Out of the Basement tells the story of underground music (and mainstream rock that sometimes rose out of it) in post-industrial Rockford, Illinois. This is a bracing, candid, democratic, and cutting edge portrayal of a rust belt city full of rebel kids making DIY music despite the odds. It combines oral history, brutally honest memoir, music history, and a sense of blunt poetics to capture the ethos of life in the 1970s-2000s, long before the Internet made punk accessible to small towners.

From dusty used record stores and frenetic skating rinks to dank basements and sweat-piled gigs to the radical forebears like the local IWW chapter, the book follows the stories of rebels struggling to find spaces and a sense of community and their place in underground history.

Author: David Ensminger
Series: Scene History Book 3
Publisher: Microcosm Publishing
Pages: 96pp
Size: 5.5 x 7
Notes: softcover, b/w
Release Date: February 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1621067665