About This Book
About the Author: Raul R. Alvarez
This is one man’s story told through rock-n-roll music, a “rock-ography” if you will. The initial purpose for writing this books was for me to leave words of wisdom to my kids, using rock-n-roll to support my claim for why life should be lived a certain way. Although some might question the premise that set the wheels of this project in motion, this was the impetus. While the intended audience of this memoir are my kids, the life lessons and survival skills that I share in the book also serve as my way of communicating to rock artists the kind of impact that their music and songs have on their fans (or at least on this one fan). I think music has healing powers, and I’ve been blessed to have found artists and songs that have helped to heal my psyche and soul. I remain eternally grateful to the artists whose music served as a source of strength and inspiration.
I grew up in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, and then spent the next six years in the San Francisco Bay Area earning an engineering degree at Stanford and going to lots of hard rock and heavy metal concerts. Since then, I have lived in Austin, Texas, the Live Music Capital of the World, where I shifted for a while from hard rock, alternative rock and heavy metal to Blues and other kinds of roots music. In Austin, I earned a Master’s degree in Community and Regional Planning at the University of Texas, served as an elected official (on the Austin City Council and the Austin Community College Board of Trustees), and worked for a law firm (as a legal assistant), the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club (as Environmental Justice Director) and for Austin ISD (as an administrative supervisor). I now work for a community based organization (the Community Advancement Network) whose mission it is to assess and enhance community well-being in Austin/Travis County by finding ways for community partners to leverage resources and take collective action. I am a husband (married to my lovely wife, Theresa) and father of two. It is for my two kids, Sofia and Joseph, that I dedicate this rock-infused autobiography.