Всё порви, начни сначала. Постпанк 1978–1984 гг.

by Simon Reynolds, Саймон Рейнольдс

Яростная сила панка омолодила рок-музыку, но к лету 1977 года движение превратилось в пародию на само себя. И тут началось самое интересное. «Всё порви, начни сначала» — история именно о том, что произошло дальше.

Книга известного музыкального журналиста и публициста Саймона Рейнольдса стала одним из первых и самых известных трудов, посвящённых той дикой, авантюрной и восхитительно странной музыке, которая в изобилии возникала в годы после панка. Её так и назвали — пост-панк, а её представители вроде Public Image Ltd., Gang of Four, Talking Heads, The Fall (и многие другие) посвятили себя завершению той музыкальной революции, что панку не удалось закончить. Музыканты пост-панка были неутомимыми новаторами: экспериментировали с электроникой и машинными ритмами, адаптировали идеи и находки из современной им популярной музыки и из искусства начала XX века. Они были всецело уверены в том, что смогут изобрести совершенно новое будущее — для музыки и вообще для всех вокруг.

Рейнольдс рисует портрет этой короткой эпохи через истории групп в диапазоне от Joy Division и Throbbing Gristle до Depeche Mode и Soft Cell. Он — подробный летописец того увлекательного времени, когда музыка, выступления, мода и стиль переживали бесчисленные инновации. «Всё порви, начни сначала» детально воссоздаёт идеализм, остроту и эмоциональность одного из самых важных и непростых периодов в истории популярной музыки. И истории вообще.

О русском издании:

Русское издание включает в себя все главы из английского и американского изданий (в свое время они были изменены с учетом специфики стран), а также, в качестве цифрового дополнения, добавлены два обширных раздела с дискографией и музыкальным путеводителем по звуковой эзотерике, которые не вошли в оригинальное издание. Помимо этого, к каждой главе редактором Артемом Абрамовым был составлен специальный плейлист, которой позволит точнее и глубже понять предмет, о котором пишет автор.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, History, Punk, Art, Biography, Pop Culture

736 pages, Paperback

First published April 21, 2005

About the author

Simon Reynolds is one of the most respected music journalists working today, and his writing is both influential and polarizing. He draws on an impressive range of knowledge, and writes with a fluid, engaging style. His books Rip it Up and Start Again and Generation Ecstasy are well-regarded works about their respective genres, and RETROMANIA may be his most broadly appealing book yet. It makes an argument about art, nostalgia, and technology that has implications for all readerswhether diehard music fans or not. Its an important and provocative look at the present and future of culture and innovation."

Reviews

[Orsodimondo · Rating 4 out of 5]

DAMAGE GOODS


Nick Cave

Penso all’idea del rock come forza in grado di cambiare almeno la coscienza del singolo ascoltatore…Il post-punk è stato l’ultimo grande periodo in cui c’è stata una forte ondata di innovazione che riguardasse insieme musica, testi, performance e anche il ruolo generale della musica .


Talking Heads: Tina Weymouth, Jerry Harrison, Chris Frantz e David Byrne. “Stop Making Sense” il film sul loro show del 1984 diretto da Jonathan Demme è probabilmente il più bel film sul rock che io abbia mai visto. Se non altro sul rock dal vivo.

Era il tempo dei vinili, e di altri supporti, ma tutti rispettavano la durata di un album. Prima che questa meravigliosa creatura sparisse nel maelstrom dello streaming digitale.
Reynolds appare l’uomo giusto al posto giusto: sa di cosa parla e sa come parlarne.
Con passione e competenza, senza dimenticare il benedetto contesto, e cioè il resto, quello che accadeva prima e dopo, intorno – la musica, le band sono ben inserite sia nella storia della musica che nella Storia in generale.
Tanto più che a casa sua erano gli anni dell’orrida Margaret primo ministro.


Johnny ‘Rotten’ Lydon con i Sex Pistols. Il rock'n'roll è la forma espressiva più schifosa, volgare e malefica, è un afrodisiaco pestilenziale, è la musica preferita da tutti i delinquenti della terra, disse Frank Sinatra nel 1957. La prima risposta potrebbe essere quella dei Jefferson Airplane in "We Can Be Together”: Siamo osceni, senza legge, brutti, pericolosi, violenti e giovani del 1969. Alla quale farei seguire questa di qualche anno dopo, 1976, proprio di John Lydon in , "Anarchy in The U.k.": I am an anti-christ, I am an anarchist


Il post-punk prende l’avvio come reazione agli eccessi del rock, dal fastidio verso il ‘rockismo’.
Voglia di cambiare, di opporsi, di sperimentare e di ricominciare da capo, di essere intellettuale avanguardistico o amatoriale come un dilettante (A volte scrivo cose che non riesco a capire, è questo che mi esalta).
Voglia di offendere, a cominciare dalla generazione dei padri (vedi per esempio il diffuso ricorso a immagini e riferimenti nazisti, per provocare la generazione che il nazismo aveva conosciuto e imparato a temere).
Il punk era troppo primitivo, troppo stradaiolo. E allora via alla sperimentazione sonora attraverso elettronica, rumore (noise), dub, disco, synth…
Talking Heads, Human League, Pere Ubu, Pop Group, Scritti Politti, Throbbing Gristle, Joy Division, New Order, This Heat, Nick Cave e Birthday Party, PIL, Devo, Residents, Fall, XTC, Cabaret Voltaire, Slits, Gang of Four…
Il messia fu forse Johnny ‘Rotten’ Lydon, sutura e rottura tra punk e post-punk con i Sex Pistols prima e i PIL poi.
Ma quello che rimane più inciso nella memoria è Ian Curtis, suicida a 24 anni dopo aver inciso due pietre miliari (“Unknown Pleasures”, 1979, e “Closer”, 1980)


Johnny Lydon con i PIL, Public Image Limited.

Ho ascoltato e riascoltato, scoperto e rinfrescato tanta musica leggendo questo libro bello lungo fitto e importante dove si parla di rock, punk, trip-hop, hip-hop, elettronica, jazz, pop, dance, funk ecc. ma più di tutto, si parla di post-punk, sempre sia lode ai Joy Division.

La musica oggi non è più quel veicolo di identità e liberazione che ha forgiato più di una generazione. Amore per la musica e formazione della propria identità non vanno più di pari passo, l’ascolto è diventato eclettico, i gusti sono ‘un po’ di tutto’.
Con lo streaming la musica è diventata una fornitura continua, come il gas e l’elettricità, come la televisione. È qualcosa da usare più che qualcosa che chiede il coinvolgimento.


1982: David Bowie, che sta bene ovunque, pre e post punk, insieme al bassista dei Clash, Paul Simonon, allo Shea Stadium di New York.

Non è più la musica a essere elemento aggregativo, a creare un senso di comunità. Più facile che adesso succeda per gli abiti o certe forme di tecnologia. La musica è retrocessa, battuta dalla concorrenza di altre forme di intrattenimento e di creatività artigianale (videogiochi, youtube…).
La musica non conosce più barriere artistiche perché ha superato i generi. Il che da una parte è un bene, ma dove sono finiti brivido e stupore di quando erano gli artisti a superare le barriere? L’ascolto musicale adesso è una poltiglia indifferenziata, dove sono finite l’avventura e la scoperta generate dall’esplorare i generi musicali? Finita l’epoca in cui la musica era iniziazione. Finiti i tempi dei mods contro i rockers, le tribù non esistono più, l’identità non conta, siamo ormai nell’epoca dell’appartenenza. Amen.


Ian Curtis, leader dei Joy Division. 15.7.1956-18.5.1980. L’amore ci farà a pezzi. A Ian Curtis è dedicato il bel documentario di Anton Corbijn del 2007, ‘Control’.

