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Paperback Book Details
  • 06/2015
  • 9780692438152
  • 350 pages
  • $16.99
Adam Caress
Author
The Day Alternative Music Died
Adam Caress, author

Adult; Pop Culture & Sports; (Market)

At once a groundbreaking cultural history of rock music and an impassioned defense of the unique value of art, The Day Alternative Music Died is a timely and essential addition to the cultural discourse. Featuring a meticulously researched and eminently readable narrative that will appeal to both casual and diehard music fans, The Day Alternative Music Died tells the fascinating story of the tensions between artistic and commercial aspirations throughout the history of rock music. Author Adam Caress grafts the vital and untold story of the rise and fall of the alternative music scene in the 1980s and 90s into a larger rock music narrative that spans half a century, shedding light on a number of crucial developments in rock and popular music which remain widely misunderstood, even as they continue to have far-reaching implications for the future of music creation, consumption, and criticism. With a scope that encompasses everything from Bob Dylan’s arrival on the rock scene in the mid-1960s through Spotify’s recent attempts to establish a new model for music distribution, The Day Alternative Music Died provides engaging and valuable insight into what it means to be a music fan, artist, and critic here in the 21st Century.
Reviews
In this insightful book, music writer Caress writes that he was struck by the “blatant commercialization and homogenization of alternative music” in the 1990s. Caress believes that popular rock music from the mid-1960s to now has been a constant battle between artistic and commercial aspirations, and that rock music’s current absorption into the corporate mainstream has “stripped it of the artistic credibility which had given rock its unique gravitas among the competing styles of popular music.” He begins his survey in 1965, provocatively arguing that before Bob Dylan’s arrival on the rock scene, “there was no tension between aspirations to substantive artistry and commercial success”—everyone wanted to be commercially popular entertainers. With the death of the 1960s counterculture, Caress views rock history as a constant pendulum swinging between movements focused on message and technique, such as the rise of punk rock, and more commercial movements, such as the popularity of glam metal bands. He identifies the rise of Nirvana as the peak of an “alternative” music scene. (BookLife)
Formats
Paperback Book Details
  • 06/2015
  • 9780692438152
  • 350 pages
  • $16.99
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