The Rock Pack

Hardcover
225 pages
Book and CD edition (September 1997)
Universe Publishing
ISBN: 0789301008
11-1/2" x 11-1/2"

This month's prize is The Rock Pack, an extraordinary interactive book and compact disc set created in association with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame + Museum. The pop-up book is crammed with memorabilia and facsimiles from the most famous album covers and posters to guitars and sitars. The CD features interviews with the pioneering movers and shakers of the rock world. Meet the deejays and the musicians, visit their studios and their sets, and test your knowledge with the interactive trivia quizzes. Visit in 3-D form some of rock's greatest shrines and performances. This is the ultimate rock trip!

Reviews:

Published in conjunction with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, this interactive kit features pull-outs, pop-ups, and other examples of 3-D artwork that bring to vivid life the colorful, idiosyncratic world of rock music and the dynamic culture it spawned. Decade-by-decade double-page panels trace the history of rock from its multi-cultural roots in blues, folk, and gospel to seminal influences like American Bandstand, Woodstock, Motown, and MTV. From girl groups to glam-rock, from "The King" to Prince, and from funk to punk, this treasury of trivia examines the artists and promoters, performances and venues that comprise the "long, strange trip" of rock and roll. Color and black-and-white photos and illustrations. . . .Barnes & Noble Bargain Book Editors

For every fan of rock and roll, this extraordinary "interactive" book is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum's complete treasure of the artists, the music, and the culture that make the world of rock. From Bo Diddley and Leadbelly to Jimi Hendrix and Joni Mitchell to Pearl Jam and Nirvana, the myriad forms of rock are presented. The book is crammed with memorabilia and facsimiles, from the most famous album covers and posters to guitars and sitars. Meet the deejays and the musicians, visit their studios and their sets, and test your knowledge with the interactive trivia quizzes. The CD features interviews with the pioneering movers and shakers of the rock world. Visit in 3-D form some of rock's greatest shrines and performances. With separate pull-out booklets on the best independent labels, rock art and memorabilia, the British Invasion, Woodstock and the festivals, and more than 200 full-color photographs and illustrations. ...Publisher of The Rock Pack

Van der Meer's sixth collaboration (The Art Pack, The Music Pack, The Earth Pack, etc.) is a cursory guide to some of the world's most famous buildings and architects. With the help of Sudjic, an architecture critic, historian and curator, he introduces the reader with no knowledge of the subject to works across the architectural spectrum from pyramids to palaces to airports. In seven sectionsfocusing on a type of building, a style, an aspect of architecture or design process the reader is given one main pop-up example surrounded by various diagrams, pull outs and partial pop-up parts of buildings. These examples span centuries and continents, but do a good job of making a few points very easy to understand. For example, a pop-up vault, which must be completed with a supplied transverse arch to show how the overall form is made, is surrounded by diagrams that show how the proportioning system is involved. With so may interactive devices, readers may initially be overwhelmed, but the arrows, diagrams and a sensible text layout will eventually draw them out to the accompanying explanations, anecdotes and fleeting summaries of historical developments. Included is an audio tape that guides the reader through the book page by page, a glossary that will be of little use to the targeted reader and a time line that would be better if it were poster-sized and illustrated. Still, this is one of the coolest coffee-table books around. 75,000 first printing; BOMC selection. (Oct.) FYI: Also running with the "Pack" is Jim Henke (chief curator of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) and Ron van der Meer's The Rock Pack with popups of the hall of fame; a photo-wheel quiz on Motown; lift out booklets on reggae, rock festivals; a cd and more. . . .Publisher's Weekly