When routine bites hard,
And ambitions are low,
And resentment rides high,
But emotions won’t grow,
And we’re changing our ways, taking different roads.
Then love, love will tear us apart again.
(“Love Will Tear Us Apart”, Joy Division)

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here is a band. They put out a great record. Here's why it was great. Then they became less great and broke up. Here is another band. They put out a great record. Here's why it was great. Then they became less great and broke up. Here is another band. They put out a great record. Here's why it was great. Then they became less great and broke up. Here is another band. They put out a great record. Here's why it was great. Then they became less great and broke up. Here is another band. They put out a great record. Here's why it was great. Then they became less great and broke up. Here is another band. They put out a great record. Here's why it was great. Then they became less great and broke up. Here is another band. They put out a great record. Here's why it was great. Then they became less great and broke up. Here is another band. They put out a great record. Here's why it was great. Then they became less great and broke up. Here is another band. They put out a great record. Here's why it was great. Then they became less great and broke up. Those bands were amazing. There have been no good bands since.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

The standard narrative of the pop music history of the late 70’s and early 80’s has the bracing musical revolution of punk quickly degenerating into the more commercial and co-optable form of New Wave. Punk is the honest, authentic voice of political and aesthetic revolution, while New Wave is the watered down, corrupted, commercialized version of that impulse. Now there’s a grain of truth to this interpretation, but it misses a few things about punk that were quickly to drive it into an aesthetic dead-end, and it downplays the real virtues of much of the music that followed in its wake. Musically, punk wasn’t anything other than good old guitar-driven rock and roll played louder and faster and with a more aggressive, anti-social, overtly political attitude. Basically it layered a new set of attitudes and fashion statements over an already well-established musical form. Not only that, in a lot of ways it was simply updating and recycling traditional rock poses—macho cock rockers, the rock musician as revolutionary, with the model for revolution being the armed guerilla or street fighter. And punk’s politics—its populism and fetishization of authenticity—worked against musical innovation. One aspect of the founding myth of punk was that it was a cleansing force, washing away the excesses of the bloated, decadent, self-important pop music establishment of the 70’s. Consequently musical innovation and experimentation were suspect.

Reynolds takes postpunk out of the shadow of punk rock and presents it as a genre in its own right, distinct it from both punk and New Wave. He shows how little postpunk owed to punk, and how much it owed to other genres (the art rock and experimental music of the 70’s, Reggae and dub, funk) and other cultural and intellectual influences (post-60’s collectivist and communal values, postmodern social and aesthetic theory of the late 70’s and early 80’s). Postpunk was a much less ideologically hidebound, much more sonically adventurous musical form than the punk rock that preceded it. About all it inherited from punk was attitude and energy.

Reynolds dates postpunk from 1978-1984, and the book is divided into two parts. The first part, from roughly 78-80ish, recounts the emergence of postpunk, and focuses on the dour, arty, experimental, socially conscious bands that most music nerds associate with postpunk—Gang of Four, The Fall, early Scritti Politti, PIL, Cabaret Voltaire, Pere Ubu etc. The second half, on new pop and new rock, follows the evolution of postpunk into the mid-eighties and focuses on the more accessible, commercial, radio-and-dancefloor-friendly turn the genre took in the early 80’s. Some bands make appearances in both sections, most notably Scritti Politti, who were one of the more uncompromising bands of postpunk’s early years, but who later made a conscious decision to record more listener-friendly stuff in order to infiltrate the mainstream. Other bands covered in the second half include: the Specials and other two-tone and ska revival bands, Malcolm McLaren projects like Bow Wow Wow and Adam and the Antz, arty synthpoppers like Gary Numan and Ultravox, NYC Mutant Disco groups, Progressive Punk bands like Black Flag, The Minutemen, and Mission of Burma etc.

Reynolds does a fine job of connecting the music to the larger cultural, intellectual and political contexts from which it emerged. Postpunk was born along with Thatcherism in the UK. It also coincided with the rise of postmodernism and critical theory in the universities. It likewise coexisted, in the UK, with a strong tradition of communist and socialist-friendly left-wing politics. There was a bit of this in the US as well, especially in the Reagan 80’s, with bands like The Minutemen proselytizing for the Central American solidarity movement (D. Boon often worked the crowd for CISPES after many Minutemen shows). And, there were certainly strong residues of 60’s and 70’s collectivist, counter-culture politics within postpunk—Factory Records and Rough Trade most notably. And while most pop artists certainly try to manage their careers, and think hard about their self-presentation, the art school refugees and brainy autodidacts who made up the first wave of postpunk were a particularly self-reflective bunch. It would be wrong to describe the music as un-commercial, or to portray the musicians and artists as completely unconcerned with popularity or commercial success, but there was a definite sense of existing to negate the corporate hit-making machinery and the ideology of 70’s corporate rock and pop, at least until New Pop came along and rebelled against postpunk rebellion by emulating the most listener-friendly, anti-rockist pop forms.

There’s always a danger in any social-intellectual history of the pop arts of inflating the art form’s significance simply by virtue of placing it within a well-developed reconstruction of the cultural milieu in which it emerged (on the other hand, the mistake many highbrow critics make—are there any of them left?—is to avoid looking beyond the shiny surfaces to the more serious elements embedded in pop art forms). There may be some pop songs, genres, movements about which there really isn’t much of interest to say—bands and scenes that don’t merit more than a glib one-paragraph squib in a music magazine, and that don’t connect to larger trends and issues or ideas in any kind of interesting way. But as Reynolds shows this is certainly not the case with postpunk. One could argue that Reynolds is too much of a fan, and that he overpraises much of the music—as the Vanity Fair critic tapped to review the book for the New York Times did, though it’s hard to take such criticism seriously from someone who writes for what’s essentially a middlebrow version of People—but to me he gets it absolutely right 95% of the time. He convincingly makes the case that, despite the preeminent place punk has occupied in rock-crit mythology, postpunk was by far a more interesting and influential movement—sonically, intellectually and politically.

Reynolds comes to praise, rather than bury, postpunk, but his fanboy’s enthusiasm is balanced by a 40-year-old’s sense of how sophomoric much of the politics were and how crappy, ultimately, a lot of the music was, in traditional musical terms. But this is balanced by an admiration for the creativity and idealism of the various scenes, the sense of mission, willingness to experiment, and to bend musical tastes to the bands‘ will rather than simply playing what was popular in order to be rock stars, that characterized much of postpunk. And while he spends almost 600 pages lovingly reconstructing the scene and it’s influences and musical products, he doesn’t make much of an argument for its larger significance outside of the world of pop music. He never loses sight of the fact that the end product, even of the more uncompromising or abrasive variants—like Gang of Four, Throbbing Gristle, Crass, The Minutemen etc.—was one form or another of pop music. I’m not sure how to say this exactly, but the idea, the concept of pop—as something youth-oriented, playful, ephemeral, disposable, commercial, popular, relatively undemanding, not meant to last—is the reality check that keeps Reynolds from overpraising the music. Reynolds, shows how the world shaped the music, but thankfully stops short of arguing that the music changed the world.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Warning: do not read this book unless you have ready access to Spotify or some other music subscription service that allows you to listen to entire albums without purchasing them, or else you will go bankrupt trying to catch up with the Fall, James Chance and the Contortions, the Associates and a hundred other bands with which you were vaguely familiar but suddenly find fascinating thanks to Simon Reynolds' writing. This is the best work of music history, and one of the best history books, I have ever read. Reynolds is more critic than fan but more fan than sycophant, which makes his examination of what we now call "alternative" music from 1977-1984 both exuberant and objective. He also does an excellent job of evoking the milieus in which various postpunk genres arose -- now I know exactly why Manchester has so much to answer for. Reynolds takes his job as a historian seriously, so when he writes about a band, he describes both its intent and its impact, noting the occasional chasm between the two. His biographical sketches of the artists whom he covers are detailed but brisk and just gossipy enough to be amusing if not horrifying (I'm now convinced that Malcolm McLaren should have been arrested and tried in the Hague for crimes against humanity). If the book has any flaw, it's that Reynolds occasionally overstuffs his chapters with too many references and anecdotes, leaving the reader more interested than informed, and towards the end of the book, he covers some yawn-inducingly familiar territory like the rise of MTV, but even then he's insightful and doesn't lapse into standard cultural critiques even as he quotes people who do. If you care about any late 70s or early 80s music beyond Styx or the Commodores, this book is a must.

