VIA PRESS RELEASE | Vol. 4: 1981 and Vol. 5: 1988 of On Record, a comprehensive series of award-winning books celebrating popular music from 1978–1998, have just been published.
Marking more than 50 years as one of America’s foremost popular music writers, G. Brown has interviewed well over 3,000 musicians in every genre, from superstars including Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, and Kurt Cobain to scores of one-hit wonders, all of whom recounted their escapades and reminisced about what their time on the charts meant to them personally and musically. Over the decades, Brown also amassed an archive of nearly 15,000 rare promotional photos over the decades.
Each volume of the On Record series presents nearly 200 archival images and 100 interviews with an array of performers, from the late Jerry Garcia and Dave Matthews to Bono and Mick Jagger. Beautifully crafted, these books belong in the library of every music fan and music institute. Proceeds from book sales benefit Colorado Music Experience, a non-profit cultural and educational organization dedicated to preserving musical legacies.
“G. Brown’s writing is informed, perceptive, and incisive, often tinged with his hilariously irreverent sense of humor. He has an abiding respect for music and those who create it. These attributes reveal themselves in his On Record collections,” says Bruce Hornsby, Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, and virtuoso pianist.
“Over the years, I’ve had the good fortune of doing many interviews with G. Brown. He has created a wonderfully interesting retrospective about popular music culture as vinyl morphed into multiple formats. I am honored to be a part of G.’s On Record book series, which is both a compelling read and a joy to look at,” says Kenny Loggins, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter and performer.
Vol. 4: 1981 chronicles the first stirrings of synth-pop writ large (Human League, Soft Cell), superstars from Stevie Nicks to Billy Joel to The Police, the gated reverb drum sound that became ubiquitous (Phil Collins), and a full complement of one-hit wonders and R&B, country, and jazz sensations.
Vol. 5: 1988 captures the debuts of seminal female-singer songwriters (from Melissa Etheridge to Tracy Chapman) and the heavy-metal and hard-rock acts dominating the charts (Bon Jovi, Poison, Scorpions, et al.), as well as the year’s greatest releases from pop, R&B, country, and jazz stars.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR | G. Brown has navigated the world’s musical landscape for decades as a journalist, broadcaster, and historian. He contracted with The Denver Post for 26 years, interviewing more than 3,000 musicians—from Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen to Bono and Kurt Cobain. Published in numerous national magazines including Rolling Stone and National Lampoon, Brown also covered music news and hosted and programmed for myriad Denver-based radio stations.
He is the author of Red Rocks: The Concert Years, a comprehensive history of America’s most iconic outdoor music venue, as well as Colorado’s Rock Chronicles and Telluride Bluegrass Festival: The First Forty Years. He was the founding director of the Colorado Music Hall of Fame beginning in 2011; he then launched and now oversees Colorado Music Experience, a 501 (c) (3) serving as a repository for informational and archival resources, presented in engaging and entertaining ways.
