Critiquing avant-garde rock bands from the 1960s to the present, Bill Martin examines how social upheaval gave rise to this new form of musical expression. He covers early experimentation by artists such as James Brown, initiation into the mainstream and the resulting adaptations by the Beatles and the Who, and continues into the present looking at how groups like Stereolab, Sonic Youth, Jim O'Rourke, and others continue to innovate. An annotated discography is included.