Love Rock Revolution

Punk isn't a sound--it's an idea! In its history, K Records has fostered some of independent music's greatest artists, including Bikini Kill, Beat Happening, Built to Spill, Beck, Modest Mouse, and the Gossip. In 1982, K Records released its first cassette and put its own spin on punk's defiant manifesto: You don't need anyone's permission to make music. Thirty years later, the label continues to operate in the underground while rightfully claiming a role as one of the most transformative engines of modern independent music. It has also galvanized the international pop underground, helped create the grunge scene that took over pop culture, and provided a launching pad for the riot grrrl movement that changed the role of women in music forever. Love Rock Revolution tells the story of how it all happened, recounting the early journeys of K Records founder Calvin Johnson from the punk mecca of London to the hardcore clubs of Washington, D.C., in the late-'70s, the creation of K Records in the '80s, the label's role in revolutionizing independent music in the '90s, and its struggle to survive that revolution with its integrity intact. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Covering one of the most unforgettable moments in modern history—and including striking images of twentieth-century icons such as Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsburg, Grace Slick, and more—The Haight is an indispensable gallery of legendary photographer Jim Marshall’s iconic Sixties-era San Francisco photography. The counter-culture movement of the 1960s—and the wellspring of creativity it fostered—is one of the most continually fascinating and endlessly examined moments of the twentieth century. The footprint of that movement reverberates strongly today in music, fashion, literature, and social issues, to name a few. Widely regarded as the cradle of revolution, California’s Haight-Ashbury grew in the sixties from a small neighborhood in San Francisco to a worldwide phenomenon—a concept that extends far beyond the boundaries of the intersection itself. Legendary photographer Jim Marshall visually chronicled this area as perhaps no one else did. Renowned for his powerful portraits of some of the greatest musicians of the era, Marshall covered Haight-Ashbury with the same unique eye that allowed him to amass a staggering archive of rock-and-roll photography and Grammy recognition for his life’s work. In this one-of-a-kind book, the full extent of Marshall’s Haight-Ashbury work is stunningly displayed: live concerts, powerful candids, intimate sessions with icons of the day, street scenes, crash pads, alleyways, and the human be-in, all culminating in the definitive photographic record of a watershed moment in time. Featuring hundreds of images of everyone from Bill Graham, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jefferson Airplane to Donovan, The Beatles, Allen Ginsberg, and Timothy Leary, The Haight tells the complete and comprehensive story of the street, creative, cultural, and revolutionary aspects of the day. Written by bestselling San Francisco music journalist Joel Selvin, the story behind each and every one of these incomparable images is disclosed through an intimate and revealing narrative, lending the images a fascinating context and prospective. Bold and beautifully crafted, The Haight captures the full scope and nuance of Marshall’s San Francisco photography and offers fresh insight into the Summer of Love, Haight-Ashbury, and beyond.

Ally Nightingale has secrets. Secrets she doesn’t even share with the Rock Chicks. But two men know what she’s up to. One has her back. The other has her heart, but he doesn’t know it. As Ally rewinds the last year of her life, she knows two things. One, she’s never going to get what every Rock Chick should have—her own Hot Bunch guy. And two, she’s a Nightingale through and through. She just isn’t sure what to do about it. But as her secrets are revealed, the men in her life react. Darius Tucker, a lifelong friend, as usual, takes her back. Ren Zano, the man she loves, isn’t quite so sure. The Rock Chicks, Hot Bunch and the entire gang at Fortnum’s weigh in, and a Rock Chick Revolution starts brewing. It’s up to Ally to control it and prove what she knows down to her bones. She’s a Rock Chick, she deserves her hot guy and she’s going to keep the one she wants… Because bottom line: she’s a Nightingale.

