Dispatches From the Kingdom of Outsiders

From the heart of "mossy, briny, piss-colored" 1970s Times Square to the heights of MTV News and the A&R suites of Atlantic Records, Tim Sommer has lived a dozen lives in the service of music.

Dispatches From the Kingdom of Outsiders is a defiant, soulful map of the ephemeral nation built by the lonely and the weird young people who found their first true home in a Sex Pistols 45 or a picture of David Bowie. Part memoir, part high-octane cultural criticism, this collection documents a vanished era when knowledge was precious currency and a T-shirt was a flare sent up to find fellow survivors.

Whether he's trying to get the Clash to sign a picture of the Beatles, sitting in a dorm room with U2 or explaining why "Wooly Bully" is the heaviest song in history, Sommer writes with the infectious "bizarrely certain" passion of the 16-year-old office boy he once was. This is more than a book about rock and roll, it is a celebration of the "Kingdom" where admission is free, and outsiders finally belong.

Sample chapter titles:

I Was Almost a Temporary Beastie Boy Meet the Beatles' First Left-Handed Bassist What Was the First Punk Rock Record? I Watch in Awe and Terror While Johnny Depp and Evan Dando Nearly Kill Themselves Uncle Schrödinger's Band (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Like Listen to the Grateful Dead) Weezer's cover of "Africa" Is the Most Repugnant Pop Recording of All Time Sha Na Na Was the Most Important Band at Woodstock How Kent State Helped Create the Template for American Indie Rock