| International Standard Book Number |
9780306837999 (hardback)
|
| International Standard Book Number |
0306837994 (hardback)
|
| Personal Name |
Klosterman, Chuck, 1972- author.
|
| Title Statement |
Rock* : a mainstream alternative history of alternative mainstream music / Chuck Klosterman.
|
| Edition Statement |
First edition.
|
| Production, Publication, Distribution, Manufacture, and Copyright Notice |
New York : Da Capo Press, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing, 2026.
|
| Physical Description |
xiii, 304 pages, 14 unnumbered pages of plates : black and white illustrations ; 24 cm.
|
| General Note |
Includes index.
|
| Formatted Contents Note |
Music: What happened -- Rock as reality -- These are the soul cages.
|
| Summary, Etc. |
Kaleidoscopic culture critic Chuck Klosterman rewrites the history of reality in an "ingenious" (Kirkus Reviews) work of speculative fiction based on a question that has never been considered or (in all likelihood) even asked: What if The Beatles had only developed a cult following while the Velvet Underground emerged as the most popular band in the world? The Velvet Underground & Nico was released in the spring of 1967. For decades, the cliche has been that it initially only sold 10,000 copies, though everyone who bought it supposedly started a band. It is the definition of a record whose influence outstrips its mass popularity. But what if the opposite had transpired? What if instead of selling 10,000 copies, it had sold...10 million copies? What if it had sold 100 million copies? What would have happened if the Velvet Underground had inexplicably become the biggest group in the history of popular music, and everything about the rest of the 20th century was merely a footnote to that phenomenon? Chuck Klosterman has generated a fictitious universe where almost everything is different, except for the songs. The songs remain the same -- the difference is how they are heard and what they now mean. Lou Reed is a messiah, reversing the monoculture and dictating the outcome of presidential elections. The Beatles disappear, though they never break up. The Rolling Stones collapse while Led Zeppelin goes bankrupt. Punk rock fills stadiums, undermined only by insouciant radicals like Boston and Van Halen. Disco is destroyed. Hip-hop becomes country. The 1980s are defined by disposable pop icons (like G.G. Allin) and Christian revivalists (like Madonna). Lenny Kravitz lets love rule, Oasis collides with a wonderwall, and the terrorist attacks of 9/11 are somehow blamed on the Strokes. Presented like The Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll if written by Philip K. Dick, Jorge Luis Borges, and Patrick Bateman, Rock* intermixes satiric contrarianism and Spinal Tap-ish absurdity with darker theories about what makes art popular, how success delineates perception, and the inescapable consensus of subjective history.
|
| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Rock music History and criticism.
|
| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Imaginary histories.
|
| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Rock music History and criticism Parodies, imitations, etc.
|
| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Rock musicians Humor.
|
| Index Term-Genre/Form |
Creative nonfiction.
|
| Index Term-Genre/Form |
Parodies (Literature)
|
| Index Term-Genre/Form |
Counterfactual histories.
|