Rebels and Underdogs

Garin Pirnia was born and raised in the rock and roll city of Dayton, Ohio. She has written about music for Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Mental Floss, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Paste Magazine, and many more publications. She is the author of The Beer Cheese Book and the screenwriter of The Finicky Cat, a short horror comedy, that has won several awards at film fests and screenplay contests. Music, beer cheese, and cats—she does it all.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Akron/Kent2. Cincinnati3. Cleveland4. Columbus5. Dayton

"Jerry Casale (DEVO) probably sums it up best in this book: 'In Ohio, nobody gave a shit.' But around that inversely proud axiom, Garin Pirnia gives it a fine archaeologist's try to plop meat all over the bones of one of rock'n'roll's unsung if inarguably most important locales, just as the genre is looking like a skeleton of its former fame."—Eric Davidson, singer in New Bomb Turks and author of We Never Learn: The Gunk Punk Undergut"Ohio's rock 'n' roll has always sounded like it was made by teenagers stranded in the wasteland, obsessing about music they'd never actually heard, then trying to make it themselves, which is why the best bands—Devo, Afghan Whigs, Guided by Voices, Nine Inch Nails—are so hard to pin down. But Garin Pirnia has done just that in this exceptional book, an account satisfyingly comprehensive, but driven by the instincts and ardor of a true devotee."—David Giffels, author of 'Furnishing Eternity' and coauthor of 'Are We Not Men? We Are Devo!'