This Is the Sound: The Best of Alternative Rock

by Randi Reisfeld

Overview

From Nirvana and R.E.M. to Green Day and Belly, alternative bands are dominating the airways. This book looks at the hottest bands on the alternative music scene--their history, influences, concert personas, and distinctive styles. This is their sound--the sound of drums pounding and guitars wailing--the sound of rock'n'roll. Includes 50 photos.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439121634
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Publication date:	06/30/2008
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	9 MB
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

Randi Reisfeld is the author of numerous original series and novels for teens, including three New York Times bestsellers. Her series with HB Gilmour, T*Witches, is the basis for two popular Disney Channel TV-movies. Her trilogy Starlet also reflects her life-long obsession with all things Hollywood. Randi lives in Washington Township, NJ. Visit her on the web at www.randireisfeld.com.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 8 UpA sprightly anthology of rock journalism highlighting nine bands that make what Reisfeld categorizes as out-of-the-mainstream "...music with a message." The author has done her homework, extensively interviewing her subjects and liberally quoting the rock and general media. The musicians' language is often raw, but that won't surprise teen fans who read Rolling Stone. Though glibly conversational in tone, Reisfeld's profilessprinkled with rhetorical questions and metaphorical imagesmix biographical fact with largely uncritical musical review. Each of the vignettes begins with a short passage about how the band got its name, followed by more detail concerning how it formed, what its music is like, its influences, and where to contact the members by snail-mail or e-mail. The book's scope is broad, including such varied performers as the "industrial/computer rock" band Nine Inch Nails; Juliana Hatfield, the "princess of teen angst"; the Cranberries, whose message-laden songs have brought politics back to rock; and Courtney Love's band Hole, which makes music with a "pissed-off sound." Average- to poor-quality black-and-white photographs appear throughout. A lively format and catchy prose make this an appealing title about with-it groups.Jack Forman, Mesa College Library, San Diego

School Library Journal

Although few books will become passeas quickly as this wrap-up of today's hottest alternative rock bands, few will attract YAs quite as well. In her introduction, Reisfeld calls alternative rock "honest" music that dives into "deeper emotional waters, expressing powerful feelings of despair, lust, and confusion." Fans of Nine Inch Nails will dispute inclusions such as Green Day or Juliana Hatfield, but Reisfeld's selections (she devotes one chapter to each of nine bands) give a good sense of different musical styles. The author also explores the roots and psychology of each band, analyzing the music in a lively but not overblown way. Other featured bands include Belly, Live, Hole, the cranberries, and Smashing Pumpkins. Band members are listed, as are albums, and a wealth of black-and-white photos is included.

Susan Dove Lempke

From the stomach-wrenching perversity of Nine Inch Nails to the Celtic sound of the cranberries, the nine groups profiled here represent alternative rock's startling diversity, but this routine assortment of hype and soundbites does neither the music nor the musicians justice—and any survey that leaves out the likes of REM and Nirvana is bound to be seriously deficient. Acknowledging no specific sources and using language that ranges from inept ("They flat rejected all the big money offers") to laughable (the group Belly "was bulging with promise"), Reisfeld (Melrose Place, 1992, not reviewed, etc.) tells essentially the same story over and over: unhappy childhoods, serendipitous meetings with other teenage outsiders, a short period of obscurity, an album or three, huge success. The frontmen and frontwomen ("There are just as many women rocking just as hard as the guys"—oh, really?) contribute the usual platitudes about fans, money ("does absolutely nothing for you," says Eddie Vedder), and being true to themselves, and the taboo subjects—drugs, sex, business—are barely mentioned. At publication it will already be dated; stick with the sketches in Spin, Heavy Metal, and other periodicals.

Kirkus Reviews