Out of the Basement: From Cheap Trick to DIY Punk in Rockford, IL, 1973-2005

Small town America built the punk rock revolution; but big city scenes have gotten all the coverage. 

No longer! Out of the Basement 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.Includes hilarious untold stories and anecdotes about Fred Armisen, Green Day, and the Misfits.