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Throbbing Gristle: An Endless Discontent
Drawing on archives and live performances, this book traces the impressions and reverberations of UK punk band Throbbing Gristle.
This book looks at late 1970s Britain, before, during, and immediately after the Winter of Discontent, to situate the activism of Throbbing Gristle in this time. It explores how the band worked in and against the time, and how they worked in and against punk, as punk worked in and against the time and place. Punk acts as a mediating factor and nuisance value in the band’s story, as Throbbing Gristle emerged with punk in late 1976, grappled with it through 1977, and then went on to create and eventually criticize a number of post-punk scenes that had flourished around 1979.
This book looks at late 1970s Britain, before, during, and immediately after the Winter of Discontent, to situate the activism of Throbbing Gristle in this time. It explores how the band worked in and against the time, and how they worked in and against punk, as punk worked in and against the time and place. Punk acts as a mediating factor and nuisance value in the band’s story, as Throbbing Gristle emerged with punk in late 1976, grappled with it through 1977, and then went on to create and eventually criticize a number of post-punk scenes that had flourished around 1979.
- GenresMusic
280 pages, Paperback
Published December 13, 2023
45 people want to read
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October 13, 2023
One thing the teenage me knew about Throbbing Gristle is that they were important! I grimly hung on, and there you go....I was right! Serious analytical studies, such as this, have backed up this notion over the passing years.
Sadly, I can't say I was There, as, I was informed, it was too expensive to haul their equipment over the border. Located in the South West of Scotland, I had to rely on the recordings and (really!) letter writing to keep up with the mission. (My Mission Is Terminated postcard is proudly framed and on display). Everyone I knew despised TG, often subjecting me to ridicule for my appreciation, even buying the records was akin to buying brown paper produce from some grubby backstreet establishment (this was often the reaction from vendors in respected record emporiums), on the whole it was outsider material...and therefore dangerous and threatening. I kept pace!
Taking Simon Ford's Wreckers Of Civilisation as an essential chronology, Ian Trowell has supplemented this with the above mentioned analysis, an examination of TG's modus operandi, purposes and intentions - this alone has confirmed a whole lot of my suspicions - a task which is harder than it may seem, in part due to Genesis P-Orridge's unreliable and occasionally misleading recollections and recent Nonbinary, which is an entertaining bending of the facts. Cosey Fanni Tutti's excellent Art Sex Music is acknowledged as an assistance in straightening out a few mythological happenings, although we can, at this time, assume that the whole exactitude will never really be known.
Also studied in detail are the parallels with the punk movement, the Sex Pistols in particular, detailing paths crossed and shared spaces. My own view of the Sex Pistols music is mirrored by Genesis, as quoted, "We'd see them quite often, going in and out (of the rehearsal rooms). They would be doing their methedrine alcoholism with rhythm-and-blues garage rock, and we'd be upstairs plotting the destruction of all rock and roll". The overarching question in this section is, were TG in, out or against punk! Keep guessing!
He has also chosen five TG performances, in different English locations, during the first mission, to describe and to examine the relationship between TG and their audience, attempting to really understand where they were trying to get across, and how. Apart from the recordings of these events, very little hard information, factual or empirical, remains, regarding some of these shows so it is a huge task to build up a picture, which Trowell manages to do (with some assistance from others), despite that obstacle, and the skewed notes left by Gen. Often there is no evidence that certain happenings at these, now part of the TG mythos, actually did! Or did differently! The process reinforces the fact that there was no such thing as a 'standard' TG event, but the writing goes a long way in allowing me a notion of what being there was like. Other elements are discussed in these sections, and the whole pursuit is fascinating and entertaining reading. Not at all dry, like scholarly studies often are.
The final chapter covers the period between the last of the events discussed here, and the mission being terminated. This details further recordings, TG's influence on a great number of artists following, and the inevitable terminus in San Francisco, as well as relating the individual members 'afterlives'. There is plenty of information included that is new to me, and like the book as a whole, an absolute pleasure to read - An important book about an important band!
Sadly, I can't say I was There, as, I was informed, it was too expensive to haul their equipment over the border. Located in the South West of Scotland, I had to rely on the recordings and (really!) letter writing to keep up with the mission. (My Mission Is Terminated postcard is proudly framed and on display). Everyone I knew despised TG, often subjecting me to ridicule for my appreciation, even buying the records was akin to buying brown paper produce from some grubby backstreet establishment (this was often the reaction from vendors in respected record emporiums), on the whole it was outsider material...and therefore dangerous and threatening. I kept pace!
Taking Simon Ford's Wreckers Of Civilisation as an essential chronology, Ian Trowell has supplemented this with the above mentioned analysis, an examination of TG's modus operandi, purposes and intentions - this alone has confirmed a whole lot of my suspicions - a task which is harder than it may seem, in part due to Genesis P-Orridge's unreliable and occasionally misleading recollections and recent Nonbinary, which is an entertaining bending of the facts. Cosey Fanni Tutti's excellent Art Sex Music is acknowledged as an assistance in straightening out a few mythological happenings, although we can, at this time, assume that the whole exactitude will never really be known.
Also studied in detail are the parallels with the punk movement, the Sex Pistols in particular, detailing paths crossed and shared spaces. My own view of the Sex Pistols music is mirrored by Genesis, as quoted, "We'd see them quite often, going in and out (of the rehearsal rooms). They would be doing their methedrine alcoholism with rhythm-and-blues garage rock, and we'd be upstairs plotting the destruction of all rock and roll". The overarching question in this section is, were TG in, out or against punk! Keep guessing!
He has also chosen five TG performances, in different English locations, during the first mission, to describe and to examine the relationship between TG and their audience, attempting to really understand where they were trying to get across, and how. Apart from the recordings of these events, very little hard information, factual or empirical, remains, regarding some of these shows so it is a huge task to build up a picture, which Trowell manages to do (with some assistance from others), despite that obstacle, and the skewed notes left by Gen. Often there is no evidence that certain happenings at these, now part of the TG mythos, actually did! Or did differently! The process reinforces the fact that there was no such thing as a 'standard' TG event, but the writing goes a long way in allowing me a notion of what being there was like. Other elements are discussed in these sections, and the whole pursuit is fascinating and entertaining reading. Not at all dry, like scholarly studies often are.
The final chapter covers the period between the last of the events discussed here, and the mission being terminated. This details further recordings, TG's influence on a great number of artists following, and the inevitable terminus in San Francisco, as well as relating the individual members 'afterlives'. There is plenty of information included that is new to me, and like the book as a whole, an absolute pleasure to read - An important book about an important band!
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