Courtney Love has never been less than notorious. Her intelligence, ambition and appetite for confrontation has made her a target in a music industry still dominated by men. As Kurt Cobain's wife she was derided as an opportunistic groupie; as his widow she is pitied, and scorned, as the madwoman in rock's attic. Yet Hole's second album, "Live Through This," awoke a feminist consciousness in a generation of teenage girls."Live Through This" arrived in 1994, at a tumultuous point in the history of American music. Three years earlier, Nirvana's "Nevermind "had broken open the punk underground, and the first issue of a zine called Riot Grrrl had been published. Hole were of this context and yet outside of it: too famous for the strict punk ethics of riot-grrrl, too explicitly feminist to be the world's biggest rock band. And then Kurt Cobain shot himself, four days before the album's scheduled release."Live Through This" is an album about girlhood and motherhood; desire and disgust; self-destruction and survival. There have been few rock albums before or since so intimately concerned with female experience. The album is a key document of third-wave feminism, but the conditions that produced its particular aesthetic have disappeared. So where did the energy of that feminism go? And why is Courtney Love's achievement as a songwriter and musician still not taken seriously, nearly twenty years on?

In December 1976, a coach drove off down a London street. On board were the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Heartbreakers and their respective management, while The Damned, who were also on the bill, were travelling separately. The 'Anarchy in the UK Tour' should have been just another rock 'n' roll tour, and surely would have been, had it not been for the Sex Pistols' anarchic antics on the Today show two days earlier. What should have been an inconsequential three-minute interview to hopefully plug the new single, and the accompanying promotional tour, descended into farce when the show's host Bill Grundy goaded the Sex Pistols' guitarist Steve Jones into saying something outrageous? Author Mick O Shea has interviewed members of the band's involved, managers, roadies and audience members to tell the story of why this was such an important tour. Explains why many local councils banned the tour resulting in only seven out of a scheduled twenty gigs taking place. One London councilor stated: "Most of these groups would be vastly improved by sudden death" The book is also an examination of punk rock's impact on the nation in the Seventies. Illustrated throughout with rare photographs and memorabilia.

In this book, Wilson Neate gets beneath the surface of a punk band with a difference. In contrast with many of their punk peers, Wire were enigmatic and cerebral, always keeping a distance from the crowd. Although Pink Flag appeared before the end of 1977, it was already a meta-commentary on the punk scene and was far more revolutionary musically than the rest of the competition. Few punk bands moved beyond pared-down rock 'n' roll and garage rock, football-terrace sing-alongs or shambolic pub rock and, if we're honest, only a handful of punk records hold up today as anything other than increasingly quaint period pieces.While the majority of their peers flogged one idea to death and paid only lip service to punk's Year Zero credo, Wire took a genuinely radical approach, deconstructing song conventions, exploring new possibilities and consistently reinventing their sound. This is a chord. This is another. This is a third. Now form a band, proclaimed the caption to the famous diagram in a UK fanzine in 1976 and countless punk acts embodied that do-it-yourself spirit. Wire, however, showed more interesting ways of doing it once you'd formed that band and they found more compelling uses for those three mythical chords."33 1/3" is a series of short books about a wide variety of albums, by artists ranging from James Brown to the Beastie Boys. Launched in September 2003, the series now contains over 50 titles and is acclaimed and loved by fans, musicians and scholars alike.

When it comes to New York City hardcore, its community proudly boasts Lou and Pete Koller-brothers who have dominated the scene worldwide since 1986 with the aurally devastating Sick of It All as their vehicle. "One the best books ever written about hardcore, period..." -Decibel Magazine For Flushing, Queens natives Lou and Pete Koller, hardcore has become a lifestyle as well as an unlikely career. From the moment these siblings began applying their abilities to punk's angrier, grimier sub-genre, they quickly became fifty percent of one of the most intense and compelling quartets to ever claim the movement-the legendary New York hardcore band, Sick of it All. Contrary to popular belief, Lou and Pete are proof positive that you don't need to have lived a street life, or come from a fractured, chaotic home in order to produce world-class hardcore. If Agnostic Front are the godfathers of New York hardcore, then vocalist Lou and guitarist Pete are its grand masters. The Blood and the Sweat is the no-holds-barred autobiography of two brothers who have never wavered, as well as an unrelenting depiction of the American dream, and the drive and determination required to live it-regardless of whatever obstacles appear before you. Featuring commentary from family, friends, bandmates past and present, and their peers, including Gary Holt (Exodus, Slayer), Kurt Brecht (D.R.I.), Barney Greenway (Napalm Death), and more...

