On February 21st 2012, five members of an obscure feminist post-punk collective called Pussy Riot staged a performance in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Dressed in their trademark brightly coloured dresses and balaclavas, the women performed their song 'Punk Prayer - Mother of God, Chase Putin Away!' in front of the altar. The performance lasted only 40 seconds but it resulted in two-year prison sentences for three of the performers - and has turned Pussy Riot into one of the most well-known and important protest movements of the last five years. This necessary and timely book is an account of the Pussy Riot protest, the ensuing global support movement, and the tangled and controversial trial of the band members. It explores the status of dissent in Russia, the roots of the group and their adoption - or appropriation - by wider collectives, feminist groups and music icons. Masha Gessen has unique access to the band and those closest to them. Her unrivalled understanding of the Russian protest movement makes her the ideal writer to document and explain the rage, the beauty and the phenomenon that is Pussy Riot.

Totally Wired features 32 interviews with the post-punk era's most innovative musicians and colourful personalities. From Ari Up, Jah Wobble, David Byrne, Edwyn Collins, it also includes conversations with the most influential of label bosses, managers, record producers, DJs and journalists - such as John Peel and Paul Morley. Crackling with argument and anecdote, these conversations bring a rich human dimension post-punk's exceptional characters, from their earliest days to their glorious and sometimes disastrous musical adventures. Along with interviews, we get 'overviews': further reflections by Simon Reynolds on key icons and crucial scenes, including John Lydon and Public Image Ltd, Ian Curtis and Joy Division, and the lineage of glam grotesquerie running from Siouxsie & The Banshees to the New Romantics to Leigh Bowery.

During the late 1960s, throughout the 1970s, and into the 1980s, New York City poets and musicians played together, published each other, and inspired one another to create groundbreaking art. In "Do You Have a Band?", Daniel Kane reads deeply across poetry and punk music to capture this compelling exchange and its challenge to the status of the visionary artist, the cultural capital of poetry, and the lines dividing sung lyric from page-bound poem. Kane reveals how the new sounds of proto-punk and punk music found their way into the poetry of the 1960s and 1970s downtown scene, enabling writers to develop fresh ideas for their own poetics and performance styles. Likewise, groups like The Fugs and the Velvet Underground drew on writers as varied as William Blake and Delmore Schwartz for their lyrics. Drawing on a range of archival materials and oral interviews, Kane also shows how and why punk musicians drew on and resisted French Symbolist writing, the vatic resonance of the Beat chant, and, most surprisingly and complexly, the New York Schools of poetry. In bringing together the music and writing of Richard Hell, Patti Smith, and Jim Carroll with readings of poetry by Anne Waldman, Eileen Myles, Ted Berrigan, John Giorno, and Dennis Cooper, Kane provides a fascinating history of this crucial period in postwar American culture and the cultural life of New York City.

With many incarnations, The Fall (1976-2018) were one of the most influential bands to emerge in the British Post-Punk Scene. Their unique sound and distinct iconography have had a lasting impact on music fans and performers alike. This book disassembles The Fall's significant contribution to music. Based on up-to-date original research, the book separates fact from fiction and offers a thorough investigation into The Fall and their founder/leader Mark E Smith, in particular. Given The Fall's complexities (their wide range of influences; multiple line-ups and 'anti-music' stance), the book draws upon a wide range of academic disciplines, including ethnomusicology, sociology, literary theory, linguistics, journalism, cultural studies, and film and media studies, in order to unpack the group's influence and legacy.