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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Contemporary popular music > Rock & pop > Indie
NATIONAL BESTSELLER AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR "Ozzi's reporting
is strong, balanced and well told...a worthy successor to its
obvious inspiration, Michael Azerrad's 2001 examination of the '80s
indie underground, Our Band Could Be Your Life."-New York Times
Book Review A raucous history of punk, emo, and hardcore's growing
pains during the commercial boom of the early 90s and mid-aughts,
following eleven bands as they "sell out" and find mainstream fame,
or break beneath the weight of it all. Punk rock found itself at a
crossroads in the mid-90's. After indie favorite Nirvana catapulted
into the mainstream with its unexpected phenomenon, Nevermind,
rebellion was suddenly en vogue. Looking to replicate the band's
success, major record labels set their sights on the underground,
and began courting punk's rising stars. But the DIY punk scene,
which had long prided itself on its trademark authenticity and
anti-establishment ethos, wasn't quite ready to let their homegrown
acts go without a fight. The result was a schism: those who
accepted the cash flow of the majors, and those who defiantly clung
to their indie cred. In Sellout, seasoned music writer Dan Ozzi
chronicles this embattled era in punk. Focusing on eleven prominent
bands who made the jump from indie to major, Sellout charts the
twists and turns of the last "gold rush" of the music industry,
where some groups "sold out" and rose to surprise super stardom,
while others buckled under mounting pressures. Sellout is both a
gripping history of the music industry's evolution, and a punk rock
lover's guide to the chaotic darlings of the post-grunge era,
featuring original interviews and personal stories from members of
modern punk's most (in)famous bands: Green Day Jawbreaker Jimmy Eat
World Blink-182 At the Drive-In The Donnas Thursday The Distillers
My Chemical Romance Rise Against Against Me!
' An extraordinary history... The range of voices breathing new
life into past events is vast' **** Mojo ' The Morrissey and Marr
recollections are particularly revealing' The Word The Buzzcocks.
Joy Division. The Fall. The Smiths. The Stone Roses. The Happy
Mondays. Oasis. Manchester has proved to be an endlessly rich seam
of pop-music talent over the last 30 years. Highly opinionated and
usually controversial, stars such as Mark E. Smith, Morrissey, Ian
Brown and the Gallagher brothers have always had plenty to say for
themselves. Here, in John Robb' s new compilation, Manchester' s
gobbiest musicians tell the story of the city' s thriving music
scene in their own words. When the Buzzcocks put on the Sex Pistols
at Lester Free Hall in 1976, they kickstarted a musical revolution
and a fervent punk scene exploded. In 1979 the legendary Tony
Wilson founded Factory Records, the home of Joy Division/New Order
and later the Happy Mondays. The Hacienda, the Factory nightclub,
became notorious in the late 1980s as a centre of the influential
Madchester scene, led by the Mondays and the Stone Roses, with a
unique style and sound of its own. Then, from the ashes of
Madchester rose u ber-lads Oasis, the kings of Britpop and the
biggest UK band of the 1990s. John Robb is a leading music
journalist and the author of the bestselling biography of the Stone
Roses. His other books include Punk: An Oral History, The
Charlatans ... We Are Rock and The Nineties: What the F**k Was That
All About? He lives in Manchester.
In Britain during the late 1970s and early 1980s, a new phenomenon
emerged, with female guitarists, bass-players, keyboard-players and
drummers playing in bands. Before this time, women's presence in
rock bands, with a few notable exceptions, had always been as
vocalists. This sudden influx of female musicians into the male
domain of rock music was brought about partly by the enabling ethic
of punk rock ('anybody can do it!') and partly by the impact of the
Equal Opportunities Act. But just as suddenly as the phenomenon
arrived, the interest in these musicians evaporated and other
priorities became important to music audiences. Helen Reddington
investigates the social and commercial reasons for how these women
became lost from the rock music record, and rewrites this period in
history in the context of other periods when female musicians have
been visible in previously male environments. Reddington draws on
her own experience as bass-player in a punk band, thereby
contributing a fresh perspective on the socio-political context of
the punk scene and its relationship with the media. The book also
features a wealth of original interview material with key
protagonists, including the late John Peel, Geoff Travis, The
Raincoats and the Poison Girls.
Travis Barker's soul-baring memoir chronicles the highlights and
lowlights of the renowned drummer's art and his life, including the
harrowing plane crash that nearly killed him and his traumatic road
to recovery-a fascinating never-before-told-in-full story of
personal reinvention grounded in musical salvation and fatherhood.