Lobotomy is a lurid and unlikely temperance tract from the underbelly of rock 'n' roll. Taking readers on a wild rollercoaster ride from his crazy childhood in Berlin and Munich to his lonely methadone-soaked stay at a cheap hotel in Earl's Court and newfound peace on the straight and narrow, Dee Dee Ramone catapults readers into the raw world of sex, addiction, and two-minute songs. It isn't pretty. With the velocity of a Ramones song, Lobotomy rockets from nights at CBGB's to the breakup of the Ramones' happy family with an unrelenting backbeat of hate and squalor: his girlfriend ODs; drug buddy Johnny Thunders steals his ode to heroin, "Chinese Rock"; Sid Vicious shoots up using toilet water; and a pistol-wielding Phil Spector holds the band hostage in Beverly Hills. Hey! Ho! Let's go!

Celebrating a wide range of punk design in vinyl cover art, posters, flyers, fanzines, and other ephemera, The Art of Punk highlights the movement primarily within graphic design and print, while also considering its impact on wider popular culture. Punk was based on immediacy-an often-inspired amateurism and underground, close-knit communities that burned brightly but were not intended to extend beyond the gig, the event, the scene, the moment. Punk songs by such legendary bands as the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, the Damned, the New York Dolls, the Germs, and the Clash tended to be short, fast, and aggressive, and the oft-repeated credo "If it can't be said in three minutes, it's not worth saying" was adopted as standard practice, extending in turn to an entire ethos for the whole subculture. The book is arranged chronologically, and by genre, and features more than 900 visual examples both by uncredited artists and internationally renowned designers and design groups, alongside interviews with, and commentary by, many of the artists concerned.

Grinding California provides the first academic analysis of the subculture of skate punk at book-length. It establishes highly critical evaluations of the discourses that influenced early skateboarding and punk cultures. Based on an examination of songs, flyers, magazines, and videos, Konstantin Butz revisits the American popular cultures of the 1980s and approaches them from a variety of theoretical and methodological angles. He introduces contemplations of the rebellious potential that can be located within skate punk's material and corporeal contestations of the site-specific locale of suburban Southern California. Theoretical recourses to thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Jean Baudrillard, and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht are topped off with excerpts from interviews with some of the most influential protagonists of the 1980s skate punk scene.

The Sex Pistols exploded onto the music scene in 1976, paving the way for the deluge of punk rock that would change the face of modern rock music forever. Their debut album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols, proved one of the most important rock albums of all time, fusing slammed rock chords with searing vocals. The Sex Pistols simply, and seemingly effortlessly, blew away all that had come before them, setting an entirely new bar for rock acts that followed in their wake. In Sex Pistols: The Pride of Punk, Peter Smith explores the impact the band had on launching the punk movement, beginning in 1976 with their debut single and ending in 1978 with their American tour. Despite their brief career, the Sex Pistols illustrate an important set of political and cultural elements of 1970s UK and US culture: disaffected youth, strained international relations, and rapid changes in culture. Peter Smith digs deep to collate the factors that fueled the Sex Pistols and the punk revolution.

?An American Demon is Jack Grisham's story of depravity and redemption, terror and spiritual deliverance. While Grisham is best known as the raucous and provocative front man of the pioneer hardcore punk band TSOL (True Sounds of Liberty), his writing and true life experiences are physically and psychologically more complex, unsettling, and violent than those of Bret Easton Ellis and Chuck Palahniuk. Eloquently disregarding the prefabricated formulas of the drunk-to-sober, bad-to-good tale, this is an entirely new kind of life lesson: summoned through both God and demons, while settling within eighties hardcore punk culture and its radical-to-the-core (and most assuredly non-evangelical) parables, Grisham leads us, cleverly, gorgeously, between temporal violence and bigger-picture spirituality toward something very much like a path to salvation and enlightenment. An American Demon flourishes on both extremes, as a scary hardcore punk memoir and as a valuable message to souls navigating through an overly materialistic and woefully self-absorbed "me first" modern society. An American Demon conveys anger and truth within the perfect setting, using a youth rebellion that changed the world to open doors for this level of brash destruction. Told from the point of view of a seminal member of the American Punk movement -- doused in violence, rebellion, alcoholism, drug abuse, and ending with beautiful lessons of sobriety and absolution -- this book is as harrowing and life-affirming as anything you're ever going to read.