[Lee Klein · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this in paperback years ago but couldn't really ever get into reading it. Last summer I listened to and absolutely loved Our Band Could Be Your Life, so figured I'd listen to this one this summer. It's unfair to this encyclopedic compendium to compare it with the comparatively focused, deeper-dives of Michael Azerrad's rock-journalism masterpiece, but I really couldn't help thinking it would've been more enjoyable if the focus were tighter, particularly of course more attention given to The Fall. To my mind a lot of the bands covered in this, particularly the second half, are more like New Wave, stuff I knew from MTV, than what I would consider "post-punk." But I also kept feelin' some fascination while learning how those bands and songs to remember from my pre-teen years emerged from punk. Some of this stuff I knew but only to a degree, so it was fascinating to hear the whole story about Public Image Limited or Scritti Politti's evolutions. Also interesting to hear how mass bands like U2 emerged from postpunk, but why almost no mention of REM despite a bit about the B-52s and Athens GA? Loved the appendix talking about the emergence and effect of MTV but also felt like that could've been integrated throughout the second half of the book. Anyway, glad to have listened to it and even more so glad to have found the 207-song 14-hour playlist on Spotify to explore.

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is what happened: I bought the US edition of this book back when it was released, read it, loved it. Six months or so later, I learned that the original UK edition had been cut all to hell for its US release. Something like 200 pages had been removed in order to pare the US edition down to its 400 page final length. I was shocked and appalled, but never knew quite how to get myself a copy of the UK edition, short of doing an international order through Amazon UK, which I told myself would be prohibitively expensive. So that was all there was to it, for a long time.

Then, a couple of months ago, I came into a large sum of money (four figures) with which I was free to purchase whatever I wanted. Well, in addition to paying off all of my past due utility bills and purchasing the laptop I'm currently typing this review on (a steal at $450), I went ahead and did the Amazon UK order to obtain the original, director's-cut edition of "Rip It Up And Start Again." Boy, am I glad I did. The 400 page edition that I originally read was thoroughly enjoyable, but it still couldn't compare to the author's original intention. With smaller print, the UK edition still came out to be 125 more pages than the US edition, and where the US edition included no pictures at all, the UK edition presented at least one image every half-dozen pages or so. I finally got to see the Scritti Politti EP cover depicting the squalor in which they lived, as well as photos from Throbbing Gristle and James Chance performances, amongst many other things. And the text was greatly expanded, not just in additional coverage for bands that had been unmentioned in the US text but also in additional sections, sometimes great portions of one chapter or another that were completely removed, which I was now reading for the first time. It was a revelation to me, especially since the sections that were removed often dealt with bands that I'd been far less likely to already know about than the bands that were left in the truncated manuscript.

All of this is just a comparison between two editions, though. What's really important here is the work itself, and in reading this book, the first work I ever encountered by Simon Reynolds, I found myself going from barely aware of him to being a huge fan. That experience is only amplified by reading this new, expanded edition. Reynolds is one of the best music writers I've ever read, able to integrate literate, intensely rational analysis of the ideas behind particular groups and their recorded works, with far more emotionally-centered reactions to the feel and sound that those works ultimately emanated. Reynolds is more of a Greil Marcus than a Lester Bangs, but he's able to incorporate the strengths of both of these writers as well as those of many others, including British rock critics that I'm, again, less familiar with than I should be, into an ecumenical overall approach that leaves no stone unturned in its in-depth analysis of bands, scenes, movements, and overall periods in punk/rock history. I say "periods" because this book, despite its subtitular reference to postpunk, covers a great deal more than just that few years after the dissolution of the Sex Pistols in which Joy Division and Public Image Ltd. represented the cream of the creative crop. The book delves deeply into the New Wave/"New Pop" movements of the early 80s, probing the depths of synthpop and fey British "haircut bands" to find the serious ideas and important creative moments that were at the root of a great deal of the era. In so doing, Reynolds makes a persuasive case for the likes of the "Don't You Want Me" era Human League, Duran Duran, and even Culture Club. I almost find myself wanting to give certain era-defining synthpop albums another listen. Almost.

Ultimately, that's the biggest tribute to the power of Reynolds's writing here. He not only makes me want to dig out records by groups I like that I haven't heard in quite a while, but also records by groups I've always hated. If his writing unearths a valuable truth or a worthwhile musical moment on the second Culture Club album or in Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Relax," I feel like I should hear it again, even though I'd ordinarily tell you that I'd be happy if I never heard any of that garbage again. That's enough to tell me that this is a writer worth paying attention to. "Rip It Up And Start Again" may be the first Simon Reynolds book I've ever read, but it won't be the last.

[Tracy Reilly · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, this book probably was written for me. Those are my years, this is my music. I was a bit surprised at how differently this was written from the usual rock journalism stuff,usually full of that overly cute jargon, with the writer's personality in flamboyant display. Well in a monthly, vying for the short attention span of the audience, this is perhaps a necessary evil. Seminal!!!

This book, however, is presented in a less frenzied, leisurely pace. It tends to look at niches of time and place, analyzes what created them on a cultural level--including politics, the socio-economic and educational bent of the given town, how one artist/musician/philosopher, or a group may have started a fire, spread it to the locals, created offshoots or clones, mutated, moved, added new interests, new people, new instruments. Reynolds seems to have special insight into the Northern provinces of Britain, explaining why they frequently became incubators for new music with the combination of dying industries, art schools, and socialist/nationalist ideology. There were a lot of squats and communes.

But he also has lots of good thoughts about American schools of postpunk--although he does avoid some of the more well-known scenes like Boston, D.C., and California that have probably been done to death. Mostly, what I got from this book was picking up stray threads of people and places I heard about, perhaps, but now I feel I've got a decently thorough schooling in who they were, what they sounded like, why they existed: their raison d'etre, if that changed, and how that made them get big/fail.

Because the inevitability is always the ultimate failure, whether they had a moment at the Top of the Pops, or avoided it out of a sense of purity. It's kind of fascinating how many different ideas and styles got mashed up in these days--one thread that seems to permeate the post-punk era is this one decision--to guitar or no?? Because electric music was a big part of this era of music, of course.

I learned a lot. Got me excited about music again. Bands I never heard of, bands I had heard of but never invested in mentally. I had missed a lot, whoo boy.

I think my Big Learn here was recognizing the difference in experience for the American Music consumer (me) of that era and the British consumer(not me). The main difference, as I see it, was musicologists like John Peel, whose name appears again and again in this book. Forget Clapton is God---or John Stabb. John Peel was the Lord and Savior of all latter-twentieth century odd and creative music. America didn't have him, and that's a big empty for us. That's why Americans with unusual music taste had to dig deeper, search longer, and ultimately feel both alienated and special. We did not have a John Peel with a national microphone to spread the news.

[Jeni · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book reads like an MA thesis. It reminds me of every boring man, boring on about music I am too young (or too female) to listen to. I got lost in a bit of the guitar/sound wankery but it was pretty cool to read about the shows. Part fanboy, part mansplainer (sorry not sorry) but it made me feel as if I should give up listening to music as nothing can be so good as the halcyon days of the post punk genre. Also, I was massively irked to find a bunch of quotes in place of stylised prose for the B52’s, almost as I felt he couldn’t be bothered but felt obliged to include them. It was more noticeable due to the language he used in every other chapter. Also, there are some terrible, terrible people that appear to be deified in this book. Glad, I read it so I can put it on my shelf to repel men, or whatever the latest Daily Fail article is.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fuck! I loved it. Thank you, Simon Reynolds.

It is PACKED with an overwhelming amount of information. It encompasses so much and is written in a compelling way that left me often wishing I could have slowed down, exhibited more self-control, to listen to bands or just generally absorb a scene before tumbling into the next.