After breaking out as the acclaimed drummer of the multiplatinum
punk band Blink-182, everything changed for Travis Barker. But the
dark side of rock stardom took its toll: his marriage, chronicled
for an MTV reality show, fell apart. Constant touring concealed a
serious drug addiction. A reckoning did not truly come until he was
forced to face mortality: His life nearly ended in a horrifying
plane crash, and then his close friend, collaborator, and fellow
crash survivor DJ AM died of an overdose. In this blunt, driving
memoir, Barker ruminates on rock stardom, fatherhood, death, loss,
and redemption, sharing stories shaped by decades' worth of
hard-earned insights. His pulsating memoir is as energetic as his
acclaimed beats. It brings to a close the first chapters of a
well-lived life, inspiring readers to follow the rhythms of their
own hearts and find meaning in their lives.
Uncompromising and innovative, hardcore punk in Washington, DC,
birthed a new sound and nurtured a vibrant subculture aimed at a
specific segment of the city's youth. Shayna L. Maskell explores
DC's hardcore scene during its short but storied peak. Led by bands
like Bad Brains and Minor Threat, hardcore in the nation's capital
unleashed music as angry and loud as it was fast and minimalistic.
Maskell examines the music's aesthetics and the unique impact of
DC's sociopolitical realities on the sound and the scene that
emerged. As she shows, aspects of the music's structure merged with
how bands performed it to put across distinctive representations of
race, class, and gender. But those representations could be as
complicated and contradictory as they were explicit. A fascinating
analysis of a punk rock hotbed, Politics as Sound tells the story
of how a generation created music that produced--and
resisted--politics and power.
When the Ramones recorded their debut album in 1976, it heralded
the true birth of punk rock. Unforgettable front man Joey Ramone
gave voice to the disaffected youth of the seventies and eighties,
and the band influenced the counterculture for decades to come.
With honesty, humor, and grace, Joey's brother, Mickey Leigh,
shares a fascinating, intimate look at the turbulent life of one of
America's greatest--and unlikeliest--music icons. While the music
lives on for new generations to discover, "I Slept with Joey Ramone
"is the enduring portrait of a man who struggled to find his voice
and of the brother who loved him.
In Generation Ecstasy, Simon Reynolds takes the reader on a guided
tour of this end-of-the-millenium phenomenon, telling the story of
rave culture and techno music as an insider who has dosed up and
blissed out. A celebration of rave's quest for the perfect beat
definitive chronicle of rave culture and electronic dance music.
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL 2018** WHO IS VERNON
SUBUTEX? An urban legend. A fall from grace. The mirror who
reflects us all. Vernon Subutex was once the proprietor of
Revolver, an infamous music shop in Bastille. His legend spread
throughout Paris. But by the 2000s his shop is struggling. With his
savings gone, his unemployment benefit cut, and the friend who had
been covering his rent suddenly dead, Vernon Subutex finds himself
down and out on the Paris streets. He has one final card up his
sleeve. Even as he holds out his hand to beg for the first time, a
throwaway comment he once made on Facebook is taking the internet
by storm. Vernon does not realise this, but the word is out: Vernon
Subutex has in his possession the last filmed recordings of Alex
Bleach, the famous musician and Vernon's benefactor, who has only
just died of a drug overdose. A crowd of people from record
producers to online trolls and porn stars are now on Vernon's
trail. Translated from the French by Frank Wynne "Thrilling,
magnificently audacious" Irish Times "Brimming with sex, violence
and deviant behaviour" Sunday Times "Virginie Despentes's Vernon
Subutex trilogy is the zeitgeistiest thing I ever read" NELL ZINK
Punk Pedagogies: Music, Culture and Learning brings together a
collection of international authors to explore the possibilities,
practices and implications that emerge from the union of punk and
pedagogy. The punk ethos-a notoriously evasive and multifaceted
beast-offers unique applications in music education and beyond, and
this volume presents a breadth of interdisciplinary perspectives to
challenge current thinking on how, why and where the subculture
influences teaching and learning. As (punk) educators and artists,
contributing authors grapple with punk's historicity, its
pervasiveness, its (dis)functionality and its messiness, making
Punk Pedagogies relevant and motivating to both instructors and
students with proven pedagogical practices.
Punk culture is currently having a revival worldwide and is poised
to extend and mutate even more as youth unemployment and youth
alienation increase in many countries of the world. In Russia, its
power to have an impact and to shock is well illustrated by the
state response to activist collective and punk band Pussy Riot.
This book, based on extensive original research, examines the
nature of punk culture in contemporary Russia. Drawing on
interviews and observation, it explores the vibrant punk music
scenes and the social relations underpinning them in three
contrasting Russian cities. It relates punk to wider contemporary
culture and uses the Russian example to discuss more generally what
constitutes 'punk' today.
