Rock Music: North Carolina
"I'm Gone to Carolina in My Mind": Rock Music in North Carolina
Concert poster for the Breeders and the Comas at Cat's Cradle, Chapel Hill, N.C., February 6, 2002, Casey Burns Collection (#20415), Southern Folklife Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
NC rocks, too! Multiple rock music scenes and Rock and Roll Hall of Famers have come out of North Carolina. Most notably, the Chapel Hill music scene has made contributions to folk, indie, punk, and alternative rock music and has produced bands, such as Southern Culture on the Skids, Superchunk, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Ben Folds Five, and many more. These library resources contextualize the music scenes, artists, and scholars of rock music in North Carolina.
Books
Step It Up and Go: The Story of North Carolina Popular Music, from Blind Boy Fuller and Doc Watson to Nina Simone and Superchunk by
This book is a love letter to the artists, scenes, and sounds defining North Carolina's extraordinary contributions to American popular music. David Menconi spent three decades immersed in the state's music, where traditions run deep but the energy expands in countless directions. Menconi shows how working-class roots and rebellion tie North Carolina's Piedmont blues, jazz, and bluegrass to beach music, rock, hip-hop, and more. From mill towns and mountain coves to college-town clubs and the stage of American Idol, Blind Boy Fuller and Doc Watson to Nina Simone and Superchunk, Step It Up and Go celebrates homegrown music just as essential to the state as barbecue and basketball. Spanning a century of history from the dawn of recorded music to the present, and with sidebars and photos that help reveal the many-splendored glory of North Carolina's sonic landscape, this is a must-read for every music lover.
Call Number: ML3477.7.N85 M45 2020ISBN: 9781469659350Publication Date: 2020-10-19
A Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race, and New Beginnings in a New South by
Tracing the roots of Southern music, Dixie Lullaby is a brilliantly original look at how the unifying powers of rock music in the 1970s and 1980s helped Southerners to come to terms with their complex racial past. Photos throughout.
Call Number: ML3918.R63 K46 2004ISBN: 0743237943Publication Date: 2004-08-24
A Dream about Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons by
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the genre-defying icon Ben Folds comes a memoir that is as nuanced, witty, and relatable as his cult-classic songs. "A Dream About Lightning Bugs reads like its author: intelligent, curious, unapologetically punk, and funny as hell."--Sara Bareilles NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND PASTE Ben Folds is a celebrated American singer-songwriter, beloved for songs such as "Brick," "You Don't Know Me," "Rockin' the Suburbs," and "The Luckiest," and is the former frontman of the alternative rock band Ben Folds Five. But Folds will be the first to tell you he's an unconventional icon, more normcore than hardcore. Now, in his first book, Folds looks back at his life so far in a charming and wise chronicle of his artistic coming of age, infused with the wry observations of a natural storyteller. In the title chapter, "A Dream About Lightning Bugs," Folds recalls his earliest childhood dream--and realizes how much it influenced his understanding of what it means to be an artist. In "Measure Twice, Cut Once" he learns to resist the urge to skip steps during the creative process. In "Hall Pass" he recounts his 1970s North Carolina working-class childhood, and in "Cheap Lessons" he returns to the painful life lessons he learned the hard way--but that luckily didn't kill him. In his inimitable voice, both relatable and thought-provoking, Folds digs deep into the life experiences that shaped him, imparting hard-earned wisdom about both art and life. Collectively, these stories embody the message Folds has been singing about for years: Smile like you've got nothing to prove, because it hurts to grow up, and life flies by in seconds. Praise for A Dream About Lightning Bugs "Besides being super talented, and an incredibly poignant and multifaceted musician, Ben Folds is a fantastic author. I couldn't put this book down--and not just because I taped it to my hand. Ben takes us into his mind and into his process from the very beginnings of his childhood to where he is today--one of the greatest musicians and writers that has ever graced the art."--Bob Saget
Call Number: ML420.F656 A3 2019ISBN: 9781984817273Publication Date: 2019-07-30
Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, the Indie Label That Got Big and Stayed Small by
Merge Records defies everything you've heard about the music business. Started by two twenty-year-old musicians, Merge is a lesson in how to make and market great music on a human scale. The fact that the company is prospering in a failing industry is something of a miracle. Yet two of their bands made the Billboard Top 10 list; more than 1 million copies of Arcade Fire's Neon Bible have been sold; Spoon has appeared on Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show; and the Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs is a contemporary classic. In celebration of their twentieth anniversary, founders Mac and Laura offer first-person accounts--with the help of their colleagues and Merge artists--of their work, their lives, and the culture of making music. Our Noise also tells the behind-the-scenes stories of Arcade Fire, Spoon, the Magnetic Fields, Superchunk, Lambchop, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Butterglory. Hundreds of personal photos of the bands, along with album cover art, concert posters, and other memorabilia are included.