So comprehensive and vivid. Pointed me to so much great music, I watched the movie Kes, I want to read J.G. Ballard. Blah etc. I even enjoyed learning about disturbing little scenes and seeming shock-jocks.

I appreciated where the authorial voice sat: Reynolds is transparent with his opinions which helped orient me in this sprawling history. But his presence was not overbearing. Just honest and not some phony omniscience.

I read the apparently abridged American publication and have learned that the U.K. version has like, 200 more pages??? Do I need to read this. ?

[Antonio Fanelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interessante.
Una maratona nella musica dei primi anni ottanta.
Racconta bene lo spirito del tempo.
Purtroppo non ho mai trovato comprensibili le recensioni discografiche: l'ascolto non mi restituisce mai le sensazioni che, secondo i recensori, avrei dovuto provare.
E poi tutto quell'elencare gruppi personaggi e titoli di canzoni e album alla lunga affatica e annoia.
Peccato.
Un libro meno recensioni musicali e più sociologia forse sarebbe risultato più scorrevole.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is certainly the best single book so far on post-punk, but it is significantly impaired, firstly by Reynolds' refusal or inability to decide what he means by 'post-punk', and secondly, by his decision to try to include musical developments after punk in the US. He ought to have decided what 'post-punk' meant for him and stuck with it. Similarly, he ought to have limited the ambit of the book to the UK, Ireland & Germany, because his treatment of developments in those countries is generally excellent (albeit with some puzzling omissions and corresponding over-indulgences).

The conceptual confusion about what 'post-punk' means is the most glaring general problem, and is signaled by a divergence in usage between the book cover and the text. On the cover & spine, the book is subtitled "Postpunk 1978-1984." In the text, the word is consistently rendered as "post-punk." The difference suggests a confusion between 'postpunk' as genre, and 'post-punk' as purely chronological distinction (anything after punk). This fundamental ambiguity is then underlined by the two parts of the book. Part One is "Post-Punk;" Part Two is "New Pop & New Rock." Part Two probably should have been a separate book.

I turn now to the customary remonstrances for sins of omission. The chapter on the development of Goth doesn't so much as mention Dave Vanian & The Damned; I'd have thought they would be the seminal example of a band moving from punk to a particular place in post-punk. Psychedelic Furs are mentioned only in passing (and even then, only as a 'New Wave' band), while Echo & The Bunnymen and Teardrop Explodes are discussed in detail. In perhaps the most bizarre oversights, Essential Logic are merely mentioned in passing, while Kleenex/LiLiPUT are not mentioned at all.

There is, on the other hand, a sin of emission in his discussions (plural) of The Associates, which are quite frankly embarrassing. There's nothing wrong with having had sexual fantasies about a favorite singer, but all critical distance & judgment go out the window here, borne aloft by his fan-boy ejaculations. Twelve pages are devoted to this relatively unimportant and utterly non-influential band.

As an American reader, his uneven and at times down-right shabby treatment of the development of post-punk in the USA is impossible to ignore. He is not American, and so he is completely reliant upon interviews and press coverage. This handicap is most glaringly apparent in the second of two chapters on New York. This chapter contains no writing by Reynolds at all; it is comprised entirely of quotes taken from music magazines, interspersed with some quotes taken from interviews. He does not even attempt an evaluation of the material presented. Why include this chapter at all?

Worse, he appears to have decided not to engage with the Los Angeles scene in anything but the most cursory fashion, devoting almost all of his meager coverage to a discussion of L.A. hardcore punk…which had pretty much nothing to do with post-punk, certainly not stylistically.

To begin with, his treatment of the San Francisco & Los Angeles scenes is bizarrely inverted; the L.A. post-punk scene was much larger and more diverse, and he fails altogether to mention either The Screamers, one of the great post-punk bands that actually preceded punk (like Pere Ubu, e.g.) or Deadbeats (who were doing New York-style No Wave at least as early as anybody in New York did).

When he does gesture towards L.A. post-punk, interesting bands such as 100 Flowers, Human Hands, B-People & Monitor are only mentioned in a list; neither Wall of Voodoo nor the Fibonaccis rates a mention. [He also fails to mention Fear's 'New York's Alright (If You Like Saxophones)', which skewered the wildly over-rated No Wave scene with greater wit than any of the NY bands.]

To return briefly to Goth, his treatment is limited to the UK (The Cramps are mentioned as a sartorial influence on one UK band). But the birth of American Goth in Los Angeles is a fascinating chapter in the history of the genre; many of the earliest L.A. Goths were Latino(a), and the role of the sanguinary Mexican style of Catholicism seems significant (and of course it's tempting to include the Aztecs as well).

He makes a forehead-smacking error in describing "…basic apolitical hardcore, such as Orange County's TSOL…." TSOL's first record included songs such as 'Property Is Theft', 'Abolish Government/Silent Majority', and 'World War III'. But this error also serves to indicate an even bigger missed opportunity: TSOL's next record (Dance With Me) was explicitly Goth in subject matter and tried to chart a musical course between hardcore and some more expansive form. It isn't a brilliant album by any means, but it serves to underline a certain shoddiness in Reynolds' approach to the American scenes.

He is aware of the emergence of hybrid punk/roots forms in Los Angeles in the wake of punk (Blasters, Gun Club, Los Lobos, et al.), but he doesn't seem to think they qualify as 'post-punk' for some reason (while Dexy's Midnight Runners somehow do). Neither does he stop to consider why that development occurred when and where it did.

L.A. is, after all, the world capital of surface and appearance, and the themes of presentation, image, authenticity and self-fashioning are central to the book. Could there be a more interesting case study of a musician moving through the promise of punk, the experimental space of post-punk, and a subsequent turn to a pre-existing form than the career of Phranc, who went from Catholic Discipline to Nervous Gender (basically an L.A. band, though they started in San Francisco) to solo folk performer? Or how about the move of the Kinman brothers from the avowedly Marxist punk Dils to cowpunk pioneers Rank And File? Another opportunity missed.

He could have considered why the reactions to the dead-end of punk took such different forms in the UK and in L.A. Indeed, a comparison of the UK with Los Angeles would have been much richer conceptually than the utterly predictable and by-the-numbers focus on NY No Wave and its progeny. It seems to have escaped him that No Wave skronk never appealed to more than perhaps 2,000 people, almost all of whom lived on the island of Manhattan, and it had no discernible influence on anybody else anywhere, ever. Compare the L.A. punk-roots hybridization: that birthed an entirely new sub-genre of music that spread across the country over the next few decades, alt-country.

Overall, this is a very, very good book on most UK post-punk (qua genre), with a lot of perhaps overly-detailed material on the British pop music that came after post-punk. Perhaps a better, more tightly-focussed book will be written about post-punk someday. Until then, this will suffice as a guide to the curious and a prod to the nostalgic.

[aga · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disclaimer: this is just a messy rant, don't take it seriously.

