Subcultures Books

Having grown up on "underground" FM radio during the 60's and 70's, this book was extremely enjoyable. More than just a book about a bunch of hippies running radio stations the right way (ie, playing good music as opposed to corporate-pushed excrement), "Voices in the Purple Haze" also delves into the history of rock and roll radio, from AM right up until the first FM stations started taking a chance with the new musical genre.

Keith shows the cultural and financial reasons for the growth of the underground format as well as its mutation into what eventually became AOR (Album Oriented Rock). He does this with pages and pages of interviews with the actual DJ's and executives who invented, drove and changed the underground radio scene. A case for and against the idea and ideals of the freeform format eventually appear, with both cases getting equal time right up until the end of the book. The final product is a fairly well-balanced document that gives the reader enough data to understand the history and genesis of FM radio and form their own opinions.

All in all a great book about a very important and fun period in the history of radio. By the end of the book, you'll understand why modern radio [is] so bad.

One of many things the 1960s brought us was the advent of "free-form" or "underground FM radio." As a young teenager growing up in this era in Los Angeles, I had the chance to listen to KPPC-FM and later KLOS, KMET, and KWST-FM. I even had a chance a few times to listen to KSAN in San Francisco in the early to mid 1970s. In some ways I look back and think those stations were likely the best I ever heard.

This book chronicles that era and describes the conditions that brought it about: social unrest and tumultous times, along with extremely restrictive radio programming. In interviews with numerous former "underground DJ's," they talk about what it was like to be a part of them. The book also goes on to describe the evolution of, and ultimately what "killed" them. It was again the same culture that spawned them in the first place, the "children of the 60s" who later became the "working class heroes and yuppies of the 70s and 80s." Reading this book brought back memories of an era that most likely will never exist again.

As a former college and briefly "pro" disk jockey who still is intrigued by the wild and wooly side of radio, this book was a nostalgic trip back in time.

As Gustavson uncovers the lives of these 3 individuals he enables the reader to think about why and in what way students are driven to learn outside the classroom. He allows us to see how we as teachers can harness this intrinsic motivation students have for their own activities (like zine writing, turntablism, and grafitti)and shift it into our schools and classrooms. He taps into ideas by John Dewey and other teaching greats whom have emphasized the importance of experience in education and adds to it his own modern non-lofty slant. It is book that makes you think deeply about what it means to teach with your students instead of at them. Read this book!

This book is a must for teachers and scholars alike. Gustavson argues that current educational practice ignores (at best) or actively discourages how youth actually engage creative practices in their daily lives.

Through in-depth ethnographic interviews with three student-artists (a graffiti artist, a 'zine writer, and a turntablist), Gustavson teases out the sophisticated habits of mind and body these youth actively engage while doing their thing. In the process, he provides the reader with useful thumbnail histories of graffiti art, 'zines, and turntablism that help the reader appreciate the deep socio-historical roots of each. More importantly, he shows that far from merely "wasting time" or "vandalizing property" these youth are engaged in real learning as they practice their respective crafts. We ignore how these youth learn "on their own terms" Gustavson argues, at our peril.

A skillful weave of theory and practice, Gustavson not only diagnoses the problem with much contemporary education, but also addresses how we as scholars, educators and adminstrators might change the way we structure our curricula, classrooms and schools to transform them into places of genuine inquiry and learning. In helping us think about how to bridge the gap between learning in and outside of school, Gustavson's book is truly visionary. Check it out and change the way you think about graffiti, 'zines, turntablism and your students forever.

While the title of this book suggests the obvious--that it deals with the houses and barns of the Amish--there is much more to it. After a cursory discussion of Amish architectural preferences, the author focuses on three Amish farms to give the reader a better sense of how Amish farmsteads and farming practices have evolved. These accounts are, however, largely genealogical. Overall, the book is very enlightening and informative; it is written in a clear and refreshingly lucid manner, and contains numerous black & white photographs of homes, farm buildings and equipment--and, in some cases, livestock. Truly a pleasure to read.

This catalogue has excellent photographs that gives one a sense of the attitude of the Beat Generation. Everyone is familiar with the writers of the period, but not everyone knows about art generated during those years. This catalogue gives a review of art, film, and writing being created at the time. Not only that but it devotes a chapter to women and a chapter to minorites working during the time period. A good source of information for anyone interested in the 1950's to the early 1960's.

Although the context for [this book] is the world's present ecological and social dilemmas, it is really about Mateel, a small, northern California community and its efforts to construct a new way of living. Anders describes in detail this Humboldt County culture, which exists in the upper Mattole and Eel River watersheds.

Mateel's origins are in late sixties counterculture and most of the community's original inhabitants were considered "dropouts." It is here conviction that Mateelians have combined elements from America's past with ideas borrowed from other cultures to arrive at solutions that can only be described as futurist.

I lived the history contained in this book and so I know that this is the truth. Not the truth as the mainstream press would have you see it but what it was really like to live through the 70's. It was a time of hope and a time of struggle. If you want to know what it was like, read this book.

This is a richly detailed, fascinating look at the organization of the social groups known as "hippie communes". This book examines a number of these communities that existed in Vermont and Western Massachusetts during the 1960's and 1970's. The book focuses on a confrontation between the laid-back "Jackson's Meadows" commune and the more aggressive and regimented "Krishna Brethren" commune over a piece of land in Vermont. I personally lived with the pseudonymous "Krishna Brethren" as a young teenager during 1970-1975 and personally witnessed some of the events and all of the locales mentioned in the book. The writer's impartial description of the drama was a real eye opener for someone like me who was too young at the time to fully grasp the psychological and political issues that were invoked by the conflict. I do recall how the rival group was demonized by the Krishna Brethren during some of their lectures and Meetings, especially when the JM leader refused to capitulate to the Brethren's demands. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the commune movements of the late sixties and early seventies. For anyone who lived with the communities described, this book is a MUST READ!!

Brake is the best, the most analytical and most interesting book I have read about subcultures. He takes the approash of symbolic interactionism, theories, and uses it for what it is worth. I would recomend this book to all people interested in you cultures and youthsubcultures

This book is sick; it is off the chain. Love that cover. D-dogg Wenner.

This book is interesting, thought-provoking, and incredibly accessible. Shankar draws on extended fieldwork to depict the lives of Desi teens in vivid terms. she explores important issues of immigration and diaspora, language use, multiculturalism, and the difficulties faced by youth who find themselves with a range of choices about how to go about being Desi in the US today.