for all animal groups. It features detailed explanatory scientific diagrams. It includes feature pages that explore topics of particular interest and provide insights into animal behavior.

In Circular Breathing, George McKay, a leading chronicler of British countercultures, uncovers the often surprising ways that jazz has accompanied social change during a period of rapid transformation in Great Britain. Examining jazz from the founding of George Webb’s Dixielanders in 1943 through the burgeoning British bebop scene of the early 1950s, the Beaulieu Jazz Festivals of 1956–61, and the improvisational music making of the 1960s and 1970s, McKay reveals the connections of the music, its players, and its subcultures to black and antiracist activism, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, feminism, and the New Left. In the process, he provides the first detailed cultural history of jazz in Britain.McKay explores the music in relation to issues of whiteness, blackness, and masculinity-all against a backdrop of shifting imperial identities, postcolonialism, and the Cold War. He considers objections to the music’s spread by the “anti-jazzers” alongside the ambivalence felt by many leftist musicians about playing an “all-American” musical form. At the same time, McKay highlights the extraordinary cultural mixing that has defined British jazz since the 1950s, as musicians from Britain’s former colonies-particularly from the Caribbean and South Africa-have transformed the genre. Circular Breathing is enriched by McKay’s original interviews with activists, musicians, and fans and by fascinating images, including works by the renowned English jazz photographer Val Wilmer. It is an invaluable look at not only the history of jazz but also the Left and race relations in Great Britain.

We can do little to escape the experience of the United States of America through many media: TV, pop music, youth culture, Hollywood, fast food. How do these traces and images affect us? Do we internalize them, want to be American? Do we (can we?) resist them? Is our desire for them a symptom of European pop culture’s crisis? From black face minstrelsy, rap music and fiction to McDonald’s, rock festivals and Star Trek, the cultural conception of America is critically unpacked by contributors from Europe, Israel and the USA. McKay rounds off the picture by offering a comprehensive introduction that explains theoretical approaches to Americanization from the thesis of Yankee cultural imperialism to America as site of liberation or fantasy.

‘I’m going to camp out on the land … try and get my soul free’. So sang Joni Mitchell in 1970 on ‘Woodstock’. But Woodstock is only the tip of the iceberg. Popular music festivals are one of the strikingly successful and enduring features of seasonal popular cultural consumption for young people and older generations of enthusiasts. From pop and rock to folk, jazz and techno, under stars and canvas, dancing in the streets and in the mud, the pleasures and politics of the carnival since the 1950s are discussed in this innovative and richly-illustrated collection. The Pop Festival brings scholarship in cultural studies, media studies, musicology, sociology, and history together in one volume to explore the music festival as a key event in the cultural landscape — and one of major interest to young people as festival-goers themselves and as students.

‘I’m going to camp out on the land … try and get my soul free’. So sang Joni Mitchell in 1970 on ‘Woodstock’. But Woodstock is only the tip of the iceberg. Popular music festivals are one of the strikingly successful and enduring features of seasonal popular cultural consumption for young people and older generations of enthusiasts. From pop and rock to folk, jazz and techno, under stars and canvas, dancing in the streets and in the mud, the pleasures and politics of the carnival since the 1950s are discussed in this innovative and richly-illustrated collection. The Pop Festival brings scholarship in cultural studies, media studies, musicology, sociology, and history together in one volume to explore the music festival as a key event in the cultural landscape — and one of major interest to young people as festival-goers themselves and as students.

From Yeah to Yo! our language bears traces of American influence. We can do little to escape the experience of America through many media: TV, pop music, youth culture, Hollywood, fast food. How do these traces and images affect us? Do we internalize them, want to be American? Do we (can we?) resist them, see America as still at cultural Cold War? Is our desire for them a symptom of European pop culture's crisis? From blackface minstrelsy, rap music and fiction to McDonald's, rock festivals and Star Trek, the cultural conception of America is critically unpacked by contributors from Europe, Israel and the USA. George McKay rounds off the picture by offering a comprehensive introduction that explains theoretical approaches to Americanization from the thesis of Yankee cultural imperialism to America as site of liberation or fantasy.

Welcome to the social and environmental devastation that is Britain in 1996. Welcome to interchangeable political parties and their chattering media jesters pulling together to make Johnny Rotten's dream come true: no future. But despite their best efforts, fear, cynicism and the National Lottery aren't the whole story. Protest hasn't disappeared during the last twenty years, and nor have solidarity and imagination. They have simply taken new forms; they have moved out and moved on. More and more people, young people especially, are making a virtue of necessity and living outside Britain's rotting institutional fabric. Travelers, tribes, ravers or squatters, direct-action protesters of every kind, DIYers. This book is the first attempt to write their history, to explore and to celebrate their endlessly creative senselessness.George McKay looks back at the hippies of the sixties and punks of the seventies, and shows how their legacies have been transformed into what he calls cultures of resistance. His journey through the undergrounds of the last two decades take us from the Windsor Free Festival of 1972 to the Castlemorton Free Rave Megaparty exactly twenty years later, from the anarchopunk band Crass via Teepee Valley and Glastonbury to today's ever-intensifying anti-road protests, and to the widespread opposition to the Criminal Justice Act.Drawing on fanzines and free papers, record lyrics, interviews and diaries, Senseless Acts of Beauty gives a vivid, insider account of countercultures, networks and movements that until now have remained largely unrecorded. At the same time, George McKay analyzes their effects, and gives his own answers to the questions they pose: what are their politics, their aspirations, their consequences? One thing is certain, he argues: if there is resistance anywhere in Britain today, then it is here, in the beat-up buses, beleaguered squats and tree-top barricades, that we should start to look for it.

Collective youth up trees or down tunnels, protest camps and all-night raves across the land-these are the spectacular features of the politics and culture of nineties youth in Britain. DiY Culture lays to rest the myth of "Thatcher's children," for the flags are flying again-green, red and black.Editor George McKay claims that popular protest today is characterized by a culture of immediacy and direct action. Gathered together here for the first time is a collection of in-depth and reflective pieces by activists and other key figures in DiY culture, telling their own stories and histories. From the environmentalist to the video activist, the raver to the road protester, the neo-pagan to the anarcho-capitalist, the authors demonstrate how the counterculture of the nineties offers a vibrant, provocative and positive alternative to institutionalized unemployment and the restricted freedoms and legislated pleasures of UK plc.

This is a guide to names used in Scotland - Scots, Gaelic, international, ancient, modern, and timeless - and their origins and meanings. These names are either popular in modern Scotland, or are chosen because they have some special significance or historical link to the country. With Gaelic pronunciations, and historical and geographical references to the origin of first names and surnames, this book both helps parents choose a name for their baby, and also guides the reader to the history of Scotland's most common surnames. Find out whether you have Scots ancestry in this fascinating compilation.