Station to Station

From the advent of local, DJ-hosted sock-hop broadcasts to the current primacy of MTV as today's chief arbiter of pop music tastes and trends, Weingarten's fascinating survey doesn't miss a beat, spotlighting all of the key events -- both the obvious and the seemingly obscure -- that contributed to this most elemental of media marriages. Here is Elvis Presley securing a page in history with his sex-charged performance on The Ed Sullivan Show; American Bandstand exercising a longstanding stranglehold on the pop-radio charts; the rise of the revolutionary and influential Soul Train; the bizarre impact of soul-inflected rock and psychedelic-drug culture on children's programming (Schoolhouse Rock, Alvin & the Chipmunks); and much, much more. Drawing on dozens of in-depth interviews with key players at every level and from every era, Station to Station is at once detailed and wide-ranging, informative and entertaining.