This book is an ethnographic investigation of punk subculture as
well as a treatise on the importance of place: a location with both
physical form and cultural meaning. Rather than examining punk as a
"sound" or a "style" as many previous works have done, it
investigates the places that the subculture occupies and the
cultural practices tied to those spaces. Since social groups need
spaces of their own to practice their way of life, this work
relates punk values and practices to the forms of their built
environments. As not all social groups have an equal ability to
secure their own spaces, the book also explores the strategies
punks use to maintain space and what happens when they fail to do
so.
We remember the 1980s as the era of Ronald Reagan, a conservative
decade populated by preppies and yuppies dancing to a soundtrack of
electronic synth pop music (the "MTV generation"). But the decade
also produced some of the most creative works of punk rock - not
just the music of bands like the Minutemen and the Dead Kennedys,
but also visual arts, literature, poetry, and film. Kevin Mattson
documents what Kurt Cobain once called a "punk rock world." He
shows just how widespread the movement became, and how democratic
(not at all New York-centric), due to its commitment to
Do-It-Yourself (DIY) ethics. Mattson puts this movement into a
wider context, telling about a culture war that punks opened up
against the sitting president. Reagan's talk about end days and
nuclear warfare made kids panic; his tax cuts for the rich and
simultaneous slashing of school lunch program funding made punks
seethe at his meanness. The anger went deep, since punks saw Reagan
as the country's entertainer-in-chief - his career (from radio to
Hollywood and television) synched to the very world punks rejected.
Through deep archival research, Mattson reignites the heated
debates that punk's opposition generated - about everything from
"straight edge" ethics to anarchism to the art of dissent. By
reconstructing the world of punk, Mattson shows that it was more
than just a style of purple hair and torn jeans. And in so doing,
he reminds readers of its importance and its challenge to
simplistic assumptions about the 1980s as a one-dimensional,
conservative epoch.
As one of the people who defined punk's protest art in the 1970s
and 1980s, Gee Vaucher (b. 1945) deserves to be much better-known.
She produced confrontational album covers for the legendary
anarchist band Crass and later went on to do the same for Northern
indie legends the Charlatans, among others. More recently, her work
was recognised the day after Donald Trump's 2016 election victory,
when the front page of the Daily Mirror ran her 1989 painting Oh
America, which shows the Statue of Liberty, head in hands. This is
the first book to critically assess an extensive range of Vaucher's
work. It examines her unique position connecting avant-garde art
movements, counterculture, punk and even contemporary street art.
While Vaucher rejects all 'isms', her work offers a unique take on
the history of feminist art. -- .
An updated reissue of what, along with England's Dreaming, has
become the acknowledged seminal work on punk. Cain was at every
major gig and interviewed all of the acts at the time. He was
viewed as an 'insider' and his access was unrivalled. This book is
a vibrant and fast-paced trip through an extraordinary year.
Includes major new interviews with Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten,
Strangler Hugh Cornwell and Rat Scabies of The Damned.
(Book). Read & Burn is the first serious, in-depth appraisal of
Wire, one of the most influential British bands to emerge during
the punk era. If Wire were briefly a punk band, however, it was
largely by historical accident. Despite the fact that they had
complicated and transformed that category almost before they'd
begun, they seem never to have quite escaped the label. Be it punk,
post-punk, or art-punk, critics have clung onto the p-word in an
attempt to capture the essence of Wire's innovative uniqueness. But
their story which honors punk's original yet quickly forgotten
commitment to the new is one of constant remaking and remodelling,
one that stubbornly resists reduction to a single identity. As a
result, the group's projects have always balanced uneasily between
artistic endeavour and the need for commercial sustainability,
played out against the backdrop of the musicians' perennially
complex creative relationships. Tracing Wire's diverse output from
1977 up until the present, Read & Burn seeks to do justice to
their highly influential and restlessly inventive body of work by
developing a sustained critical account of their shifting
approaches. It combines analysis and interpretation with
perspective drawn from exclusive interviews with past and present
members of the band.