By June 1993, when Washington, D.C.'s Fugazi released their third full-length album In on the Kill Taker, the quartet was reaching a thunderous peak in popularity and influence. With two EPs (combined into the classic CD 13 songs) and two albums (1990's genre-defining Repeater and 1991's impressionistic follow-up Steady Diet of Nothing) inside of five years, Fugazi was on creative roll, astounding increasingly large audiences as they toured, blasting fist-pumping anthems and jammy noise-workouts that roared into every open underground heart. When the album debuted on the now-SoundScan-driven charts, Fugazi had never been more in the public eye. Few knew how difficult it had been to make this popular breakthrough. Disappointed with the sound of the self-produced Steady Diet, the band recorded with legendary engineer Steve Albini, only to scrap the sessions and record at home in D.C. with Ted Niceley, their brilliant, under-known producer. Inadvertently, Fugazi chose an unsure moment to make In on the Kill Taker: as Nirvana and Sonic Youth were yanking the American rock underground into the media glare, and "breaking" punk in every possible meaning of the word. Despite all of this, Kill Taker became an alt-rock classic in spite of itself, even as its defiant, muscular sound stood in stark contrast to everything represented by the mainstreaming of a culture and worldview they held dear. This book features new interviews with all four members of Fugazi and members of their creative community.

Featuring never-before-seen photographs of U2 on their first US Tour, Bad Brains, Black Flag, Danzig, The Descendants, Fugazi, The Damned, The U.K. Subs, and many, many more Since 1981, Chris Barrows has taken pictures of bands at their concerts, backstage, and behind the scenes. From U2 during their first tour in 1982 to Captain Sensible of The Damned on his knees in an alley licking a dominatrix's thigh high vinyl boots, or Lee Ving standing on railroad tracks at night, Barrows' intimate and stirring portraits of bands stripped down and unguarded will be a wonderful addition to any music fan's collection.

Black Flag were the pioneers of American Hardcore, and this is their blood-spattered story. Formed in Hermosa Beach, California, in 1978, they made and played brilliant, ugly, no-holds-barred music for eight brutal years on a self-appointed touring circuit of America's clubs, squats, and community halls. They fought with everybody--the police, the record industry, and even their own fans--and they toured overseas on pennies a day in beat-up trucks and vans. This history tells Black Flag's story from the inside, drawing on exclusive interviews with the group's members, their contemporaries, and the bands they inspired. It depicts the rise of Henry Rollins, the iconic front man, and Greg Ginn, who turned his electronics company into one of the world's most influential independent record labels while leading Black Flag from punk's three-chord frenzy into heavy metal and free jazz.

What was I fighting for? Even now I'm not sure. Something so old and so deep, it has no words, no shape, no logic.

Viv Albertine has always been obsessed with the truth: the truth about family, power, and her identity as a rebel and outsider. But at what cost? In this brutally honest memoir she relentlessly exposes human dysfunctionality: the impossibility of intimacy, and the damage wrought upon us by secrets and revelations, siblings and parents. Written with Albertine's unique vulnerability and intelligence, To Throw Away Unopened is a startling self-portrait and a testament to rebuilding oneself and facing the world again.

The proximity of the East L.A. barrio to Hollywood is as close as a short drive on the 101 freeway, but the cultural divide is enormous. Born to Mexican-born and American-naturalized parents, Alicia Armendariz migrated a few miles west to participate in the free-range birth of the 1970s punk movement. Alicia adopted the punk name Alice Bag, and became lead singer for The Bags, early punk visionaries who starred in Penelope Spheeris' documentary "The Decline of Western Civilization."

Here is a life of many crossed boundaries, from East L.A.'s "musica ranchera" to Hollywood's punk rock; from a violent male-dominated family to female-dominated transgressive rock bands. Alice's feminist sympathies can be understood by the name of her satiric all-girl early Goth band Castration Squad.

