Annie Zaleski with Kevin Smokler / Duran Duran’s Rio

Booksmith is thrilled to host Annie Zaleski for her new book, Duran Duran’s Rio, part of the acclaimed 331/3 book series. She’ll be in conversation with Booksmith BFF and author of Brat Pack America and Practical Classics, Kevin Smokler. Join us!

This event is free and all ages, but RSVP is required. Event link will be sent to everyone who registers.

You can order Duran Duran’s Rio here and we’ll ship it directly to you (or hold for pickup at our San Francisco shop).

We are happy to fulfill orders anywhere in the world – international postage will be invoiced separately. If you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to contact events@booksmith.com.

About the book

In the ’80s, the Birmingham, England, band Duran Duran became closely associated with new wave, an idiosyncratic genre that dominated the decade’s music and culture. No album represented this rip-it-up-and-start-again movement better than the act’s breakthrough 1982 LP, Rio. A cohesive album with a retro-futuristic sound-influences include danceable disco, tangy funk, swaggering glam, and Roxy Music’s art-rock-the full-length sold millions and spawned smashes such as “Hungry Like the Wolf” and the title track.

However, Rio wasn’t a success everywhere at first; in fact, the LP had to be buffed-up with remixes and reissued before it found an audience in America. The album was further buoyed by colorful music videos, which established Duran Duran as leaders of an MTV-driven second British Invasion, and the group’s cutting-edge visual aesthetic. Via extensive new interviews with band members and other figures who helped Rio succeed, this book explores how and why Rio became a landmark pop-rock album, and examines how the LP was both a musical inspiration-and a reflection of a musical, cultural, and technology zeitgeist.

About the authors

Cleveland, Ohio-based author, journalist and editor Annie Zaleski is an award-winning writer with profiles, interviews, and criticism in a variety of publications. Bylines include Rolling Stone, NPR Music, The Guardian, Salon, Time, Billboard, The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Los Angeles Times, Stereogum, Cleveland Plain Dealer, andLas Vegas Weekly. She also contributed liner notes to the 2016 reissue of R.E.M.’s Out of Time and Game Theory’s 2020 collection Across The Barrier Of Sound: PostScript.

Kevin Smokler (@weegee) is a writer, documentary filmmaker and event host with a focus on pop culture. He’s the author of the book Brat Pack America: A Love Letter to 80s Teen Movies (2016) and the essay collection Practical Classics: 50 Reasons to Reread 50 Books you Haven’t Touched Since High School (2013). In 2020, he co-directed the documentary film Vinyl Nation on the contemporary renaissance of vinyl records in America, which has screened at 27 film festivals in the US, Europe and Australia. He’s appeared in conversation onstage with comedians, playwrights, authors, magazine publishers, architects, musicians and filmmakers for the last 2 decades and lives in San Francisco.

This event is free and all ages, but RSVP is required.