ONE OF BILLBOARD'S "100 GREATEST MUSIC BOOKS OF ALL TIME" The
provocative transgender advocate and lead singer of the punk rock
band Against Me! provides a searing account of her search for
identity and her true self. It began in a bedroom in Naples,
Florida, when a misbehaving punk teenager named Tom Gabel, armed
with nothing but an acoustic guitar and a headful of anarchist
politics, landed on a riff. Gabel formed Against Me! and rocketed
the band from its scrappy beginnings-banging on a drum kit made of
pickle buckets-to a major-label powerhouse that critics have called
this generation's The Clash. Since its inception in 1997, Against
Me! has been one of punk's most influential modern bands, but also
one of its most divisive. With every notch the four-piece climbed
in their career, they gained new fans while infuriating their old
ones. They suffered legal woes, a revolving door of drummers, and a
horde of angry, militant punks who called them "sellouts" and tried
to sabotage their shows at every turn. But underneath the public
turmoil, something much greater occupied Gabel-a secret kept for 30
years, only acknowledged in the scrawled-out pages of personal
journals and hidden in lyrics. Through a troubled childhood,
delinquency, and struggles with drugs, Gabel was on a punishing
search for identity. Not until May of 2012 did a Rolling Stone
profile finally reveal it: Gabel is a transsexual, and would from
then on be living as a woman under the name Laura Jane Grace.
Tranny is the intimate story of Against Me!'s enigmatic founder,
weaving the narrative of the band's history, as well as Grace's,
with dozens of never-before-seen entries from the piles of journals
Grace kept. More than a typical music memoir about sex, drugs, and
rock 'n' roll-although it certainly has plenty of that-Tranny is an
inside look at one of the most remarkable stories in the history of
rock.
'Hungry Beat is the story of an all-too-brief era where the
short-circuiting of that industry seemed viable. But hell, the
times were luminous as was the music these artists made. The songs
and many of the players remain, and here they tell their story and
lick their wounds' Ian Rankin The immense cultural contribution
made by two maverick Scottish independent music labels, Fast
Product and Postcard, cannot be underestimated. Bob Last and Hilary
Morrison in Edinburgh, followed by Alan Horne and Edwyn Collins in
Glasgow helped to create a confidence in being Scottish that
hitherto had not existed in pop music (or the arts in general in
Scotland). Their fierce independent spirit stamped a mark of
quality and intelligence on everything they achieved, as did their
role in the emergence of regional independent labels and cultural
agitators, such as Rough Trade, Factory and Zoo. Hungry Beat is a
definitive oral history of these labels and the Scottish post-punk
period. Covering the period 1977-1984, the book begins with the
Subway Sect and the Slits performance on the White Riot tour in
Edinburgh and takes us through to Bob Last shepherding the Human
League from experimental electronic artists on Fast Product to
their triumphant number one single in the UK and USA, Don't You
Want Me. Largely built on interviews for Grant McPhee's Big Gold
Dream film with Last, Hilary Morrison, Paul Morley and members of
The Human League, Scars, The Mekons, Fire Engines, Josef K, Aztec
Camera, The Go-Betweens and The Bluebells, Hungry Beat offers a
comprehensive overview of one of the most important periods of
Scottish cultural output and the two labels that changed the
landscape of British music.
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.
This book examines the birth of punk in the UK and its
transformation, within a short period of time, into post-punk.
Deploying innovative concepts of 'critical mass', 'social networks'
and 'music worlds', and using sophisticated techniques of 'social
network analysis', it teases out the events and mechanisms involved
in punk's 'micro-mobilisation', its diffusion across the UK and its
transformation in certain city-based strongholds into a variety of
interlocking post-punk forms. Nick Crossley offers a detailed
review of prior work in this area, a rich exploration of new
empirical data and a highly innovative and robust approach to the
study of 'music worlds'. Written in an accessible style, this book
is essential reading for anybody with an interest in either UK punk
and post-punk or the impact of social networks on cultural life and
the potential of social network analysis to explore this impact. --
.
Punk. London.1977. Most people blinked and missed it. Many spent a
decade trying to catch up. Derek Ridgers stumbled across it by
accident, where it was, in the beating filthy heart of the Roxy in
middle of a derelict slum called Covent Garden. Stumbling through
the moshpits trying to keep hold of a borrowed camera. 1977. Punk
London brings you 152 pages of photography featuring the birth of
the the most exciting cultural phenomenon in UK history. Currents
and vibes, flows and backwash, trends and anti-trends splashing
around in the cauldron of youth culture in the city of London, and
the lost rebels haunting their suburban bedrooms - jumping the
train uptown to get into the legendary Roxy. All converged, for one
priceless moment, an outpouring of a truly original, DIY, anarchic,
underground scene. Ridgers captured the first wave. Kids in the
crowd, never before seen. The punks who made their own clothes
because you couldn't buy punk clothes. The punks who got beaten up
time and again for making themselves into targets. Rebellion before
it got easy. You won't see these kids anywhere in the magazines.
They weren't trying to get famous. 1977 will happen again. 1977 is
happening somewhere, for someone, right now.
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