Guy Pratt came of age just as playing bass became sexy. In spurning the guitar solo, punk put the low-end on more of an equal footing--or maybe it was just that Paul Simonon and Bruce Foxton were pretty cool. Either way, people were trying out the basslines of "White Man in Hammersmith Palais" or "Peaches." Having dallied with Funkapolitan, Pratt suddenly found himself on "Top of the Pops" and supporting David Bowie with the smooth Australian outfit Icehouse. At a ludicrously young age he became a sought-after bass player to the stars, finding himself crawling from studios to bars and from hotels to stadiums with the likes of Robert Palmer, Womack & Womack, Bernard Edwards, Bryan Ferry, and David Crosby. The 1980s were in their prime, and with a number of Crolla-suited appearances in windswept videos behind him, he was invited to join Pink Floyd for a series of stadium extravaganzas to make Bono & Co. look fairly modest. He was in The Smiths for a week, has traveled through customs in a wheelchair after a flight with Jimmy Page, spent time in the studio with Michael Jackson, and has lived to tell all. This autobiographical account emerges from the successful stand-up tour of the same name, charting his journey from a Mod band to playing with Roxy Music at Live 8.

A no-holds-barred memoir of legendary Dead Kennedys and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer D.H. Peligro, Dreadnaught chronicles Peligro from his pre-DK years growing up in a deprived St. Louis ghetto to his years in San Francisco with Jello Biafra, East Bay Ray, and Klaus Flouride--from Los Angeles with the Red Hot Chili Peppers through years of drug and alcohol abuse all over the world amidst a backdrop of some of the most defining periods of late twentieth century cultural, social, and music history.

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."

Raised in Queens, where he worked as a plumber while honing his guitar skills, Johnny Ramone eventually became a founding member of The Ramones, one of the most influential rock bands of all time. Often called the first punk rock outfit, their status is now legendary. But despite becoming an international star when he was alive, Johnny never really strayed from his blue-collar roots and attitude. His bouts of delinquency as a kid might have given way to true discipline when it came to keeping the band in line, but he was truly imbued with the angr y-young-man spirit that would characterise his persona on and off stage. Johnny was the driving force behind the Ramones, sometimes referred to as a drill sergeant, bringing order and regiment to the band. This was evident in the speed, accuracy and intensity of their music. Johnny kept the band focused and moving forward, ultimately securing their place in rock history. The Ram ones were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002 and two years later, Johnny dies of cancer, outliving the other two founding members and getting the last and complete word. Brutally honest, revealing and touching, this is Johnny Ramones's story and the story of the Ramones from start to finish, told in his own words and on his own terms. In addition to his story, the book will contain Johnny's annotated and graded assessment of the Ramones' albums, a number of eccentric Top Ten Lists; favourite Elvis films, favourite Republicans [Johnny was actually pretty conservative], favourite horror films, pages from his legendary "black books" with notes on concerts, inspirations, anecdotes and scores of black and white and colour photos, many of which have not been published before.

The Damned are forever in the history books as the first UK punk band to get an album out. Damned Damned Damned was a flamethrower of a record, led by the incendiary violence of "New Rose" (first UK punk single as well) and "Neat Neat Neat," two shocking punk anthems that defined the golden era of the new wave more purely pogo-mad than anything outta The Clash or the Sex Pistols. And the mayhem never let up, with the band already breaking up and reforming (another first!) by 1979 for one of the greatest punk albums of all time, Machine Gun Etiquette (by the way, The Damned were also the first UK punk band to tour America). More punch-ups and gratuitous vandalism ensued as the band expanded its palette through the years. Popoff has wanted to write Lively Arts: The Damned Deconstructed for decades, and now that it's finished, he's been all over video and radio calling it his favourite and best book he's ever done. For in it, Popoff got to analyse monastically - headphones and repeat button at the ready - every damned Damned song across all the albums and every EP and single. This herculean task represented a joy of an exercise from a penmanship point of view, but it was most satisfying in a proselytizing sense - Martin wants everybody joining him in poring over The Damned catalogue in minute detail. Let this long-suffering band of scrapping, scratching cats in a sack know how important and beloved they are before they're all dead!