Call Number: ML3792.M47 C66 2009ISBN: 9781565126244Publication Date: 2009-09-15
Late Century Dream: Movements in the US Indie Music Underground by
Late Century Dream: Movements in the US Indie Underground looks in detail at a number of regional music scenes in the US independent music underground through the fertile years of the 1980s and 1990s, encompassing many different genres under the DIY banner. Featuring newly commissioned essays and extended appendices of new interview and oral material, Late Century Dream takes a fresh, detailed look at both lesser-reported aspects of familiar movements like grunge--by way of progenitors such as Green River and Mudhoney, and other lesser-known but influential groups such as TAD and Skinyard--and the 80s hardcore and punk scene in Washington DC, and in cities and regions with little or no prior discussion around their music scene. These include: the early-90s post-hardcore/early screamo scene which sprang up around Gravity Records in San Diego, including Heroin, Antioch Arrow, Three Mile Pilot and many others; the legacy of the Butthole Surfers and the development of the punk scene in Texas which encompassed groups such as The Dicks and Big Boys; and the three phases of Chapel Hill music, from the mid-80s tail end of proto-indie, through the legendary college-rock boom encompassing bands like Superchunk and Archers of Loaf, to late-90s iterations spearheaded by groups such as the White Octave and Sorry About Dresden, and many others. Divided simply in to chapters focusing on each different region or city, the book will also be illustrated with a wealth of archival and unseen promo, live and zine imagery. Late Century Dream is an exciting addition to Black Dog Publishing's music titles, following on from Black Metal and Krautrock, in giving readers an alternative view of the popular music scenes.
Call Number: ML3534.3 .L38 2013ISBN: 9781907317972Publication Date: 2013-11-05
James Taylor: Long Ago and Far Away by
In this major biography, the late Timothy White explores both the career and the troubled personal journey of the legendary singer-songwriter.Rich with insights from Paul McCartney, Carly Simon, Sting, Danny "Kootch" Kortchmar, the entire Taylor family and many other key figures around James Taylor and his music.Dispelling myth and rumour, Long Ago and Far Away examines the roots of Taylor's mental anguish and his recurring bouts with heroin and alcohol. This is an epic family history, an exploration of the real stories behind Fire and Rain and the rest of the songs, as well as a frank account of Taylor's days on the Apple record label, the financial disaster of his Greatest Hits album deal and the deaths and divorces that have haunted his life.
Call Number: ML410.T2 W45 2005ISBN: 1844498646Publication Date: 2005-10-01
Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone by
From the author of the acclaimed Dinah Washington biography Queen comes this complete account of the triumphs and difficulties of the brilliant and high-tempered Nina Simone. Her distinctive voice and music occupy a singular place in the canon of American song. Tapping into newly unearthed material--including stories of family and career--Nadine Cohodas gives us a luminous portrait of the singer who was born Eunice Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina, in 1933, one of eight children in a proud black family. We see her as a prodigiously talented child who is trained in classical piano through the charitable auspices of a local white woman. We witness her devastating disappointment when she is rejected by the Curtis Institute of Music--a dream deferred that would forever shape her self-image as well as her music. Yet by 1959--now calling herself Nina Simone--she had sung New York City's venerable Town Hall and was on her way. As we watch Simone's exciting rise to stardom, Cohodas expertly weaves in the central factors of her life and career: her unique and provocative relationship with her audiences (she would "shush" them angrily; as a classically trained musician, she didn't believe in cabaret chat); her involvement in and contributions to the civil rights movement; her two marriages, including one of brief family contentment with police detective Andy Stroud, with whom she had her daughter, Lisa; the alienation from the United States that drove her to live abroad. Alongside these threads runs a darker one: Nina's increasing and sometimes baffling outbursts of rage and pain and her lifelong struggle to overcome a deep sense of personal injustice, which persisted even as she won international renown. Princess Noire is a fascinating story, well told and thoroughly documented with intimate photos--a treatment that captures the passions of Nina's life.
