Everybody's Heard about the Bird: The True Story of 1960s Rock 'n' Roll in Minnesota

Description

If you didn't experience rock and roll in Minnesota in the 1960s, this book will make you wish you had. This behind-the-scenes, up-close-and-personal account relates how a handful of Minnesota rock bands erupted out of a small Midwest market and made it big. It was a brief, heady moment for the musicians who found themselves on a national stage, en

Rick Shefchik spent almost thirty years in daily journalism, mostly as a critic, reporter, and columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. He is the author of From Fields to Fairways: Classic Golf Clubs of Minnesota (Minnesota, 2012). He's a novelist and author of three works of nonfiction and has been in several working bands as a guitarist and singer.

"Engrossing and exhaustive, Everybody's Heard about the Bird is an invaluable pop history document that chronicles the nascent Minneapolis recording and music industry and early rock-and-roll stew. All in all, a labor of love that feels both fresh and long overdue." -Jim Walsh, journalist, songwriter, and author of The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting: An Oral History "A meticulously researched and thoughtfully told celebration of the successes Minnesota musicians achieved in the '60s."-Pioneer Press "A deep, exhilarating, educational and inspiring rabbit hole that leads to aural artifacts from a time when ballroom dance floors looked like sizzling pans of human flesh, so wild and freely were they filled with dancing kids."-MinnPost.com "If you didn't experience rock and roll in Minnesota in the 1960s, this book will make you wish you had."-Fox 9 News "Relive the years of Augie Garcia and Bobby Vee, the Castaways and the Trashmen, whose hit "Surfin' Bird" inspired hundreds of bands in the Upper Midwest. Word is that this fun read. . . is selling out all over town."-Pioneer Press "Just like 'Surfin' Bird' and the other songs of that era, the best word that could be used to describe Shefchik's book is simply 'fun.'"-Star Tribune "Rick Shefchik...has meticulously re-created the scene whose biggest names included the Castaways, the Underbeats, the Avanties, and the Gestures."-Minnesota History "Shefchik's meticulously researched history is the authoritative document of this early, fertile era of rock 'n' roll."-Minnesota History