Sell-in: How the Music Business Seduced Alternative Rock

'Exchanging nervous glances, Dickson turned to Grierson. "Go backstage and make sure they don't kill each other," he said.'In the 1990s, a generation of independent-minded Australian musicians found themselves the target of a mainstream music industry which had long derided them. Along the way, as alternative rock went from being a term of scorn to a corporate marketing tool, some would prosper, while others around them would implode under the pressure or simply fade away.Featuring a who's who of contemporary Australian rock, The Sell-Incharts the artistic and commercial struggle behind the breakthrough of Ratcat, The Cruel Sea, silverchair, Powderfinger, The Living End and their contemporaries, an era when getting to gigs to pay the rent was replaced by the need to have hit singles, sell hundreds of thousands of albums and break the lucrative American market.Exclusively documented by leading music journalist Craig Mathieson, The Sell-Inmoves from sold-out shows to plush boardrooms, recording studios to courtrooms, as creative triumph is matched by bitter feuding and the original independent ethos is supplanted by million dollar deals, double crosses and ego trips, while rewriting the face of the Australian music industry.'Inside the dressing room an enraged [Tex] Perkins had hold of the slightly built Rumour and was ramming his head into the wall. With each blunt impact Rumour would yell, "You don't need me!" "That's the problem," growled Perkins. "We do need you."'Mathieson, Craig is the author of 'Sell-in: How the Music Business Seduced Alternative Rock' with ISBN 9781865084121 and ISBN 1865084123.