Night Beat: Shadow History of Rock and Roll - Softcover

Praise for "Night Beat: " "There is such an openness and generosity of spirit in Mikal Gilmore's sensibility that the only question is whether his writing can live up to it. It seems to do so effortlessly."--Greil Marcus, author of "Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes" "More than a collection of essays, this book is a literary box-set from one of our finest voices. Music means more because Mikal Gilmore has written about it."--Cameron Crowe "Mikal Gilmore understands the soul of rock & roll artists. He's as good as it gets."--Danny Goldberg, President and CEO, Mercury Records "Quite simply, "Night Beat" contains some of the most revelatory writing about popular music that's ever been done."--Michael Azerrad, author of "Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana" Praise for "Shot in the Heart: " "The making of art is supposed to be cathartic, but often the catharsis does more for the audience than for the creator. "Shot in the Heart" is a gesture of sustained courage that just happens to be a page turner." --Daphne Merkin, "The New Yorker" ""Shot in the Heart" is a most extraordinary and original book, and both the story and the storyteller utterly transcend the genre into a league of their own." --Bob Shacochis, author of "Easy in the Islands" "From the Hardcover edition."

Few journalists have staked a territory as definitively and passionately as Mikal Gilmore in his twenty-year career writing about rock & roll. Now, for the first time, this collection gathers his cultural criticism, interviews, reviews, and assorted musings in one essential and illuminating book. Beginning with Elvis and the birth of rock & roll, Gilmore traces the seismic changes in America as its youth responded to the postwar economic and political climate.