Call Number: ML420.S5635 C65 2010ISBN: 9780375424014Publication Date: 2010-02-02
Hell: My Life in the Squirrel Nut Zippers: A Memoir by
The Swing Movement -- all jazz hands and high-waisted pants -- advanced and receded in good order. I wrote this book to tell the other side of the story. I want you to know about the oddball collection of iconoclasts who got together and made the Squirrel Nut Zippers what they were: a combustible, improbable gumbo of joy and menace. Along the way, I write about our many influences: jazz and blues and hot music and calypso and, yes, swing. Come run these fields, like rabbits, while the harvest moon hangs caught in the branches. Come linger over this snapshot.
Call Number: ML421.S695 M39 2013ISBN: 9780991042593Publication Date: 2014-08-16
Kill the Music: The Chronicle of a College Radio Idealist's Rock 'n' Roll Rebellion in an Era of Intrusive Mortality and Censorship by
This poignant memoir explores the experiences of Michael G. Plumides, Jr. - a college radio deejay at WUSC-FM, and the owner of the ill-fated and controversial 4808 Club, located in Uptown Charlotte, NC. Through entertaining conversations with legendary rock stars, tales of sexual liaisons, and the ins-and-outs of concert promotion, KILL THE MUSIC is a no-holds-barred comedic, skewed, enlightening, and sometimes disheartening look into a past not so long ago, and how oddly our society connected without the use of social media but by the posting of a flyer.The book also touches on the growth of music in North and South Carolina and the bands who hit it big, censorship issues, and the puritanism that suffered the "New South" during the late 1980's; the era of moral hysteria under Jesse Helms, Phyllis Schafly, and the Parent Music Recourse Center. Plumides, the son of a flamboyant attorney and a beauty queen, traverses through the politics of music, and the small town mentality of a "World Class City." Commentaries on these issues throughout but never short on levity, KILL THE MUSIC is an insightful must-have for those who love seedy tales of live music nightclubs and their rivalries, but also the different genres of rock, rap, punk, metal, and alternative, during the salad days of college radio on the backdrop of the stifling Reagan and Bush eras.
Call Number: CB P734pISBN: 9781439234471Publication Date: 2009-04-15
Novel Sounds: Southern Fiction in the Age of Rock and Roll by
The 1950s witnessed both the birth of both rock and roll and the creation of Southern literature as we know it. Around the time that Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley put their electric spin on Southern vernacular ballads, a canonical group of white American authors native to rock's birthplace began to write fiction about the electrification of those ballads, translating into literary form key cultural changes that gave rise to the infectious music coming out of their region. In Novel Sounds, Florence Dore tells the story of how these forms of expression became intertwined and shows how Southern writers turned to rock music and its technologies--tape, radio, vinyl--to develop the "rock novel." Dore considers the work of Southern writers like William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and William Styron alongside the music of Bessie Smith, Lead Belly, and Bob Dylan to uncover deep historical links between rock and Southern literature. Along with rock pioneers, Southern authors drew from blues, country, jazz, and other forms to create a new brand of realism that redefined the Southern vernacular as global, electric, and notably white. Resurrecting this Southern literary tradition at the birth of rock, Dore clarifies the surprising but unmistakable influence of rock and roll on the American novel. Along the way, she explains how literature came to resemble rock and roll, an anti-institutional art form if there ever was one, at the very moment academics claimed literature for the institution.
Call Number: PS261 .D67 2018ISBN: 9780231185226Publication Date: 2018-06-12
Articles
- "The Inconsistent Drifters" by Norman Jopling, Record Mirror, 7 October 1961
- "Link Wray: Be What You Want To" by Wayne Robins, Rolling Stone, 24 May 1963
- "Nina Simone" by Dave Godin, Blues & Soul, July 1968
- "James Taylor Comes to Town" by Penny Valentine, Sounds, 31 October 1970
- "Meet the dB's" by Peter Silverton, Sounds, 21 February 1981
- "Let's Active" by Richard Grabel, Creem, October 1986
- "Superchunk: Tossing Seeds (Singles 89-91)" by Chuck Eddy, Rolling Stone, 16 April 1992
- "Sonic Youth: Dirty" by David Cavanagh, Select, September 1992
- "George Clinton" by Ben Thompson, The Independent, 8 June 1996
- "Ben Folds Thrives" by Rob Tannenbaum, Details, April 1997
- Rock's BackpagesAn archive of music journalism and popular music writing of the last 60 years. Includes 38,000 articles on all subcategories of popular music.