Not gonna lie, I (being a post-punk fan since 2010/11) was very excited to read this one. I was hoping I would love it. Boy, was I wrong.
The book feels like two different books taped together - one pretty good, the other quite bad. The first half is dedicated to post-punk since its emergence until 1979/1980. Reynolds gives a pretty good overview of post-punk bands and scenes of the era. The chapters are dedicated either to certain scenes or bands that shared similar ideals/aesthetics/sound - the division make sense and the scenes/bands are analyzed rather well. The author gives enough information about the the bands: their ideals, artistic goals and aspirations, as well as some trivia about their personal lives. There's also a chapter dedicated to independent labels which was probably the most interesting and informative one. Reynolds provides sociopolitical background of the bands and of the regions they came from. Throughout the entire book, the author uses quotes from the band members and other associated people, which are often the best part of a chapter. The first part is both an easy, fun and compelling read for a fan of the genre. It ends in 1979 with the release of PiL's This Is Not a Love Song - and that's where real problems being. Reynolds implies that most post-punk after 1979/1980 became pretty much uninteresting (he does so in a quite condescending manner and looks down on the likes of Killing Joke and The Sound) and gives up on writing about it (almost) altogether, which is a pity.
While part I the author offered an in-depth analysis of a particular era and genre, part II is all over the place. Reynolds writes about many different genres and scenes, ranging from 2-tone ska, through synthpop to gothic rock. None of those are described and analyzed thoroughly. In this part Reynolds often gives too much time to certain bands (there's an entire chapter dedicated to Adam Ant and Bow Wow Wow) while ignoring some more important and influential bands (like The Cure about which there's only one paragraph in the entire book). Part II is also filled with some strange and unnecessary statements, my "favorite" one being about Echo & the Bunnymen being popular among girls solely because of the vocalist's beauty. In my opinion, at some points, the author lets his personal opinions and emotions show too much - both with bands he does seem like and with those he doesn't. I did not enjoy reading part II and I felt like I haven't learned much new things from it.
Throughout the entire book there was also one thing that seemed consistently annoying - the way Reynolds describes the music. His descriptions are too adjective-laden and at the same overly abstract. If I didn't know how the bands sounded like, I'd probably never guess from them.
Overall, I'd recommend reading the first half of the book and skipping the second in favor of something more in-depth on the topic.

[Danny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was planning on making my way through this slowly and listening to the music as I went along, but I found it so gripping that I ended up just tearing through and making a list of artists and albums to go back to later. That list is now ridiculously long and will take me weeks or months to get through, a testament not just to how much ground the book covers but also to how well Simon Reynolds sells the music and makes you really want to check it out.

The list would be even longer if I was including artists I already listened to but now feel a strong urge to go back to armed with the new perspectives provided by this book. Reynolds really has a skill for digging into what makes a particular band so great, and if they're not great then at least why they're interesting and worth being taken seriously.

The first part of the book focuses on the early days of post-punk when it was in its purest form, and for me this was the strongest part of the book, producing a tight narrative while also being wide-ranging. The second part focuses more on the various sub-genres that were spawned out of this initial burst of post-punk, and while still enjoyable its certainly the weaker half.

The various directions post-punk took after its initial stages is inherently a more unweildly subject and for this reason the second part struggles to tell an overarching story as well as the first, which in fairness maybe can't be helped. However, my main issue was that a few bands and scenes were given considerably more space than I felt they deserved while others were given short shrift.

A book like this is always going to have that problem and to an extent it's just personal taste, but it became much more of an issue in part two. The most glaring example of this for me was that a band as significant as The Cure were given no more than a few paragraphs, while Malcolm McLaren's various post-Pistols expolits were given page after page of detail. Maybe that's just my personal preference coming through, but I found it jarring.

This is mostly just nitpicking though because I really enjoyed this book, it provided nearly everything I was looking for in it and does a great job of balancing more intellectual musings with clear passion and enthusiasm for the subject.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terrific overview of postpunk music, mostly in the UK and the US, with a few forays further afield, from the breakup of the Sex Pistols to the mid-'80s. There was a lot of musical energy unleashed in the later '70s that took a few years to burn out. I would have read this a lot faster if I hadn't felt compelled to keep stopping and listening to songs and bands I'd forgotten about or hadn't listened to in years.

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great read, but definitely meant only for those with previous knowledge of or respect for this era of music history. Newcomers to this genre will most likely be put off by the sheer amount of obscure information that Reynolds includes, while post-punk nerds such as myself will revel in it.

However, it should be noted that the US version is highly censored and cut by almost 200 pages, and does not include the original photos of the UK release. Take some time to seek out the original UK publication and, of course, actually listen to the music that it's describing! It makes the whole experience of reading this book so much more enjoyable, you won't regret it!

[Phillip Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thorough, well researched, etc. Spends time on some bands I don't give a shit about but that's hardly Simon's fault. Content-wise, it is just fascinating how quickly all these eras burn out, in constant reaction to one another. You end up washed up in like two years. No band now would release more than like 2 singles in 2 years, for better or worse. Probably the most fascinating music era there's been (63-69 up there)

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vi riporto i capitoli (aggiungendo tra parentesi il numero della pagina di inzio di ciascun capitolo e precisando alcuni degli artisti di cui si parla oltre a quelli presenti nel titolo) perché già questo basta a far sbavare qualsiasi appassionato di musica..

Parte prima: Post-Punk
1) la mia immagine pubblica mi appartiene: John Lydon e i PiL (35)
2) L'esterno di tutto: Howard Devoto e Vic Godard (Buzzcocks, Magazine.. 50)
3) Uncontrollable urge: le bizzarrie industrial di Pere Ubu e Devo (66)
4) Contort Yourself: la New York No Wave (James Chance, Suicide, Dna, Lydia Lunch.. 88)
5) Revival Tribale: il Pop Group e le Slits (113)
6) Autonomy in the UK: le etichette indipendenti e il movimento fai da te (134)
7) Spettacolo militante: i Gang of Four e la scena di Leeds (155)
8) Offensiva artistica: Talking Heads e Wire (Bush of Ghosts 177)
9) Vivere per il futuro: Cabaret Voltaire, Human League e la scena di Sheffield (202)
10) Just Step Sideways: Fall, Joy Division e la scena di Manchester (228)
11) Messthetics: l'avanguardia londinese (Scritti Politti, LMC, Flying Lizards, This Heat, Red Crayola, John Peel.. 255)
12) Devoluzione industriale: i Throbbing Gristle e la Death Factory (285)
13) La scena Freak: Cabaret noir e teatro della crudelta' nella San Francisco Post-Punk (Residents, Tuxedomoon, Chrome, Flipper.. 310)
14) Careering: i PiL, apogeo e declino del post-punk (332)

Parte seconda: New Pop e New Rock
15) Ghost Dance: il 2-Tone e la rinascita ska (Specials, Madness.. 351)
16) Sex gang children: Malcom McLaren, il pifferaio magico del pop pantomimico (Bow Wow wow, Adam & The Ants 377)
17) Electric Dreams: il synthpop (Human League, Gary Numan, Ultravox, Spandau Ballet, Soft Cell, Japan.. 396)
18) Fun'n'frenzy: la Postcard ed il sound della giovane Scozia (Orange Juice, Josef K.. 422)
19) Play to win: i pionieri del new pop (Scritti Politti, Heaven 17, Trevor Horn 443)
20) Mutant disco e punk-funk: intrecci urbani nella New York promi anni ottanta (B-52's, Club 57, Basquiat, Kid Creole, Liquid Liquid, New Order.. 469)
21) New gold dreams 81-82-83-84: apogeo e declino del new pop (Associates, Altered Images, Simple Minds, Duran Duran, Wham!, Culture Club, ABC.. 492)
22) Roba oscura: il dark e il ritorno del rock (Bauhaus, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Cure, Birthday Party, Killing Joke.. 512)
23) Giovani gloriosi: Liverpool, la nuova psichedelia e la big music (Echo & the Bunnymen, Zoo, Teardrop Explodes, Waterboys, Big Country, u2.. 534)
24) The blasting concept: il punk progressivo dalla sst ai Mission of Burma (Black Flag, Minutemen, Husker Du, Meat Puppets 553)
25) Conformati per deformare: gli infiltrati della seconda ondata industrial (Psychic TV, Cabaret Voltaire, Foetus, Einsturzende Neubauten, Test dept, Swans, Depeche Mode.. 576)
26) Saccheggiamo il XX secolo: ZTT e la Frankiemania (Malcom McLaren, Art of Noise, Frankie goes to Hollywood, Propaganda.. 596)

Alla faccia di chi sostiene che gli anni 80 siano stati musicalmente un decennio scadente.
Un magnifico excursus attraverso uno dei periodi musicali più prolifici e sperimentali di sempre, che portò il concetto di "liberazione" musicale ai suoi limiti. E Reynolds non si limita a descrivercelo con professionalità e competenza, ma ci prende per mano e ci porta a respirare anni che sembrano ormai irripetibili.
La scrittura e' decisamente scorrevole, densa di informazioni al punto da lasciar intuire che, senza un'operazione di sintesi alla base, il libro (di 700 pagine) sarebbe potuto essere tranquillamente lungo il doppio..
Leggetelo: forse ancora non lo sapete, ma il vostro gruppo preferito è descritto all'interno di questo libro.

