“Rock Country sets the standard. I doubt there’s been a better Australian music book.” – JEFF JENKINS in The Music

“The writing is superb – lyrical, deep, sad, funny, engrossing, heartfelt.” – IAN McFARLANE in Addicted to Noise

“And then there’s the photos, oh god the photos. There’s never been such a wild and ambitious compendium on Australian music history.” – JEN JEWEL BROWN, poet, ex-RAM writer, and author of Million Dollar Riff

“That nagging sense of something young and beautiful lost under the unforgiving Australian sun is subliminally affecting … Ryan has done a remarkable job.” – MICHAEL DWYER in the Sydney Morning Herald

“As an editor, he’d make a great art director, with an obvious eye for photography and design that rivals his aptitude for words. The book looks as good as it reads.” – CLINTON WALKER, author of Stranded, historian, and ex-rock critic for Rolling Stone, Roadrunner, Stiletto et al

32 Writers, 79 Photographers – curated and edited by Christian Ryan
An essay/pictorial cultural sweep of Australian rock & pop

We break up. We love. What else? One big thing: the pure exhilaration that comes from using our bodies or our minds to make something, or simply do something, and for me listening to music is just about – it narrowly beats cricket, and ties with reading – the most magical state of doingness there is. On a perfect day it might happen in the shower, water fast and scalding, and then while you’re shaving or putting paint on your face afterwards. And if, in between reading the stories in this book, you find yourself tinkering with your shower mix – adding, say, “Sad Dark Eyes”, “Looking Through a Window”, “Cattle Train”, “Way of the World”, “It’s Not Easy”, “She Goes On”, “Hold On”, “Shivers”, “Forgotten Years”, “Stayin’ Alive”, “Boys In Town”, “Almost With You”, “Fitzroy Crossing”, “Running from the Body” or “The Weeping Song” – well, that’s another way this book will have worked.  

Robert Forster, critic and Go-Between, said: “Rock Country is the most interesting and attractive book on Australian rock ever.” 

Published by Hardie Grant (2013)
Designer: Dominic Hofstede
 
Buy from author, $50 excluding postage