{"id":20943,"date":"2021-05-05T05:30:47","date_gmt":"2021-05-05T09:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=20943"},"modified":"2021-05-07T09:42:49","modified_gmt":"2021-05-07T13:42:49","slug":"book-review-rock-and-roll-explorer-guide-to-san-francisco-and-the-bay-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/05\/05\/book-review-rock-and-roll-explorer-guide-to-san-francisco-and-the-bay-area\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Rock and Roll Explorer Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-20944\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/rock_explorer_san_francisco.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"525\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/rock_explorer_san_francisco.jpg 350w, https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/rock_explorer_san_francisco-200x300.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>San Francisco has a rich and varied cultural history. The city by the Bay has been home to a long succession of cultural scenes, from the Beat poets to the psychedelic explosion to the punk and new wave phenomenon of the late \u201870s and early 1980s. Relevant to my own interests, I\u2019m writing a book about the latter; <i>Disturbing<\/i><i> the Peace: 415 Records and the Rise of New Wave<\/i> will be published later this year by HoZac Books. And a new book, <i>Rock and Roll Explorer Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area<\/i> is a useful tool for both the music historian and the visitor to San Francisco.<\/p>\n<p>Coauthors Mike Katz and Crispin Kott have done an impressive job researching the city\u2019s music clubs, concert venues and other relevant landmarks, and compiling the fruit of their labors in a lively, highly readable work. Readers can approach this <i>Rock and Roll Explorer Guide<\/i> in any number of ways. The book can be used as a reference too;, and one can look up a given landmark, learning how, when and why it fits into the musical history of the city (and the wider world\u2019s cultural landscape).<\/p>\n<p>Alternatively, one can simply open it at its start and read all the way through. It works differently \u2013 but equally well \u2013 either way. Because some venues (or succession of venues in a given location) figure into the larger story at multiple points, you\u2019ll find yourself reading about the same place multiple times. But that\u2019s a feature, not a bug.<\/p>\n<p>You might be disappointed to learn that \u2013 thanks to redevelopment or earthquakes (and sometimes both), a number of key landmarks no longer exist. So a visit to those spots might not yield much more than a shrug. But a visit in the form of a read through <i>Rock and Roll Explorer<\/i> is rewarding on its own.<\/p>\n<p>Note to the wise: This book is Katz and Kott\u2019s second crack at such a project; they published an earlier volume giving New York City the same treatment. If this book is any indication, that book would be an equally fascinating and informative read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>San Francisco has a rich and varied cultural history. The city by the Bay has been home to a long succession of cultural scenes, from the Beat poets to the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20944,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,3668,49,51,62,65],"tags":[4520],"class_list":["post-20943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book","category-music-business","category-new-release","category-pop","category-rawk","category-review","tag-rock-and-roll-explorer","cat-10-id","cat-3668-id","cat-49-id","cat-51-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20943"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20956,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20943\/revisions\/20956"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}