This book is an in-depth look at contemporary American popular music and the kind of musicianship that is appropriate to it. Stith attempts to explain dynamics of rock musicians by studying how the skills, ideas, and human identities associated with this population manage to be created and transmitted in the context of industrialized culture. In addition, he is trying to examine how musicians begin to take on and are characterized by that identity. Stith is …showed first 75 words of 279 total…

…showed last 75 words of 279 total…he was associated with. These interviews were conducted during “down-times”, usually times where the group was hanging out, eating, traveling, etcetera. The size of the sample Stith studied and the ways in which the data-gathering techniques were administered differed from group to group, usually because his role within the population wasn’t always constant. The interview questions that were asked were hardly ever uniform, they were administered differently to suit different individuals in specific situations.