About

This archive is maintained by Visual Vitriol and the Center for Punk Arts, led by folklorist David Ensminger, a native of Rockford, IL. It features a wide array of L.A. area punk, indie, and rock’n’roll photographs, gig flyers and posters, photographs, and ephemera relating to his summer 2011 book, see below, which explores punk street art and subcultures and can be purchased here.

You may also enjoy his collection of interviews with punk icons from bands like Circle Jerks, Minutemen, Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, the Damned, and many more in Left of the Dial, published by PM Press, which can be found here.

If you would like to contribute items to this site, please feel free to email Ensminger at: leftofthedialmag@hotmail.com.

 

 

Editor David Ensminger’s Mavericks of Sound is available from Rowman and Littlefield too, which can be purchased here.

In Mavericks of Sound: Conversations with the Artists Who Shaped Indie and Roots Music, music scholar David Ensminger offers a collection of vivid and compelling interviews with legendary roots rock and indie artists who bucked mainstream trends and have remained resilient in the face of enormous shifts in the music world. As the success of the concerts at Austin City Limits have revealed, the fan bases and crowds for indie and roots music often blur and overlap. In Mavericks of Sound, Ensminger brings to light the highways and byways trod by these music icons over the course of their careers and the ways in which their music-making has been affected by, and influenced, the burgeoning indie and roots music movements.

Ranging from seminal modern singer-songwriters to rockabilly renegades and indie rockers, Mavericks of Sound features a set of broad, penetrating, and insightful conversations imbued with a sense of musical history and heritage. Ensminger captures firsthand accounts from singer songwriters like Texas Country musician Tom Russell and first wave indie artist and folk rocker Peter Case; rockabilly artists Junior Brown and the Reverend Horton Heat; American indie rock icons such as 11^th Dream Day’s Janet Bean, Pere Ubu’s Dave Thomas, Apples in Stereo’s Robert Schneider, and Swans members Michael Gira and Jarboe; English and New Zealand figures such as folk legend Richard Thompson, The Clean’s David Kilgour and The Waterboys’ Mike Scott; and folk, country and rock legends such as Merle Haggard, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Ralph Stanley, Neko Case, and Yo La Tengo.

Mavericks of Sound is the perfect work for contemporary indie, roots, Americana, country, and folk music fans who want to understand the unique artistry and unbound passion behind America’s musical innovators that readily broke and remolded rules.