Out of the Basement: From Cheap Trick to DIY Punk in Rockford, Il, 1973-2005

Out of the Basement tells the story of underground music (and mainstream rock that sometimes rose out of it) in post-industrial Rockford, Illinois. This is a bracing, candid, democratic, and cutting edge portrayal of a rust belt city full of rebel kids making DIY music despite the odds. It combines oral history, brutally honest memoir, music history, and a sense of blunt poetics to capture the ethos of life in the 1970s-2000s, long before the Internet made punk accessible to small towners. From dusty used record stores and frenetic skating rinks to dank basements and sweat-piled gigs to the radical forebears like the local IWW chapter, the book follows the stories of rebels struggling to find spaces and a sense of community and their place in underground history.


Author: David A. Ensminger
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Microcosm Publishing
Published: 02/07/2017
Series: Scene History
Pages: 96
Weight: 0.25lbs
Size: 6.90h x 5.50w x 0.40d
ISBN: 9781621067665