Caryn Rose's Blog, page 21

"Great Rock & Roll Reads for the Fall"

B-sides and Broken Hearts got a great writeup in the Huffington Post's article "Great Rock and Roll Reads for the Fall":

"If you've ever sat in a diner at 3 a.m. after a concert and hashed over the set list minute by minute, song by song — or marked the events in your life by what tour was taking place at the time, or which record was just released — or waited in line all night to buy concert tickets – or drove across the country to see a show — then likely you will enjoy this book as much as...

Great Rock & Roll Reads for the Fall - Huffington Post

"If you've ever sat in a diner at 3 a.m. after a concert and hashed over the set list minute by minute, song by song -- or marked the events in your life by what tour was taking place at the time, or which record was just released -- or waited in line all night to buy concert tickets - or drove across the country to see a show -- then likely you will enjoy this book as much as I did...It's exactly this kind of dialogue that makes the book so wonderful and real. Rose is steeped in rock and roll history, this is her life blood, she walks the walk and talks the talk."

Great Rock & Roll Reads for the Fall - Huffington Post

The Horrible Crowes, Bowery Ballroom, 9/8/11

Almost no one I know cares about Brian Fallon, or Gaslight Anthem, or Fallon's latest project, Horrible Crowes. I get it, because I came dangerously close to disregarding him myself – the first time I saw him, in an opening slot, he was yet another guy with an acoustic guitar from New Jersey dropping massively unsubtle "Thunder Road" references. (I confess there may have been some snickering on my part at the time.)

But that was a while ago, and I am now the person who buys the poster from...

20/20 on "New Wave" from 1979

This was the best you could get for music on television back then, and given the time and the outlet, this is not a terrible report, at all. It has a clue, and it also quells the whole OMG PUNK ROCK HEROIN AND YOU WILL KILL YOUR GIRLFRIEND that was the usual tenor of mainstream media when talking about this music back in the day.

There's some great footage in here, especially of the Ramones at the Diplomat, the Talking Heads (with an interview w/David Byrne and Jerry Harrison), and the Clash l...

"you sure know a lot about music for a girl"

I was against the idea of wasting time and energy on a book launch party for my novel, B-sides and Broken Hearts, until I had the brainwave to use the occasion to invite some of my amazing friends to read with me, and then I suddenly liked the idea a whole lot.

So I invited Maura Johnston (Village Voice), Evie Nagy (RollingStone.com), Judy McGuire (Dategirl columnist and author of How Not To Date), Devon Maloney (Billboard Pro) and Jillian Mapes (Billboard) and amazingly, they all said...

Rock Scene

When I was a teenager, my father used to go into NYC for business on a fairly regular basis, and he would always be willing to stop into a record store or bring me a copy of the Village Voice, picked up at the newsstand at Grand Central. (This was before I could drive, and could go get my own copy at the newsstand at Bull's Head in Stamford, the only place in town I knew of that carried the Voice).

One day he walked in the house and handed me a copy of this magazine.
"You like Bruce...

memories of the croc

In answer to this tweet asking for memories of the Crocodile Cafe in Seattle:

THE CROC: the line along the plate glass. the chicken fingers. the neon sheep. drinking whiskey in the back bar. THE GODDAMN POLE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROOM. watching ebay sellers stalk mark arm and steve turner for autographs while they ate their chicken fingers. young fresh fellows. girl trouble. THAT POLE, WHAT IS IT DOING THERE. stubbornly refusing to believe that yes, r.e.m. WERE playing there on monday night...

this book is for you.

The trailer for my novel B-sides and Broken Hearts, featuring original music by Joel Graves from Everest, and memorabilia from my personal collection. If I'm not in the photo, I was behind the camera.

There's going to be a contest around the trailer for people who are on my mailing list.

Why Styx is not good, funny or ironic.

It was hell.

I'm talking about what it was like in high school at the end of the 70s, when the music on the radio was just awful. It was bland and overproduced and you were faced with trying very hard to convince yourself that you liked "Hotel California" or what you would do with the four copies of the Foreigner album you got at your birthday party (hint: march them down to Discount Records, where manager Greg used to let me have the run of the returns bin in exchange for updating the fiddly ...

I Want My MTV, 30 Years Later

I know it's hard to believe now, but MTV used to be cool, or at least interesting. Back at the beginning, when there weren't a lot of videos, they had to play what they got. They had Pete Townshend and Sting (before he was a total prat) doing commercials. They ran Velvet Underground outtakes and local NYC bands and anything, at all, that they could run to fill the time and space. They had "VJ's" (instead of DJ, get it?) that actually knew something about music. Martha Quinn used to be a dj...