St. Louis Sound: An Illustrated Timeline

by Steve Pick, with Amanda E. Doyle

“I can’t think of another book that has brought me so many hours of joy as I combed through the intense level of detail, looking up names & songs on YouTube & Wikipedia, Googling venues to get addresses to look up.” - Steve Patterson, Urban Review St. Louis “Authors Steve Pick along with Amanda E. Doyle poured their hearts & souls into this masterpiece & their obvious love of music can be felt on every page.” - Laurie Beakley, Arch City Media “...you’ll be sure to discover many acts and artists that are expected, a handful you may not have realized even had roots in the Lou, as well as a few with which you have forgotten.” - Danya Artimisi

Genres: Music

240 pages, Hardcover

Published March 14, 2019

Reviews

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Large in format and conception, this book tackles the entirety of the music history of St. Louis from the dawn of time until the late teens of the 21st century in short capsule descriptions and histories of the major businesses, bands, places and news sources pertaining to music. Written in crystal clear prose, it presents each facet of history on a timeline, which brings context to seemingly unrelated genres and acts, and helps the undisciplined mind see the growth of local music from gee-gaws dug up out of Native American mounds up until the long association our town has fostered with folk and pop music of different kinds, including the rap star Nelly and his "Country Grammar."

The book is more image than text, and many great acts or venues are represented by two-page spreads of photographs with a few hundred words of text. The pages are almost completely covered in ink, and when new, the chemical scent of ink is almost overpowering. The design is a common one since the beginning of computerized page composition, so it will not be unexpected. Still, I found the design to be adequate but rather dark in color.

There is much in here for both the resident who knows much of what is here (like myself, though I was gifted with countless tiny details I either didn't know or had forgotten) or the outsider who wishes to examine the city through a musical lens. The use of the timeline is the great joy of either reader, and I'm sure I'm not alone in wishing there were as many years of interesting local acts before 1964 as there were after, but the explosion of musical exploration after 1964 merits no less.

I was pleased to see so many great artists included that I have been lucky enough to enjoy myself, and happy to say that despite being less of a student of many of the local acts included, I felt that the authors dealt as fairly as possible in all those included. If there was any error, it was including many bands I love that were perhaps on the edge of being too local, but bands that I LOVE and that I was very glad to see included.

The achievement I celebrate is that they seemed to include every great national star from our town, and I'm not expecting anyone to be able to add anyone of real substance to this definitive list until the next big thing blows up out of St. Louis.

[Ricki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very cool look at music in St Louis, but the last few decades were very artist-heavy with coverage not as broad as some of the earlier decades.