The History of Rock: For Big Fans and Little Punks
THE HISTORY OF ROCK FOR BIG FANS AND LITTLE PUNKS TEXT AND RESEARCH Rita Nabais ILLUSTRATION Joana Raimundo 30 YEARS TRIUMPH BOOKS
FOR LITTLE PUNKS For the little punks in my life Francisco João Guilherme Matilde Maria Vasco Alice Tiago Zé Pedro Inês Sofia Gonçalo and those to come Rita To all those with whom I’ve shared tapes CDs and endless conversations about music To all those with whom I’ve had the pleasure of attending concerts To all those with whom I’ve played band To all those with whom I’ve played in make believe bands To my best friends Joana Inside this book you’ll find the main bands and musi cians in the history of Rock through illustrations short overviews of their lives special traits and trivia about each band or solo artist Who are the most important artists How did they start their bands and careers What is a Rock star made of This history of Rock is divided into several chapters At the beginning of each you’ll find a short text that will ex plain which artists or bands you’ll get to know and the reason they appear together Apart from the illustrations text and trivia about the musicians you’ll also find ex planatory tables to learn their names where they were born and what music genre s they played There’s also a section with suggestions of songs from important artists that have not been featured You’ll understand that there are musicians from all walks of life while some have studied music in school others did it by themselves or with friends and there are even those who never stopped learning and trying new things If you have any doubt about words you don’t know you can check the glossary at the end of the book or the index of music genres where you’ll find more than 40 defini tions You’ll find what Rockabilly Reggae Punk Indus trial Glam New Wave Progressive Heavy Metal Goth Grunge and many other words mean I suggest that while reading the book you listen to some of the recommended songs the best way to know music is to listen to it If you do so and if you read the entire book you’ll become a true specialist
FOR BIG FANS Three essential factors aligned in order for this book to come to life my passion for music the fact that I’m a teacher who interacts daily with children and finally the realization that there are almost no books about Rock for children This was the determining factor in embarking on this music epic targeted at children but winking at adults too There are many ways to write about the history of mu sic particularly Rock Each writer approaches the subject in a different way their own way of listening to and understanding music In this book I tried to follow the history’s timeline highlighting the most important art ists and bands I measured an artist’s relevance by the level of influence they had on others and by the depth of their mark on our culture This required investigative work consisting of research as well as structuring listen ing to and categorizing hundreds of bands In order to avoid making it too personal I perused books and refer ence websites different top charts from magazines and field experts lists of essential bands curated by musicians and music lovers whom I thank elsewhere in this book and also websites and biographies from the bands them selves Still I’ve surely left out some artists that should have been highlighted but space is finite I was fortunate enough to work with a talented team Nuno my project editor who had the demanding work of trimming unnecessary fat and improving many of the texts Joana who has materialized my ideas for each artist or band in art form Andreia who brought all the parts together without ever failing a deadline This team was joined by Pedro the translator who turned out to be much more than that being passionate about music he didn’t leave a loose end Finally Charlotte came aboard and reviewed the English text to make it bulletproof I made an effort to keep in mind that this book which may be of interest to adults was conceived of and written for children Therefore I tried to find funny anecdotes in the artists history and softened the language in order to make it fun to read the book I’ve wondered many times if the reason for this project’s existence lies actually in my own childhood in the plea sure that I would have drawn from reading such a book one that would reveal to me a less obvious musical realm in a way I could understand Rita Nabais
