ROCK NOTES
CLARK COOLIDGE
& TOM CLARK

ISBN 9781946583444
Paperback / 368pp / 12" x 9"
Pub. November 27th, 2025

A collaboration between Clark Coolidge and Tom Clark, Rock Notes was written over a five-year period beginning in 1966. Enamored with the burgeoning rock scene, they shared thoughts and notes, using the energy of the music as a way in to riff and muse upon what these wild sounds were creating in their minds and in the world.

Spanning more than fifty years, Rock Notes has certainly had a long and winding road. The 360 pages of typescript had been somewhat weathered from its various peregrinations over the years. To preserve the solidity of the artifact we decided to do the book as facsimile, giving the layout a sense of immediacy, as well as also preserving various folds, smudges, occasional edits, varying shades of text, hand-written page numbers that don’t align with the pages in the book. That said, the text remains easy to read and turning to any page is to revisit what so many of us lived through and to this day still deeply affects us.

This collaborative diary embodies two guys playing seriously with language and thought as they explore the mystical poetic power of taking words and sounds as far as they can be taken, for now. Take note, rock on!

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"ROCK NOTES, a mythic early 1970s collaboration by two of the late 20th century’s most provocative poets, has finally come to light. Akin to a “lost” recording by the Velvet Underground the writing of these enlightened bards, like so much of that fine, fine music they would herald, sings and resounds, clangs and crashes, bangs and beatificates. Clark and Tom loved rock ‘n’ roll knowing it would never die. Thanks to this ear-splitting publication, neither will they." –Thurston Moore