[J.S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I never bought old records during that period. Why would I have? There were so many new records to buy that there was simply no earthly reason to investigate the past." Simon Reynolds

Somewhere I heard that the music you're listening to when you're 14 years old is the music that you love the rest of your life. Well, I was 14 in the early eighties, and I'm still listening to that same music. While my friends were playing air guitar and air drums to the music of Journey, Boston, and REO Speedwagon, I was listening to A Flock of Seagulls, Duran Duran, Madness, and Echo & the Bunnymen. While their music heroes were hairy-chested long-haired manly(?) men in jeans and leather, mine were more often than not geeky and effeminate young Brits wearing makeup and sporting foppish hair styles and skinny ties. Needless to say, I endured a significant amount of persecution for my taste in music. So finding someone who champions those new wave artists like Simon Reynolds is like finding a kindred spirit.

"...it's often implied that nothing of real consequence happened between punk rock and grunge, between Never Mind the Bollocks and Nevermind...
In retrospect, as a distinct pop-cultural epoch, 1978-82 rivals that fabled stretch between 1963 and 1967 commonly known as the sixties. The postpunk era makes a fair match for the sixties in terms of the sheer amount of great music created, the spirit of adventure and idealism that infused it, and the way that the music seemed inextricably connected to the political and social turbulence of its era. There was a similar blend of anticipation and anxiety, a mania for all things new and futuristic coupled with a fear of what the future had in store."

Reynolds argues that the music that followed the demise of punk was not only highly creative and innovative but also more influential than punk. He chronicles the most notable bands of the time like Public Image Ltd (PiL – Johnny Rotten's new band after the breakup of The Sex Pistols), Joy Division, The Human League, Talking Heads (etc. etc. etc!) as well as the different genres like New Romantic, synthpop, African beats and world music, ska, goth, (etc. etc. etc!). He describes how the DIY mentality of punk was adapted by the postpunk bands, avoiding guitar and drum solos, forming their own labels, and embracing a cleaner sound and cleaner images – at least as far as the way they looked anyway. I was surprised to find that they weren't all one-hit wonders – many were hugely successful in Britain and frequently had chart-topping hits on that side of the Atlantic that didn’t get played on the radio over here. (The up-side of that is that now I'm finding a lot of great new old music.)

"The true sign that you're living through a golden age is the feeling that it's never going to end. There's no earthly reason why it should stop. It's an illusion, of course, like the first swoony rush of falling in love, but that's how it felt to be young, British, and besotted with pop music in 1982."

The book had me constantly opening Spotify to listen to songs and bands I didn't know (and my new wave playlist has grown to over 29 hours). It was fun to read about bands whose music I loved, but it dragged a bit on others. The US version of the book is abridged from the UK version, but there was still a TON of information. But most of all it was fun to read someone extolling the virtues of my favorite music and bands, and I recommend it for those with similarly refined tastes!

[Jesús · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mastodóntico, enciclopédico, imprescindible. El libro de Reynolds pone orden en aquello que el punk dejó patas arriba y hace que nos preguntemos no ya qué es el post-punk, sino: ¿qué no es post-punk? Es música disco, es reggae, es dub; es negro, es blanco y es africano; es de Nueva York y es de Manchester; es autogestión, es independencia, es política y es baile; es ruido, furia y mierda, pero también es artístico, limpio y minimalista; es frío y es calor; es carne y es metal; es antirock y antiblues; es synthpop, es punk funk, es industrial; es mod, es ska, es feminista; es PIL y es The Pop Group, es Devo y Pere Ubu, es Joy Division y The Fall, es The Human League y es Talking Heads; es Bowie, es The Residents y es Roxy Music; es Simple Minds, es U2 y es Spandau Ballet también. Es algo, me parece, mucho más complejo e interesante que el propio punk porque fueron estas bandas las que realmente llevaron el espíritu de ruptura con la tradición del rock y el cabreo con la sociedad hasta nuevas y estimulantes formas de creación musical.

[Todd N · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is the british edition which has a few more chapters than the american edition. hold out for the british edition if you can. i bought this for my daughter's first grade teacher because he likes ny punk as much as i do. my favorite chapter was the cleveland chapter covering pere ubu and devo. who knew that virgin records tried to get johnny rotten to be the singer for devo? a great chapter about heaven 17 and their start as more of a political collective than a band. they decided to have more non-musicians in the band than musicians so that the musicians couldn't control the band's direction. great chapter about malcom mclaren stealing adam ant's original band and turning them into bow wow wow. it also helped me understand why i don't like u2 that much -- they are too fucking uplifting. absolutely fascinating book.

[Stephen McQuiggan · Rating 3 out of 5]

How punk came to reinvent itself, to conform and deform. Whenever the bands speak for themselves the book becomes interesting, but otherwise it's more jargon than prose. It is hard to describe music in words, but this gets pretentious very quickly; irritatingly so. The author dismisses the likes of Crass whilst praising others for having less innovation. Scritti Politti take up far too much room here, way beyond their actual worth. It is clear that Reynolds loves the subject, I just wish he could have told us why in a manner that didn't make me want to grow my hair again so that I could tear it out. Entertaining in places, long-winded and snobbish in others - you'd be safer just buying the albums.

[Sylvia · Rating 3.5 out of 5]

Post-punk: a genre that found me at an impressionable age and did strange things to my brain and now I’m like this. Since this is a book review and not a recipe blog, I’ll spare you the details. The relevant part is that I’ve not only spent countless hours since then listening to the music, but also seeking out the stories behind it, meaning this book was a perfect match for me. And overall, it is pretty damn informative, but I also have several nitpicks with it.

As the subtitle indicates, this is a history of the music that succeeded punk, starting with John Lydon’s self-reinvention and the rise of Public Image Ltd. in 1978, and ending with the brief popularity but ultimate failure of Frankie Goes to Hollywood in 1984. Reynolds highlights not just the artists themselves, but the culture surrounding them, including the media and political events that influenced them. Many of the chapters are oriented around individual cities and their flagship artists, so to speak, and some take a break from exploring anyone’s sound in favor of highlighting crucial support structures like Rough Trade and zines.

The underlying thesis is that despite its reputation for being rebellious and envelope-pushing, punk was actually a very musically conservative genre, and the credit it receives for innovation rightfully belongs to what followed in its wake. To expand on that, punk was, at its heart, a reaction against overly long, experimental progressive rock, a return to traditional 50’s garage jams but with angrier lyrics this time. Contra popular imagination, the real musical revolution did not end with the Sex Pistols’ demise, but started with it, as punk musicians dropped the ruse and finally showed off the skills and refined tastes they previously pretended not to have and embraced the influence of the artists they once denounced. Once the age of three cords and the truth came to an end, the following eagerness to get weird with it and experiment with anything and everything changed music forever in a way that tends to get overlooked nowadays. I agree with this assessment completely, no caveats.

Reynolds is British, so from an American perspective, this was a fascinating look into cultural differences in a musical context. One difference that I don’t think I would’ve noticed on my own is that American audiences place way more importance on how a band performs live; indeed, one of the reasons cited for Frankie stalling out so quickly is that their record label tried to stop them from performing live for as long as possible, and this made Americans see them as a fake band who weren’t worth paying attention to (and let’s face it, they weren’t really wrong about that, as mean as it may sound). This is on top of all the fascinating information about artists whom I consider one-hit wonders.