• A New York Times Summer Reading List selection • A Publishers Weekly Best Summer Book of 2015 • A Business Insider Best Summer Read • An Esquire Father’s Day Book selection • A New York Observer Best Music Book of 2015 • A memoir charting thirty years of the American independent rock underground by a musician who knows it intimately Jon Fine spent nearly thirty years performing and recording with bands that played various forms of aggressive and challenging underground rock music, and, as he writes in this memoir, at no point were any of those bands “ever threatened, even distantly, by actual fame.” Yet when members of his first band, Bitch Magnet, reunited after twenty-one years to tour Europe, Asia, and America, diehard longtime fans traveled from far and wide to attend those shows, despite creeping middle-age obligations of parenthood and 9-to-5 jobs, testament to the remarkable staying power of the indie culture that the bands predating the likes of Bitch Magnet--among them Black Flag, Mission of Burma, and Sonic Youth --willed into existence through sheer determination and a shared disdain for the mediocrity of contemporary popular music. In indie rock’s pre-Internet glory days of the 1980s, such defiant bands attracted fans only through samizdat networks that encompassed word of mouth, college radio, tiny record stores and ‘zines. Eschewing the superficiality of performers who gained fame through MTV, indie bands instead found glory in all-night recording sessions, shoestring van tours and endless appearances in grimy clubs. Some bands with a foot in this scene, like REM and Nirvana, eventually attained mainstream success. Many others, like Bitch Magnet, were beloved only by the most obsessed fans of this time. Like Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, Your Band Sucks is an insider’s look at a fascinating and ferociously loved subculture. In it, Fine tracks how the indie-rock underground emerged and evolved, how it grappled with the mainstream and vice versa, and how it led many bands to an odd rebirth in the 21 st Century in which they reunited, briefly and bittersweetly, after being broken up for decades. Like Patti Smith’s Just Kids, Your Band Sucks is a unique evocation of a particular aesthetic moment. With backstage access to many key characters in the scene—and plenty of wit and sharply-worded opinion—Fine delivers a memoir that affectionately yet critically portrays an important, heady moment in music history.

Traces the development of rock music from its introduction in the mid-1950's to today's electronic forms and considers its social and psychological implications.

Well into the new millennium, the analog cassette tape continues to claw its way back from obsolescence. New cassette labels emerge from hipster enclaves while the cassette’s likeness pops up on T-shirts, coffee mugs, belt buckles, and cell phone cases. In Unspooled, Rob Drew traces how a lowly, hissy format that began life in office dictation machines and cheap portable players came to be regarded as a token of intimate expression through music and a source of cultural capital. Drawing on sources ranging from obscure music zines to transcripts of Congressional hearings, Drew examines a moment in the early 1980s when music industry representatives argued that the cassette encouraged piracy. At the same time, 1980s indie rock culture used the cassette as a symbol to define itself as an outsider community. Indie’s love affair with the cassette culminated in the mixtape, which advanced indie’s image as a gift economy. By telling the cassette’s long and winding history, Drew demonstrates that sharing cassettes became an acceptable and meaningful mode of communication that initiated rituals of independent music recording, re-recording, and gifting.

From the gospel music of slavery in the antebellum South to anti-apartheid freedom songs in South Africa, this two-volume work documents how music has fueled resistance and revolutionary movements in the United States and worldwide. Political resistance movements and the creation of music—two seemingly unrelated phenomenon—often result from the seed of powerful emotions, opinions, or experiences. This two-volume set presents essays that explore the connections between diverse musical forms and political activism across the globe, revealing fascinating similarities regarding the interrelationship between music and political resistance in widely different geographic or cultural circumstances. The breadth of specific examples covered in Sounds of Resistance: The Role of Music in Multicultural Activism highlights strong similarities between diverse situations—for example, protest against the Communist government in Poland and drug discourse in hip hop music in the United States—and demonstrates how music has repeatedly played a vital role in energizing or expanding various political movements. By exploring activism and how music relates to specific movements through an interdisciplinary lens, the authors document how music often enables powerless members of oppressed groups to communicate or voice their concerns.