Popular music in the US and UK during the late 1970s and early 1980s was wildly eclectic and experimental. 'Post-punk', as it was retroactively labeled, is not an easily definable musical category. How do electro-pop melodies, distorted guitars, avant-garde industrial sounds, and reggae beats fit under the same categorical umbrella? What post-punk is not is as interesting a question as what it is. What Is Post-Punk? combines a close reading of the late-1970s music press discourse with musical analyses and theories of identity to unpack post-punk's status as a genre. Mimi Haddon traces the discursive foundations of post-punk across publications such as Sounds, ZigZag, Melody Maker, the Village Voice, and the NME, and presents case studies of bands including Wire, PiL, Joy Division, the Raincoats, and Pere Ubu. By positioning post-punk in relation to genres such as punk, new wave, dub, and disco, Haddon reveals post-punk as a community of tastes and predilections rather than a stylistically unified whole. Haddon diversifies the discourse around post-punk, exploring both its gender and racial dynamics and its proto-industrial aesthetics to restore the historical complexity surrounding the genre's terms and origins. A detailed exploration of an otherwise under-explored cultural phenomenon, What Is Post-Punk? is a significant addition to scholarship in popular music, of interest to scholars of genre theory and discourse analysis, including feminist and postcolonial discourse.

Combining unique access to Green Day with a journalist's nose for a great story, Mark Spitz tells the complete account of the band Green Day from their earliest days to their most recent explosion in popularity--achieved after many in the business had written the band off as old news. It??'s hard to believe that in early 2004, Green Day was considered pass??--a strictly 90s phenomenon. Since then, they have rewritten the rules of rock???namely the rule that says: no comebacks allowed. Sure, there are second acts in rock, but usually they???re embarrassing. ???American Idiot??? has sold 4 million copies in America???the biggest selling rock record of the year. It??'s currently at number 20 on the charts???57 weeks after debuting at number 1. The band was awarded a Grammy for rock album of the year and seven MTV video music awards including video of the year. NOBODY LIKES YOU is a story of friendship and the transporting power of playing very loud music. It is the story of how high school drop out Billy Jo Armstrong came to write song lyrics that inflamed the political conscience of fans in a way that two Yale graduates couldn???t. Green Day??'s story???from rise, to fall, to rise again--has never been fully told, and Spin journalist Mark Spitz has exclusive access.

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.

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.

Punk Now!! brings together papers from the second incarnation of the Punk Scholars Network International Conference and Postgraduate Symposium, with contributions from revered academics and new voices alike in the field of punk studies. The collection ruminates on contemporary and non-Anglophone punk, as well as its most anti-establishment tendencies. It exposes not only modern punk, but also punk at the margins: areas that have previously been poorly served in studies on the cultural phenomenon. By compiling these chapters, Matt Grimes and Mike Dines offer a critical contribution to a field that has been saturated with nostalgic and retrospective research. The range and depth of these chapters encapsulates the diverse nature of the punk subculture - and the adjacent academic study of punk - today.

It's 1982 and the Ramones are in a gutter-bound spiral. Following a run of inconsistent albums and deep in the throes of internal tensions the legendary quartet is about to crash and burn.THEnter Richie Ramone.THThen a 26-year-old from New Jersey named Richard Reinhardt he's snapped up by the group to be their new drummer and instantly goes from the obscurity of the underground club scene to membership in the most famous punk-rock band of all time revitalizing the pioneering outfit with his powerful precise and blindingly fast beats a composing classic cuts like the menacing anthem Somebody Put Something in My Drink and becoming the only Ramones percussionist to sing lead vocals for the group. With the Ramones he performs over five hundred shows at venues all around the world and records three storming studio albums a before abruptly quitting the band and going deep underground. To most fans this crucial figure in the band's history has remained a mystery his tale untold.THUntil now.THEI Know Better Now: My Life Before During and After the RamonesE is the firsthand four-on-the-floor account of a life in rock 'n' roll and in one of its most influential acts a straight from the sticks of the man who kept the beat.

The acclaimed and wildly outlandish inside account of Britain's most notorious club, The Hacienda--a story of gangsters, drugs, violence, and great beats

In the 1980s, The Hacienda was one of the most famous venues in the history of clubbing--a celebrated cultural icon alongside Studio 54, CBGB, and the Whiskey a Go Go--until its tragic demise.

Founded by New Order and Factory Records, The Hacienda hosted gigs by such legendary acts as the Smiths, Bauhaus, Grandmaster Flash, Run DMC, Kurtis Blow, Happy Mondays, and Stone Roses; gave birth to the "Madchester" scene; became the cathedral for acid house; and laid the tracks for rave culture and today's electronic dance music. But over the course of its near fifteen-year run, "Madchester" descended into "Gunchester" as gangs, drugs, greed, and a hostile police force decimated the dream.

New Order cofounder and bassist Peter Hook provides an up-close and visceral look at this cultural touchstone and it's rise and fall. The Hacienda is a funny, horrifying, and wild story of success, idealism, naivete, and greed--of an incredible time and place that changed the face and sound of modern music.

