Love Rock Revolution K Records and the Rise of Independent Music

Punk isn't a sound; it's an idea. That is the lesson that Calvin Johnson took from the '70s and brought into the '80s, when he created K Records, a modest cassette-only record label that would become one of the most transformative engines of underground culture in the twentieth century. Here is the first book to tell the story of K Records, the Olympia, Washington, record label that became one of the most influential engines in the international underground music movement of the '80s. Thirty years ago, a teenager named Calvin Johnson started a record label that would change the world of music with a revolutionary manifesto and a love of rock and roll. Love Rock Revolutiontells the whole story, from the punk pioneers of the 1970s that shaped Johnson's worldview, through K Records' rise in the '80s, to its struggle to stay true to its revolutionary spirit after Kurt Cobain, another Olympian, brought the underground to the masses in the '90s.

Mark Baumgarten is a Seattle-based music writer. He serves as editor at large for City Arts magazine, and his work has been featured in Willamette Week, The Village Voice, Seattle Weekly, and Lost Cause magazine.