Jacket Copy: Growing up in the eighties, you were surrounded by mysteries. These were the years of MTV and John Hughes movies, the era of big dreams and bigger shoulder pads. Like any teenage geek, Rob Sheffield spent the decade searching for true love and maybe a cooler haircut. This is his tale of stumbling into adulthood with a killer soundtrack. Inept flirtations. Dumb crushes. Deplorable fashion choices. Girls, every last one of whom was madly in love with the bassist of Duran Duran. As a confused teenager stranded in the suburbs, mowing lawns and playing video games, Rob had a lot to learn about women, love, music, and himself. But he was sure his radio had all the answers, whether he was driving an ice cream truck through Boston to "Purple Rain," slam-dancing to the Replacements, or pondering the implications of Madonna lyrics. From Bowie to Bobby Brown, from hair metal to hip hop, he loved them all. This book is a journey through the pop culture of an American adolescence that will remind you of your first crush, first car, and first kiss. But it's not just a book about music. This is a book about moments in time, and the way we obsess over them through the years.
Similar to: Chuck Klosterman, Nick Hornby, Fiction (An R.E.M. Biography)
Highlights:
--if you didn't grow up in the 80s, this book will tell you everything you ever need (or want) to know about New Wave music and the subculture that sprang up around its misfit fans
--this is a book for us wallflowers, who live vicariously through music, too shy to dare to live the life of glamour and adventure glorified in the lyrics of our musical heroes
--if you're into "Pretension" as it's own genre of literature, Sheffield's memoirs, along with the essays of Klosterman, Hornby, and David Foster Wallace are must-reads: the canon, if you will.
The theme about how people tend to obsess over moments of time is something I saw in Less Than Zero, in the fact that Clay can never get over Blair.
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