Los Angeles rock generally conjures memories of surf music, The Doors, or Laurel Canyon folkies. But punk? L.A.'s punk scene, while not as notorious as that of New York City, emerged full-throated in 1977 and boasted bands like The Germs, X, and Black Flag. This book explores how, in the land of the Beach Boys, punk rock took hold.As a teenager, Dewar MacLeod witnessed firsthand the emergence of the punk subculture in Southern California. As a scholar, he here reveals the origins o...

The cultural history of one of rock's greatest masterpieces told through the eyes of its creator.Tommy*, Trauma, and Postwar Youth Culture* traces the development of one of rock music's central masterpieces and its relation to the social-cultural history of the era. Composer and guitarist Pete Townshend was the creative force behind the Who, one of Britain's greatest rock bands. Townshend grew up in an England decimated by the loss of life and hope that was the ini...

Making the Scene in the Garden State explores New Jersey’s rich musical heritage through stories about the musicians, listeners and fans who came together to create sounds from across the American popular music spectrum. The book includes chapters on the beginnings of musical recording in Thomas Edison’s factories in West Orange; early recording and the invention of the Victrola at Victor Records’ Camden complex; Rudy Van Gelder’s recording studios (for Blue Note, Prestige, and ot...

Music legend Clive Davis recounts an extraordinary five-decade career in the music business, while also telling a remarkable personal story of encounters with some of the greatest musical artists of our time, including Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Simon & Garfunkel, Barry Manilow, the Grateful Dead, Patti Smith, Whitney Houston, Carlos Santana, Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin, and Alicia Keys.Orphaned in his teens, Davis earned a full scholarship to New York University...

Coming off the breakthrough success of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and Killing Yourself to Live, bestselling essayist and pop culture critic Chuck Klosterman assembles his best music journalism and media commentary previously unavailable in book form—including the groundbreaking 1996 piece about his chicken McNuggets experiment, his uncensored profile of Britney Spears, and a previously unpublished short story—all recontextualized in Chuck’s unique voice with new ...

The 25th anniversary edition of Chuck Klosterman’s debut, a hilarious memoir of growing up as a shameless metalhead in Wyndmere, North Dakota (population: 498), empirically proving that no matter where you are, kids wanna rock—now with a new introduction from the author.With a voice like Ace Frehley’s guitar, Klosterman hacks his way through hair-band history, beginning with that fateful day in 1983 when his older brother brought home Mötley Crüe’s Shout at the...

The definitive chronicle of underground music in the 1980s tells the stories of Black Flag, Sonic Youth, The Replacements, and other seminal bands whose DIY revolution changed American music forever.Our Band Could Be Your Life is the never-before-told story of the musical revolution that happened right under the nose of the Reagan Eighties -- when a small but sprawling network of bands, labels, fanzines, radio stations, and other subversives re-energized Am...

The definitive account of the radical feminist punks and their music: "Exhilarating. . . . The well-documented history Riot Grrrl deserves." — Los Angeles TimesGirls to the Front is the epic, definitive history of the Riot Grrrl movement—the radical feminist punk uprising that exploded into the public eye in the 1990s, altering America's gender landscape forever. Sara Marcus interweaves research, interviews, and her own memories as a Riot Grrrl fro...

Canada has produced many successful proponents of the genre known as heavy metal, which grew out of the hard rock of the 1970s, exploded commercially in the 1980s, and then petered out in the 1990s as grunge took over, only to rise to prominence once again in the new millennium.The road to Canadian musical glory is not lined with the palm trees and top-down convertibles of the Sunset Strip. It is a road slick with black ice, obscured by blizzards, and littered with moose and deer t...

Steven Hyden explores nineteen music rivalries and what they say about life in this "highly entertaining" book (Rolling Stone) perfect for every passionate music fan.Beatles vs. Stones. Biggie vs. Tupac. Kanye vs. Taylor. Who do you choose? And what does that say about you? Actually -- what do these endlessly argued-about pop music rivalries say about us?Music opinions bring out passionate debate in people, and Steven Hyden knows that firsthand. Ea...

Published in autumn 2001 Have Not Been the Same became the first book to comprehensively document the rise of Canadian underground rock between the years 1985 and 1995. It was a tumultuous decade that saw the arrival of Blue Rodeo The Tragically Hip Sarah McLachlan Sloan Barenaked Ladies Daniel Lanois and many others who made an indelible mark not only on Canadian culture but on the global stage as well. Have Not Been the Same tells all of their stories in rich detail through extensive fir...

In her nuanced, extremely perceptive book, Laina Dawes champions the liberating possibilities of metal while questioning the color-blindness of the metal world, celebrating the role of black women in creating rock music, examining the reaction of the black community to black punks and metalheads, and sorting out the gender issues that complicate sisterhood in a male-dominated sphere. Her thoughtful treatise on the power of music and identity challenges black women in the metal scene to joi...