Archival Materials
Wilson Library Special Collections contains a significant amount of archival materials relating to rock music in North Carolina. Below is a selected list of collections pertaining to music venues, record labels, rock music journalists, artists, and scholars in the North Carolina and Chapel Hill areas:
- Greg Barbera Collection, 1995-2005
- Clark Blomquist Collection, 1991-2009
- Steve Boyle Collection on North Carolina Rock Music, 1980-2014
- Casey Burns Collection, 1997-2006
- Daniel Coston Collection, 1975-2019
- J. Taylor Doggett Collection, 1991-2005
- Allison Hussey Collection, 2008-2019
- Independent Weekly Records, 1982-2004
- Duck Kee Studio Collection, 1976-2012
- David Lawrence Menconi Collection, 1984-2015
- Jason Lonon Poster Collection, 2004-2010
- Ron Liberti Collection, 1993-2019
- Merge Records Collection, 1987-2012
- David L. Robert Collection, circa 1970s-2011
- Chris Stamey Collection, 1975-2006
- Bryson Strauss Collection, 2000
- Southern Culture on the Skids Collection, circa 1980s-2000s
- D. Kent Thompson and Sue Meyer Thompson Collection, 1965-2018
- Craig Zearfoss Collection, circa 1988-2008
Audio
The Music Library holds more than 60,000 sound and video recordings you can check out. Use the library catalog to find their call numbers, then ask for them at the Music Library Circulation Desk.
- Use ALL FIELDS search.
- Refine your search (to CD, Vinyl record, Audiocassette, etc) with limiters on the left side of the screen
|
Ex. ALL FIELDS: James Taylor |
Ex. ALL FIELDS: Rock music |
Pay attention to the item's location; there are several collections on campus that have music materials.
When you find a recording you are interested in, click on its Subject tab to find similar items. If the item you want is checked out or we don't own it, you can request it through Interlibrary Loan.
Videos
First in Flight : A North Carolina Retrospective by
"'First in Flight' ... documents the rise of the North Carolina underground scene."
Call Number: DVD C784.9 F527fPublication Date: 2005
Chapel Hill: Young Rock by
Video compilation of Chapel Hill-area bands. "Seventeen videos interspersed with clips of our most famous and not-so-famous locals."
Call Number: C971.68 C46cPublication Date: 1994
Suggested Subject Headings
"Rock concerts -- North Carolina"
"Rock concerts -- North Carolina -- Chapel Hill"
"Rock groups -- North Carolina"
"Rock music -- North Carolina"
"Rock music -- North Carolina -- Chapel Hill"
"Rock music -- Social aspects -- Southern States"
"Rock musicians -- North Carolina"
NC Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Inductees
There are currently fifteen North Carolinians in the Rock Hall:
- Clyde McPhatters and Ben E. King of the Drifters (1988)
- Shirley Owens and Doris Coley of the Shirelles (1996)
- George Clinton of Parliament Funkadelic (1997)
- James Taylor (2000)
- Ed King of Lynyrd Skynyrd (2006)
- Obadiah H. Carter, James E. Moore, Lowman Pauling Jr., Eugene Tanner, and John L. Tanner of the "5" Royales (2015)
- Nina Simone (2018)
- Elizabeth Cotten (2022)
- Link Wray (2023)
Pictorial Works
North Carolina Musicians by
Daniel Coston's career in photography began accidentally. A magazine writer, he began taking photographs for his stories when the regular photographer was unavailable, and his contacts as a writer led him to invitations to take pictures of local musicians. His life-long fascination with the sounds of North Carolina music drew him to begin documenting the musicians in his adopted state. This book is a collection of the best photographs and the stories behind them from the past sixteen years. From Doc Watson to Ben Folds, musicians of all genres are represented here in the studio, in concert, at festivals, and at home. Coston also interviewed members of the Avett Brothers, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Squirrel Nut Zippers and many more.