He also does not shy away from addressing the bad aspects of the scene, namely the occasional racism and fascination with Nazism. While many artists took significant inspiration from African music, and ska in particular made racial harmony a core aspect of its ethos, there was also a huge amount of people who took pride in removing everything associated with black people from their music. And there were so many cases of “this band were constantly mistaken for fascists and that’s kind of their own fault”, even among otherwise great artists. Not surprising, given that in those days it was sometimes hard to tell who at the club was wearing a swastika armband because they genuinely held reprehensible beliefs and who did it just to shock people, as the book points out. (This is not to say this stuff went unconfronted, as evidenced by the incident where a front row audience member at a Delta 5 concert sieg heiled and one of the bassists responded by slamming the guy’s head against the stage.) It also features probably the best explanation of how the skinhead subculture came to be associated with Nazism despite its relatively apolitical beginnings (long story short: many skinheads hated Pakistani immigrants and noticed that the National Front did, too). I only half-jokingly believe this book should be required reading for twee mfers who say you can’t be punk and a bigot at the same time.

The tragedy of this book is that part 1 really is much better than part 2.

One of my biggest problems with it is that, just as he warned he would in the introduction, he largely ignores Germany and Australia. There was so much interesting stuff going on in those countries at the time, which only get mentioned in passing, if at all. Come on man, I know you have a lot of respect for industrial music. Why not take a break from the Anglosphere to talk about the German artists who pioneered the practice of using random objects as instruments, which you acknowledge had a huge influence on British acts? I’m much less qualified to comment on just how hard Australia got shafted, but I know the answer is “even harder than Germany did.” I think the only Australian artist that gets any focus at all is The Birthday Party, and he doesn’t even mention that a much more successful band rose out of their ashes after they crashed and burned. I think I would find these omissions easier to forgive if not for what he chose to focus on instead. I know he said there’s only so much he can research, but I really do feel like half a chapter on Düsseldorf or West Berlin or Melbourne would’ve been a better use of this book’s page count than cataloging every shady thing Malcolm McLaren did during this period. He starts to feel like a villain protagonist at certain points, and I just wanted to stop hearing about him.

He also picks up a habit in part 2 of bringing up a band just to say “they suck lol” and then moving on. His reasons for disliking any given artist are of…varying legitimacy. Some are decent artistic analysis, some are a simple aesthetic mismatch that he needlessly moralizes. Of particular note, you can spot the exact point in this book at which George W. Bush got reelected, because he starts bashing certain artists for being too American for his tastes, something he previously refrained from. And like, I get the frustration, I really do, but The Gun Club had nothing to do with all that, I promise.

I consider the half-chapter on gothic rock in particular to be a bit of a weak point of the book. (Which I don’t think is just Gell-Mann Amnesia; I also know a lot about Joy Division specifically, and I have no issue with the earlier section on them.) Besides getting the name of Bauhaus’ debut album wrong, it only briefly mentions The Cure (the most famous and commercially successful band to ever come out of the scene) and dismisses them without going into detail, lobs a “Nazi anthem” accusation so misaimed it left me with the impression that Reynolds doesn’t know what a cowboy is, and ends by implying that the entire affair was basically dead in the water by 1985, something I think even a clueless layman would clock as incorrect. Unless, of course, he is operating off a very strict and purist definition of goth that is at odds with the book’s early, noble declaration that it is “for, and about, the people who weren't there at the right time and place [...] but who nonetheless refused to believe it was all over and done with before they joined in."

Part 2 is not without its merits, however. Though more scattershot than part 1, this is out of necessity, since the foundations from part 1 spread to a much wider network and post punk became a proper cultural movement, rather than a handful of people in a handful of cities. It continues to be interesting and informative in this approach, even as any individual artist receives less focus than the ones highlighted earlier. It also has the best explanation I’ve seen of why MTV was such a game-changer, and how it directly led to the Second British Invasion. And I enjoy the fact that this nonfiction book about music has such a “the ancient evil has been reawakened” ending, the ancient evil in this case being boy bands.

I read the U.S. edition of this book, and apparently the U.K. edition is over 150 pages longer? I’ve no idea what’s contained in those extra pages, so I can’t take them into account here. Looking at the other reviews, the omitted portions contained pictures, so get the U.K. edition if you want the halftime show.

In the end, I'd say this is a 3.5, and I'm just rounding down due to feeling more critical of it than it probably deserves. I consider this book a worthwhile read for anyone invested in the subject, and I learned a hell of a lot from it. However, my extant knowledge did lead to some friction with it, and I was getting kind of worn out by the end. Some of that is, I acknowledge, a disagreement on what’s important, and I tried to extend some grace as a result, but there were times I couldn’t stop myself from holding that against it. But if the point of this book was to make me hate Malcolm McLaren, it succeeded fantastically. I kinda want to buy asbestos a pint for killing him.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book as an ideal airplane book - potentially interesting, but not likely to be particularly taxing. And it was pretty much as a I expected. I'm not a post-punk disciple (born a little late), and know the music mostly from a "looking-back" perspective. Coming from this point of view, the beginnings of the book were pretty interesting, starting with PiL and moving forward. I've always wondered about the story of PiL, and it was well explained by Reynolds.

The major problem with this book is the tendency of the chapters to fall into a similar pattern. The basic outline is : first, explain a particular hot spot of post-punk activity (generally geographic, often based upon a well-known label), second go into some detail about the flagship band of that hot spot and then last, quickly move through all the bands this flagship influenced. Clearly, this taxonomic style owes a lot to journalism and appeals to a typically fetish-like view of bands and their influences. But after about 5 chapters, it becomes a little mundane.

Minor quibble - the cover of the book claims it to be "NME's Book of the Year". Incidentally, NME is mentioned a number of places in the book as being very influential in the post-punk movement. So it's not particularly surprising they would pick a book for "Book of the Year" that so heavily advertises their street cred.

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simon Reynolds is a great critic/historian. The 80's! On the surface it seems to be dull time, but alas, not true! Great music works were produced in that era, everything from Adam Ant (Yes!) to Pere Ubu. Public Image, The Slits, Scritti Politti - and lots more are covered in this book. A fascinating read to a world that doesn't exist anymore. That's the nature of 'pop.'

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Postpunk: lived, observed, reflected on.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

let me just warn you that this book is much bigger than you think. it's dense as heck, absolutely crammed with info in small print, and it is astonishing how much info the author bothered to track down in every relentless chapter. it's an amazing achievement, in that regard. but don't let me scare you off- this book is incredible, and by far the best (not to mention most comprehensive) book I've read about this slice of music history. i learned a ton, even if it took me ages to get through.
parts are just not that readable - often can read like a list of facts - but at times he can also nail something with glorious eloquence.
as a non-brit, the whole scene - whose music i adore - just makes way more sense now. and apart from learning about a few bands that strangely had been under my radar, like swell Maps, it also means I appreciate all that much more other bands that I may not have understood their context, like Wire and PiL.
if you're a Post Punk fan then I can't imagine there being another book you would want to dig into. just don't expect to finish it quickly

[Harry McDonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Giving this anything other than 5 stars feels like a cop out.

[Claudius · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extensively in-depth, broadly exhaustive, turning me on to a lot of great music while reading it. Just please get someone to check your German spelling, Simon.

[Olha · Rating 4 out of 5]

time travel is real!

[Cristóbal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eclosiona materia pasta negra
la memoria vuelve grisácea
una época la que no viviste
miraron hacia el futuro sobre qué hacer en ese ahora, donde la sesentera hippie se vio reemplazada por el disco setentero extasiado por la cantidad de droga en las entrañas. No digamos los punks esta vez o quizá de ahora en adelante también. El post-
punk, todo lo que influyó y difundió Sex Pistols en adelante, cuando Lydon se aburrió rápido del repetitivo tum-tum-pá para escoger variantes de repetición con Public Image Ltd. erigiendo muralla de sonido, ruido extático por eternos minutos, apuntarle con un extintor al micrófono del estudio descargándolo mientras gritaba aliterado que “We only wanted to be loved” por infinitos minutos de tiempo. Cambiarlo todo y empezar de nuevo.

