More than a decade after his death, alienated, awkward, heavily eye-lined Kurt Cobain continues to sit front and center in the arena of popular culture, as the subject of books, music, fashion, gossip, and inspiration for major motion pictures and documentaries. Together with flannelsporting, music-obsessed communities emerging (in the late 1980s and early 1990s) from the chilly Pacific Northwest, Nirvana, Sound Garden, and Pearl Jam changed the scene with wild aggressive sounds and truly alternative records.


Author Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth)—who introduced Kurt Cobain t David Geffen (Geffen Records), a meeting that resulted in Nirvana’s first major debut, Nevermind, in September 1991, which by December was selling 400,000 copies a week—writes about the discovery of Seattle punk youth, the seminal bands that defined the movement, the exploitation of the subculture, and the backlash of grunge, as well as the death of his longtime collaborator and intimate Cobain.

Twenty years after the release of Nirvana’s landmark album Nevermind comes Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge, the definitive word on the grunge era, straight from the mouths of those at the center of it all.
 
In 1986, fledgling Seattle label C/Z Records released Deep Six, a compilation featuring a half-dozen local bands: Soundgarden, Green River, Melvins, Malfunkshun, the U-Men and Skin Yard. Though it sold miserably, the record made music history by documenting a burgeoning regional sound, the raw fusion of heavy metal and punk rock that we now know as grunge. But it wasn’t until five years later, with the seemingly overnight success of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” that grunge became a household word and Seattle ground zero for the nineties alternative-rock explosion.

Everybody Loves Our Town captures the grunge era in the words of the musicians, producers, managers, record executives, video directors, photographers, journalists, publicists, club owners, roadies, scenesters and hangers-on who lived through it. The book tells the whole story: from the founding of the Deep Six bands to the worldwide success of grunge’s big four (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains); from the rise of Seattle’s cash-poor, hype-rich indie label Sub Pop to the major-label feeding frenzy that overtook the Pacific Northwest; from the simple joys of making noise at basement parties and tiny rock clubs to the tragic, lonely deaths of superstars Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley.
 
Drawn from more than 250 new interviews—with members of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Screaming Trees, Hole, Melvins, Mudhoney, Green River, Mother Love Bone, Temple of the Dog, Mad Season, L7, Babes in Toyland, 7 Year Bitch, TAD, the U-Men, Candlebox and many more—and featuring previously untold stories and never-before-published photographs, Everybody Loves Our Town is at once a moving, funny, lurid, and hugely insightful portrait of an extraordinary musical era.

Between 1975 and 1988 New York City spawned an incredible and wild array of artistic communities that overlapped and interbred with scant heed for generic “purity” (let alone posterity): every musician, it seemed, was also an artist, every artist a filmmaker and every filmmaker was in a band. These heady years saw the births of Punk at CBGB and Max’s Kansas City, of Hip Hop in the Bronx, the emerging art music activities of Philip Glass and Laurie Anderson, Free Jazz and the No Wave art/rock scene around James Chance, Lydia Lunch and Mars. “New York Noise” is Paula Court’s photographic tour of these colliding worlds. From her arrival in New York City in 1978, Court diligently photographed the likes of Glenn Branca, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, David Byrne, Rhys Chatham, Lou Reed, James Chance, Patti Smith, Afrika Bambaata, John Cage, Robert Longo, Jim Jarmusch, Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince, as well as bands like DNA, Suicide, Bush Tetras, ESG and the Rock Steady Crew. Also captured in these pages are nascent musicians and actors such as Michael Stipe, Steve Buscemi, Willem Dafoe and Madonna, who came into artistic maturity amid these diverse scenes. With over 400 images, many of them previously unpublished, “New York Noise” follows Soul Jazz Records’ critically acclaimed CD series, providing an unprecedented visual record of one of New York’s liveliest cultural eras.

Supersonic presents over 300 striking pages of today’s best-designed music products with a focus on Independent and Alternative Rock as well as Electronica. In addition to abundant visuals, the book features portraits of selected designers and companies, who are creating outstanding work in these musical fields. With its stunning images from today’s most exciting music, Supersonic is a source of inspiration for all music insiders, graphic artists creating music packaging and anyone interested in cutting-edge visuals.

“All the greats are here: from Marvin Gaye’s inspirational 1971 What’s Going On – a response to his brother’s return from Vietnam – to David Bowie’s extraordinary concept album The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust … Explore musical history, from the Beach Boys’ pop milestone Pet Sounds to Nirvana’s catapulting of grunge into the popular consciousness with Nevermind. As well as the acknowledged “classics,” there are many unexpected treats, such as Einsturzende Neubauten’s power tool-enhanced soundscapes, and Aphex Twin’s sonic troublemaking. 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die pays homage to the many forces at work in the musical world and a multitude of genres – a vast quota of rock ‘n’ roll and jazz, funk and punk, disco and soul, hip hop, experimental and world music, and a wide cross section of dance music.” Detailed descriptions of each album are accompanied by insights and trivia. Did you know, for example, that the Velvet Underground And Nico album is credited with inspiring artists from Bowie to Joy Division, and from R.E.M. to The Strokes? Relive the aftermath of Bob Dylan’s fateful appearance with an electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival with his darkly visionary Highway 61 Revisited, recorded in 1965. Skip forward to the retro-guitar of The Stone Roses’ eponymous album, taking in the best of the rest before, and since. From cult and obscure, to popular and mainstream, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die fully encompasses the universal culture of music.