Out of the Basement (Paperback)

Out of the Basement tells the story of underground music (and mainstream rock that sometimes rose out of it) in post-industrial Rockford, Illinois. This 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.

David A. Ensminger is a college instructor and the author of books covering both American roots music and punk rock history--Visual Vitriol: The Street Art and Subcultures of the Punk and Hardcore Generation (Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2011), Mojo Hand: The Life and Music of Lightnin' Hopkins (Univ. of Texas Press, 2013), Left of the Dial: Conversations with Punk Icons (PM Press, 2013), Mavericks of Sound: Conversations with the Artists Who Shaped Indie and Roots Music (Rowman and Littlefield, 2014), The Politics of Punk, Out of the Basement: From Cheap Trick to DIY Punk in Rockford, IL, 1973-2005 (Microcosm, 2017), Punk Women: 40 Years of Musicians Who Built Punk Rock (Microcosm, 2021), and Roots Punk: A Visual and Oral History (Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2003). Both The Boston Globe and The Economist have highlighted his research; meanwhile, he writes for publications like Art in Print, The Journal of Popular Music Studies, Houston Press, Trust (Germany), Artcore (Britain), Razorcake, and Maximum Rock'n'Roll. He lives in Houston, Texas, where he teaches and edit over 20 blogs, including the Visual History of Punk, Hardcore, and Indie Women, which contains over 1,000 archived images: https: //punkwomen.wordpress.com