Dispatches From the Kingdom of Outsiders
Writing on Music, Culture and More 1979-2025
Tim Sommer
pub date: August 4
From the heart of "mossy, briny, piss-colored" 1970s Times Square to the heights of MTV News and the A&R suites of Atlantic Records, Tim Sommer has lived a dozen lives in the service of music.
Dispatches From the Kingdom of Outsiders is a defiant, soulful map of the ephemeral nation built by the lonely and the weird young people who found their first true home in a Sex Pistols 45 or a picture of David Bowie. Part memoir, part high-octane cultural criticism, this collection documents a vanished era when knowledge was precious currency and a T-shirt was a flare sent up to find fellow survivors.
Whether he’s trying to get the Clash to sign a picture of the Beatles, sitting in a dorm room with U2 or explaining why "Wooly Bully" is the heaviest song in history, Sommer writes with the infectious "bizarrely certain" passion of the 16-year-old office boy he once was. This is more than a book about rock and roll, it is a celebration of the "Kingdom" where admission is free, and outsiders finally belong.
Grouped into seven themed sections, the pieces amply display Sommer's broad curiosity and many enthusiasms. Subjects range from U2 and R.E.M. to the Beatles and Taylor Swift, Bob Dylan to Frank Sinatra and Bruce Springsteen. The writing is fervent, smart and provocative, filled with unique insights and personal memories. Includes an afterword by King Missile musician and poet John S. Hall.
Sample chapter titles:
Meet the Beatles’ First Left-Handed Bassist
What Was the First Punk Rock Record?
I Watch in Awe and Terror While Johnny Depp and Evan Dando Nearly Kill Themselves
Sha Na Na Was the Most Important Band at Woodstock
Uncle Schrödinger’s Band (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Like Listen to the Grateful Dead)
Weezer’s “Africa” Is the Most Repugnant Pop Recording of All Time
How Kent State Helped Create the Template for American Indie Rock
“Tim Sommer goes deep on a whole century of rock and pop culture, from Bowie to Buddy Bolden, Spike Milligan to Taylor Swift, and everything in between. Punk was always a state of mind, as much as a sound or a look, and this book is punk AF.” —Billy Idol
“Sommer is a throwback to when people writing about music wrote whatever they wanted, took shocking takes not to garner social media attention but because they really believed in them, and did not worry about industry repercussions. He's also a little insane. This is a truly original document of the kind of smart, free, joyous writing we so rarely find anywhere today.”
—Geoff Edgers (national arts reporter, The Washington Post
“Whether we heard Tim shouting out the latest Necros single on air, or read a think piece of his on Alan Vega or Mia Zapata, there would always be gleaned an intellect of considered and conversational gravitas. It was the pleasure of noise, be it from the margins or from the mainstream, that inspired Tim to pontificate so excitedly. While his ‘dispatches’ are modestly critical and discerning, they are essentially informed by joy, an aspect of shared dialogue utterly welcoming and one the world necessitates now more than ever.”
—Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth co-founder)
paperback $22.95 ISBN 979-8-9990487-3-8
eBook $8.95 ISBN 979-8-9990487-5-2
