"Memoir, social commentary, and music criticism in the form of essays-or "mixtapes"-from an older brother to his much younger brother who's struggling in early adulthood"--

While pundits bemoan the death of the music industry and decry teenagers for their morals, earnest, heartfelt bands like Dashboard Confessional, Jimmy Eat World, and Thursday are quietly selling hundreds of thousands of albums through dedication, relentless touring and respect for their fans. This relationship--between young people and the empathetic music that sets them off down a road of self-discovery and self-definition--is emo, a much-maligned,...

"The Clash thought they could change the world. They never did, but they created some of the greatest rock music of all time in the attempt. Clash interviews were mesmerizing. Infused with the messianic punk spirit, the Clash engaged with the press like no rock group before or since, treating interviews almost as addresses to the nation. Their pronouncements were welcomed but were hardly uncritically reported. The Clash's back pages are voluminous,...

In the late 1990s bands like Fugazi, Branch Manager, the Make-Up, Deep Lust, Quix*o*tic, Lungfish, Spirit Caravan, Scaramouche, Stinking Lizaveta, and many more were active in and around the underground music scene in Washington, DC. While those bands went on a hiatus or dissolved over the years, others inspired by them have formed, including Dead Meadow, Motorcycle Wars, the Evens, and Weird War. In Frame of Mind, all of these groups appear in over...

"Punk: The Definitive Guide to the Blank Generation and Beyond serves as the most exhaustive treatment of the punk movement-not only its music, which Rich Weidman exhaustively details from the proto-punk bands of the 1960s through the pop punk of the 1990s and 2000s to today's punk scene-but also the significant impact of punk on culture itself in terms of attitude, ideology, fashion and style, film, literature, and art"--