Atribuir el movimiento post-punk a un destacado cultor de éste sería egocentrar y limitar lo que imita un período histórico reflejando al Primer Mundo. En el aire se respiraba un descontento social acentuado con el thatcherismo, donde liberalismos de moneda se traspasaban también a la música como bien de consumo, producto bruto. Esto también se contagiaba en el género punk (¿acaso terminaría esto?). Cómo dejarían, los espíritus más conmocionados por cambiarlo todo, que la música tornara otra tontera más donde la comercialización se apoderara de su valor.
El frenesí del funk, el dub hipnótico del reggae y el baile adaptativo a cualquier ritmo fueron ingredientes que el post-punk adoptó como primeriza influencia para vigorizarse. Cada quien le agregó su pizca de intención que, de a poco, se propagaría. Keith Levene de Public Image Ltd. trabajaría la repetición desde otra vereda: “repetía de inmediato el error para ver si eso “equivocado” podía transformarse en una nueva clase de “correcto”. “La idea era romper con todos los condicionamientos, salirse de un solo canal y entrar en otro espacio” (42). Mark Stewart de The Pop Group, entre rescates tribales africanos con tambores de ritual, tomaba “el viraje hacia un modo de hablar directo y asertivo (…), respuesta a las urgencias de la época” (82). Industrializar el ruido vino de la mano de Cabaret Voltaire o Throbbing Gristle con la técnica cut-up que William S. Burroughs popularizó, aplicado en la música: “La idea era cortar textos o sonidos y recombinarlos para interrumpir la linealidad de pensamiento; cada corte y cada empalme funcionaba como una grieta a través de la cual, en palabras de Burroughs y Gisin, “se filtra el futuro”” (137). Lo sonoro no necesariamente tenía que ser música para los oídos.

En poco más de un lustro, las bandas que protagonizaron este movimiento hicieron del ruido un aliado para sonorizar un malestar creciente que era necesario exorcizar. Corrientes como la no wave decidían recolectar “los escombros de una psiquis destrozada” (219) para reiniciar la música, agarrando la monotonía disco para reinventarla y repetir golpes en una guitarra o saturar disonancias entre teclados de juguete donde “creaban a partir de su propia tortura” (219) como pasaba con Mars o los integrantes de Teenage Jesus que no sabían cómo tocar un instrumento pero, por lo mismo, desarrollaron un estilo “que respondía a la perfección a esa urgencia primal” (220) de la mera expresión; todo en un espacio donde el público era un integrante más de la banda. Hasta mini-obras habían en el mundo post-punk, como lo hizo Wire cuando invitaba a la gente a hacer actos como dejar “un carrito y un vaso en los que varias personas vertían agua, mientras que Newman lideraba una sinfonía guitarrística al estilo de Glenn Branca” (255). El respetable era invitado a la acción. Quizá, el oído podía verse taladrado en ruido infernal, pero jamás podría quedar indiferente.

Todas las personas terminaban involucrándose de uno u otro modo en el género. Cercanos a los músicos que pasaban a ser productores o mánagers por pura admiración tras el trabajo realizado. Así fue con Brian Eno, personaje entrañable en el libro (y, por supuesto, en la historia) que en esta época desarrolló con creces su inquietud por buscar los nuevos sonidos. Declaraba, por ejemplo: “Cuando la gente habla de manera apasionada, crea melodías” (242) cuando escuchaba a unos jóvenes Talking Heads que les acompañó en su búsqueda incesante de originalidad, la cual según Tina Weymouth, bajista de la banda, “habían pasado tantos años tratando de ser originales que ya no sabían lo que era la originalidad” (248). Nuevamente, empezar de cero. ¿Cómo reinventar la rueda? Imposible hazaña, pero ¿por qué no intentarlo para pasarlo bien en el intento?

Con espectadores entre pasmados y extasiados, las bandas de esta época fueron responsables de tallar un sonido absorbente de la vida fragmentaria. Por ejemplo, la cruda y gélida atmósfera de Unknown Pleasures se debe mucho a “la desarticulación promovida por Hannett que realzaba la atmósfera inhóspita y alienada del sonido de la banda” (170). Esta desarticulación consistía en grabar cada instrumento por separado, incluyendo las piezas de una batería. También implicaba crear estados de tensión en los músicos; tensión psicológica que provocara una disposición alterada para grabar, tensión física con el aire condicionado a bajo nivel para un cuerpo congelado. Esta fragmentación también ocurrió con Wire, quienes adoptaban dadaístas escrituras también influenciadas otra vez por Burroughs: “las percepciones caleidoscópicas de los temas de Wire muchas veces lograban representar la manera fragmentaria en la que vivenciamos la realidad con mayor fidelidad que las narraciones convencionales” (252). Estas bandas ya preveían las consecuencias de un modo de vivir en exceso, por lo que sonorizarlo era cosa de tiempo.

Recopilando estos aspectos, el libro resulta una real enciclopedia del post-punk. Al menos de las bandas que más ruido (literal y simbólicamente) provocaron en su tiempo. Cada persona que ayudó, cada disco que influyó, cada sello que tuvo sus cinco minutos de fama y fue enterrado sin pena ni gloria, es rescatado a modo de homenaje por un fanático más que tuvo la dicha de convertirse en periodista musical para escribir una obra así.

Considerando ese fanatismo, quizá el provecho de un tema así no haya sido trabajado del todo a mi parecer. Primero que nada, el periodista sufre de ese mal que Mariana Enríquez bien describió de esos hombres que escriben reseñas como si fueran motores de auto. “La guitarra rítmica entrecortada de Albertine corre como un rayo entre las sinuosas líneas de bajo de Pollitt y las repiqueteantes baterías a tempo de Budgie” (77). Tanto adjetivo de movimiento. Se redime con análisis de letras o reflexiones sobre el quehacer de la época, lo cual preveo como mucho más potencial que estas descripciones tan lateras.
Sin embargo, y creo que esto también nace de la típica arbitrariedad musical sobre qué es más importante, creo que la segunda parte del libro pierde demasiada fuerza. No veo especial relevancia con dedicar un capítulo entero a The Specials más allá de adoptar la actitud DIY del post-punk o priorizar tanto el trabajo del new pop en bandas como Orange Juice. En el transcurso de los capítulos, se rescata el synthpop de bandas como New Order o el gótico rescatado por The Cure, Bauhaus o Siouxsie and the Banshees. Grupos como estos rescataron harto más del post-punk en el sentido de su legado, respiraban la energía enajenada de instrumentos crudos y voces tambaleantes en una bocanada ochentera que se oponía como contraparte de la perfección en sobreproducción popera. Pese a ello, se les dedican algunos párrafos más que capítulos enteros dedicados a cada banda o conjunto de grupos, disposición que ocurría con creces en la primera parte. ¿Por qué desaprovechar la derrumbe de Pornography que The Cure se vio afligido en crear? ¿Por qué relegar a Josef K como meros rescatistas escoceces de Franz Kafka en vez de recalcar aún más sus particularidades? A ratos, creo que la segunda parte fue una extensión a ratos innecesaria y alborotada de cuantiosos datos que se conectaban con la época, pero tanta unión con lo desarrollado, no lo sé.


Pese a todo, Simon Reynolds fundó una obra titánica sobre un género musical que hasta el día de hoy repercute. Una enciclopedia donde todos esos sonidos extraños tenían un motivo de ser, como todo aquel arte que desafía. Me quedó dando vueltas sobre todo el final:

“Esta manía de buscar respuestas en canciones pop, de indagar hasta el último rincón de la historia de una corriente musical, que en cierto modo continúa hasta el día de hoy, ¿acaso fue un desperdicio de energía que podría haber invertido en algo más “útil”?” (549)

Recordé a Roland Barthes preguntándose por la utilidad de la literatura, respondiéndose que tal vez sirva para sufrir menos. Con la música debe ocurrir similar. La bruma mental disipa con sonoridad cuando guía hacia dónde encontrar nuestra verdad.