This eclectic compilation of readings tells the history of rock as it has been received and explained as a social and musical practice throughout its six decade history. This third edition includes new readings across the volume, with added material on the early origins of rock 'n' roll as well as coverage of recent developments, including the changing shape of the music industry in the twenty-first century. With numerous readings that delve into the often explosive issues surrounding censorship, copyright, race relations, feminism, youth subcultures, and the meaning of musical value, The Rock History Reader continues to appeal to scholars and students from a variety of disciplines. New to the third edition: Nine additional chapters from a broad range of perspectives Explorations of new media formations, industry developments, and the intersections of music and labor For the first time, a companion website providing users with playlists of music referenced in the book Featuring readings as loud, vibrant, and colorful as rock 'n' roll itself, The Rock History Reader is sure to leave readers informed, inspired, and perhaps even infuriated-but never bored.

This eclectic compilation of readings tells the history of rock as it has been received and explained as a social and musical practice throughout its six decade history. This third edition includes new readings across the volume, with added material on the early origins of rock 'n' roll as well as coverage of recent developments, including the changing shape of the music industry in the twenty-first century. With numerous readings that delve into the often explosive issues surrounding censorship, copyright, race relations, feminism, youth subcultures, and the meaning of musical value, The Rock History Reader continues to appeal to scholars and students from a variety of disciplines. New to the third edition: Nine additional chapters from a broad range of perspectives Explorations of new media formations, industry developments, and the intersections of music and labor For the first time, a companion website providing users with playlists of music referenced in the book Featuring readings as loud, vibrant, and colorful as rock 'n' roll itself, The Rock History Reader is sure to leave readers informed, inspired, and perhaps even infuriated-but never bored.

""Are We Not New Wave?" is destined to become the definitive study of new wave music."
--Mark Spicer, coeditor of "Sounding Out Pop"

New wave emerged at the turn of the 1980s as a pop music movement cast in the image of punk rock's sneering demeanor, yet rendered more accessible and sophisticated. Artists such as the Cars, Devo, the Talking Heads, and the Human League leapt into the Top 40 with a novel sound that broke with the staid rock cliches of the 1970s and pointed the way to a more modern pop style.

In "Are We Not New Wave?" Theo Cateforis provides the first musical and cultural history of the new wave movement, charting its rise out of mid-1970s punk to its ubiquitous early 1980s MTV presence and downfall in the mid-1980s. The book also explores the meanings behind the music's distinctive traits--its characteristic whiteness and nervousness; its playful irony, electronic melodies, and crossover experimentations. Cateforis traces new wave's modern sensibilities back to the space-age consumer culture of the late 1950s/early 1960s.

Three decades after its rise and fall, new wave's influence looms large over the contemporary pop scene, recycled and celebrated not only in reunion tours, VH1 nostalgia specials, and "80s night" dance clubs but in the music of artists as diverse as Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, and the Killers.