Ebook: Play Like a Man: My Life in Poster Children

As a member of Poster Children, Rose Marshack took part in entwined revolutions. Marshack and other women seized a much-elevated profile in music during the indie rock breakthrough while the advent of new digital technologies transformed the recording and marketing of music. Touring in a van, meeting your idols, juggling a programming job with music, keeping control and credibility, the perils of an independent record label (and the greater perils of a major)—Marshack chronicles the band's day-to-day life and punctuates her account with excerpts from her tour reports and hard-learned lessons on how to rock, program, and teach while female. She also details the ways Poster Children applied punk's DIY ethos to digital tech as a way to connect with fans via then-new media like pkids listservs, internet radio, and enhanced CDs.

An inside look at a scene and a career, Play Like a Man is the evocative and humorous tale of one woman's life in the trenches and online.

|List of Tour Reports

Preface

Acknowledgments

Part One. 1980s: College

Chapter 1. Origin Story

Chapter 2. The Scene at College

Chapter 3. Punk Bands in Dorms

Chapter 4. Computers

Chapter 5. Play Like a Man

Part Two. 1987-1992: Pre-major Label Life

Chapter 6. The Indie Code of Ethics

Chapter 7. Local

Chapter 8. Regional

Chapter 9. National

Part Three. 1993-1996: Major Label Life

Chapter 10. Mashed Potatoes

Chapter 11. Recording

Chapter 12. Touring

Chapter 13. Radio Sucks

Chapter 14. Computer Experiments

Chapter 15. Expectations

Chapter 16. Big Changes

Part Four. 1997: Post Major Label

Chapter 17. Online Participation

Chapter 18. Life as a Woman

Chapter 19. How to Look at Things

Chapter 20. Teaching

Appendix: List of Poster Children Alumni

Notes

Index

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"Following decades of fan engagement through road diaries and groundbreaking podcast predecessor Radio Zero, Poster Children bassist Rose Marshack has gathered stories and experience for this fast-paced and wide-ranging, but well-balanced rock/tech/spiritual memoir. Hard-won lessons, road stories, tech geekery, entertaining anecdotes and lessons from the Buddha are plentiful. . . . [A] stirring memoir." —Illinois Entertainer

"For music fans in Central Illinois, I highly recommend Marshack's book, which she finished after five years of writing and editing. It's a phenomenal model of what music journalism should be, exemplified by comprehensive documentation and peer review — plus just enough swear words to keep you chuckling as you reach for the next page." —Pantagraph

"For readers interested in the indie music scene, touring life, and female rockers." —Booklist
|Rose Marshack is a professor of creative technologies in the School of Music at Illinois State University. Her band Poster Children has performed over 800 shows in the United States and Europe.