"Violence Girl" takes us from a violent upbringing to an aggressive punk sensibility; this time a difficult coming-of-age memoir culminates with a satisfying conclusion, complete with a happy marriage and children. Nearly a hundred excellent photographs energize the text in remarkable ways.

Alice Bag's work and influence can be seen this year in the traveling Smithsonian exhibition "American Sabor: Latinos in U.S. Popular Music."

FACTORY RECORDS' REPUTATION AND FORTUNE WERE FOUNDED ON TWO BANDS -JOY DIVISION AND NEW ORDER - AND ONE SINGLE-MINDED AND STUBBORN PERSONALITY: ITS MEDIA-FRIENDLY COMPANY DIRECTOR ANTHONY H. WILSON. AT THE HEIGHT OF IT'S SUCCESS IN THE LATE 1980S, THE COMPANY REIGNED OVER THE MANCHESTER RAVE SCENE, RAN IT'S OWN CLUB, THE HACIENDA, AND HAD A STRING OF HIT RECORDS AROUND THE WORLD. BY 1992 THE BACK CATALOGUE HAD BEEN SOLD OFF, NEW ORDER AND HAPPY MONDAYS WERE IN DISARRAY, AND THE HACIENDA WAS SHUT DOWN BY THE POLICE. SINCE THEN THE STORY OF FACTORY RECORDS HAS BECOME THE STUFF OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS. A MAJOR NEW BRITISH FILM, TWENTY FOUR HOUR PARTY PEOPLE, REVISITS THE HEYDAY OF THE HACIENDA, AND STARS STEVE COOGAN AS ANTHONY H. WILSON ALONGSIDE MANY OF THE ARTISTS AND PERSONALITIES WHO WERE AROUND AT THE TIME. THE FILM IS RELEASED IN MARCH 2002. FROM JOY DIVISION TO NEW ORDER, ACCLAIMED ON IT'S ORIGINAL PUBLICATION IN 1996, TELLS THE REAL STORY OF FACTORY'S SPECTACULAR HISTORY. DRAWING ON EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS WITH THE MAJOR PLAYERS, MICK MIDDLES PROVIDES A TIMELY AND FACINATING LOOK AT THE UNIQUE PERSONALITIES AND MESSY REALITY BEHIND ONE OF THE UK'S MOST INFLUENTIAL AND (AT ONE TIME ) COMMERCIALLY SUCCESSFUL INDEPENDENT RECORD COMPANIES.

'No Feelings', 'No Fun', 'No Future'. The years 1976-84 saw punk emerge and evolve as a fashion, a musical form, an attitude and an aesthetic. Against a backdrop of social fragmentation, violence, high unemployment and socio-economic change, punk rejuvenated and re-energised British youth culture, inserting marginal voices and political ideas into pop. Fanzines and independent labels flourished; an emphasis on doing it yourself enabled provincial scenes to form beyond London's media glare. This was the period of Rock Against Racism and benefit gigs for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the striking miners. Matthew Worley charts the full spectrum of punk's cultural development from the Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks and Slits through the post-punk of Joy Division, the industrial culture of Throbbing Gristle and onto the 1980s diaspora of anarcho-punk, Oi! and goth. He recaptures punk's anarchic force as a medium through which the frustrated and the disaffected could reject, revolt and re-invent.

Fire up the crimpers and get backcombing! Hairspray and heartbreak abound as the painted youth of the 1980s go on the rampage in a North West London suburb. Further `Tales of a Rock Star's Daughter' by Nettie, eldest offspring of Cream/Blind Faith drummer Ginger Baker, follows on from her hilarious and critically acclaimed first volume. Here she negotiates eviction and poverty and goes off the rails with a new cast of maniacs. From a 1970 meeting with Jimi Hendrix, through to Live Aid, Greenham Common, a cancer op and a brief glimpse of Cream's 2005 reunion. This is essentially a punk rock, pub-based soap-opera like no other; set against venues long-gone and values out-dated, in the smashed-up ruins of a changing world.

The authorized story of an American band who shaped the history of music for generations. Today's new music-makers are looking back at the bands that broke the ground, and the Ramones are it: the original high priests of punk, the stars of rock 'n roll high school, the royal avatars of rock, raunch, and rebellion. 60 photographs and illustrations.