Following hard on the explosion of British punk, in 1979 Gang of Four produced post-punk's smartest record, Entertainment! For the first time, a band wedded punk's angry energy to funk's propulsive beats-and used that music to put across lyrics that brought a heady mixture of Marxist theory and situationism to exposing the cultural politics of everyday life. But for an American college student from the suburbs-and, one expects, for many, many others, including British youth-Jon King's and Andy Gill's mumbled lyrics were often all but unintelligible. Political rock 'n' roll is always something of an oxymoron: rock audiences by and large don't tune in to be lectured to. But what can it mean that a band that made pop songs as political theory actively resisted making that theory legible? Coming to terms with the impact of Entertainment! requires us to take the mondegreen-the misunderstood lyric-seriously. The old joke has it that the title of R.E.M.'s debut album should have been not Murmur, but Mumble: true, so far as it goes. But that's the title, too, of rock 'n' roll's Greatest Hits compilation-and that strategic inarticulateness itself, which creates such an important role for the listener, has an important politics.

'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.

What does a hemispheric Americas look like when done through the lens of punk music, visuals and literature? That is the core premise of this book, presented through a collage of analytical, aesthetic and experiential takes on punk across the continent. This book challenges the dominant vision of punk - particularly its white masculine protagonists and deep Anglocentrism - by analysing punk as a critical lens into the disputed territories of 'America', a term that hides the heterogeneous struggles, global histories, hopes and despairs of late twentieth and early twenty-first century experience. Compiling academic essays and punk paraphernalia (interviews, zines, poetry and visual segments) into a single volume, the book seeks to explore punk life through its multiple registers, through vivid musical dialogues, excessive visual displays and underground literary expression. The kaleidoscopic accounts include everything from sustained academic inquiry and photo portraits to anarchist manifestos and interview excerpts with notable punk figures. The result is a radically heterogenous mixture that seeks to reposition punk and las Americas as intrinsically bound up in each other's history: for better and for worse. Out of critical pasts, within an urgent present and toward many different possible futures. This volume critically refashions punk to suggest it emerges from within the long-term historical experience of las Americas in all their plurality and is useful as a mode of critique towards the hegemonic dimensions of America in its imperial singularity. The book is rooted in a theory of 'radical heterogeneity' and thus represents a collage-like juxtaposition of punk perspectives from across the entire hemisphere and via divergent contributions: academic, experiential and aesthetic. Readership for this collection will include both academic and general readers. Primary readership will be academic. It will appeal to researchers, scholars, educators and students in the following fields: American studies, Latin American studies, media and communication, cultural studies, sociology, history, music, ethnomusicology, anthropology, art, literature. General readership will be among those interested in the following areas - anarchism, music, subculture, literature, independent publishing, photography.

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.

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 Tallowmere Annual is a unique collection of words, sound, and ink paintings by musician and artist Keaton Henson. This hardback, special limited edition, mixed-media book tells the fragmented story of a town that never existed, Tallowmere, seemingly empty, showing only outlines of living things, words once spoken, and the sounds of distant mourning. The first of its kind, the book's front cover holds an MP3 pack embedded with an audio jack for headphones and sound controls. Readers can plug in and listen to a recorded score created specially by Keaton as an accompaniment to reading the book and viewing the artwork. Visit www.welcometotallowmere.com for more information. Detailed Specification: Cover: Cased edition with scuff proof matt lamination, 4-colour with spot UV front and back Insides: End papers: black, 140gsm uncoated wood-free paper, 128 pages, 157 gsm matt art paper in sewn sections Original artworks created by Keaton: India ink on paper. Black and white striped head and tail bands Battery pack features: Embedded in cardboard panel on front inside cover, 3x AAA batteries supplied with each pack, removable batteries, On/off switch Audio playback features: Audio chip has play/stop button and volume controls, audio lasts for approx. 20 mins, audio jack to be inserted centrally into the bottom of the cased cover. The Tallowmere Annual was shortlisted for 'The Futurebook of the Year' at The Booksellers Futurebook Live Awards 2018.

Inaugural pick for the Pitchfork Book Club GQ's One of the Best Books to Read Right Now How can so many people pledge allegiance to punk, something with no fixed identity? Depending on who and where you are, punk can be an outlet, excuse, lifestyle, escapism, conversation, community, ideology, sales category, social movement, punishable offense, badge of authenticity, reason to drink beer forever, or an aesthetic of belligerent incompetence. And if someone has a strong belief about what punk is, odds are they have even stronger feelings about what punk is not. Sam McPheeters championed many different versions. Over the course of two decades, he fronted Born Against, released dozens of records and fanzines, and toured seventeen times across the northern hemisphere. In this collection of essays, profiles, criticism, and personal history, he examines the diverse realms he intersected--New York hardcore, Riot Grrrl, Gilman street, the hidden enclaves of Olympia, and New England, and downtown Los Angeles--and the forces of mental illness and creative inspiration that drove him, and others, in the first place.

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.