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Rock Me on the Water: 1974—The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television and Politics
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About This Book
In this exceptional cultural history, Atlantic Senior Editor Ronald Brownstein tells the kaleidoscopic story of one monumental year that marked the city of Los Angeles' creative peak, a glittering moment when popular culture was ahead of politics in predicting what America would become. Los Angeles in 1974 exerted more influence over popular culture than any other city in America. Los Angeles that year, in fact, dominated popular culture more than it ever had before, or would again. Working in film, recording, and television studios around Sunset Boulevard, living in Brentwood and Beverly Hills or amid the flickering lights of the Hollywood Hills, a cluster of transformative talents produced an explosion in popular culture which reflected the demographic, social, and cultural realities of a changing America. At a time when Richard Nixon won two presidential elections with a message of backlash against the social changes unleashed by the sixties, popular culture was ahead of politics in predicting what America would become. The early 1970s in Los Angeles was the time and the place where conservatives definitively lost the battle to control popular culture. Rock Me on the Water traces the confluence of movies, music, television, and politics in Los Angeles month by month through that transformative, magical year. Ronald Brownstein reveals how 1974 represented a confrontation between a massive younger generation intent on change, and a political order rooted in the status quo. Today, we are again witnessing a generational cultural divide. Brownstein shows how the voices resistant to change may win the political battle for a time, but they cannot hold back the future.
Reviews
"into an era when the 1960s counterculture became mainstream."
"An insightful, expertly written book."
"With a book so rich in detail, it may be ungrateful to point out what isn't there."
"Rock Me on the Water segues seamlessly between movies, music, and television, often adding politics to the mix ..."
"Brownstein spends much more time on the years before 1974 than actual events occurring that year, and much of the content is repetitive, but there are interesting backstories that fans of television history will enjoy."
"Brownstein writes in a chatty tone perfect for younger readers who think of 1974 as the prehistoric age."
"Brownstein adopts a month-by-month approach to telling the story."
"What Brownstein has done is expertly knit the scenes together, giving the reader a plus-one invite to the heady world of Hollywood parties, jam sessions and pitch meetings, as well as a pointed demonstration of how culture can be made and unmade."
"An endlessly engaging cultural history that will resonate with anyone alive in 1974."
"For others, it will be a bright introduction to the year when flower power burst into the wider American cultural life."
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