A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota.
Powered by a sharp and wholly original voice, Chuck Klosterman delivers a real-life 'High Fidelity' in this savvy, deliriously funny memoir of growing up a shameless heavy-metal devotee in 1980s North Dakota.
The year is 1983, and Chuck Klosterman just wants to rock. But he's got problems. For one, he's in the fifth grade. For another, he's mired in rural North Dakota. Worst of all, his parents aren't exactly down with the long hairstyle which said rocking requires.
Luckily, his brother saves the day when he brings home a bit of manna from metal heaven - 'Shout At The Devil', Motley Crue's seminal paean to hair-band excess. And so Kosterman's twisted odyssey begins, a journey spent worshipping at the heavy-metal altar of Krokus, Ratt, and Poison - and a journey from which, clearly, he has never fully recovered.
In the hilarious, young-man-growing-up-with-a-soundtrack tradition, 'Fargo Rock City' chronicles Klosterman's formative years through the lens of heavy metal - the irony-deficient genre that, for better or worse, dominated the pop charts throughout the 1980s.
For readers of Dave Eggers, Lester Bangs, Nick Hornby, Klosterman delivers all the goods: from has first dance (with a girl) and his eye-opening trip to Mandan, ND, with the debate team; to his list of "essential" albums; and his thoughtful analysis of the similarities between Guns 'n' Roses' 'Lies' and the gospels of the New Testament.
