Beat Happening’s Beat Happening

This is the album that sent a shockwave of empowerment through the nation's cultural underground. In 1985, Olympia, Washington band Beat Happening released their eponymous debut of lo-fi pop songs on K Records and challenged every conception held about music. At the center of the group was the enigmatic Calvin Johnson and his revolutionary vision of artistic creation. His foresight and industriousness allowed him to recruit to the K Records roster other free-spirited artists like Beck, Modest Mouse, and Built to Spill long before they gained widespread acclaim.This book, structured in abecedarian fashion, breaks down the fundamental components that defined Beat Happening's self-titled album. With a foreword by Phil Elverum, it's organized in a light-hearted yet incisive format, each of the book's chapters details a particular facet of the record-band members, historic shows, recording sessions, songs, and ideologies-parts reflecting the album as a whole. These alphabetic ingredients constitute a recipe book for feeding your creative spirit.Here is the story of a band that popularized do-it-yourself projects and home recording with four-track tape machines decades before the digital revolution would extend an open hand to garage bands everywhere. This is the story of musical pioneers. This is Beat Happening.

Author is based in Austin, TX, site of the SXSW music festival which he is heavily involved in

Foreword by Phil ElverumDeconstructing a CupcakeA is for ActionB is for BretC is for CalvinD is for DIYE is for EvergreenF is for FirehouseG is for Girl CityH is for HeatherI is for InternationalJ is for JapanK is for KAOSL is for Love RockM is for Martin ApartmentsN is for Negative SpaceO is for OlympiaP is for PunkQ is for QuestionR is for RegionalismS is for Subterranean PopT is for TropicanaU is for UnfinishedV is for VinylW is for WashingtonX is for X-RatedY is for Yoyo StudioZ is for Zooming RocketshipBibiographyIndex

Structured in abecedarian fashion, this installment of the 33 1/3 series breaks down the fundamental components that defined Beat Happening's self-titled album.