Despite releasing records only on independent labels and receiving virtually no radio play, Dead Kennedys routinely top both critic and fan polls as the greatest punk band of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Their sound was inventive and tetchy, and front man Jello Biafra's lyrics were incisive and often scathing. This chronicle--the first in-depth book written about Dead Kennedys--uses dozens of firsthand interviews, photos, and original artwork to offer a new perspective on a group that was mired in controversy almost from its inception. It examines and applauds the band's key role in transforming punk rhetoric, both polemical and musical, into something genuinely threatening and enormously funny. Author Alex Ogg puts the local and global trajectory of punk into context and, while not flinching from the wildly differing takes the individual band members have on the evolution of the band, attempts to be celebratory--if not uncritical.

'Meal Deal with the Devil' combines a five-song CD from the devious San Francisco Bay Area musical satirists, Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children MacNuggits, with an accompanying read-along storybook, bringing their twisted humour to the page.

Fueled by the music of revolution, anger, fear, and despair, we dyed our hair or shaved our heads ... Eating acid like it was candy and chasing speed with cheap vodka, smoking truckloads of weed, all in a vain attempt to get numb and stay numb.

This is the story of a young man and a generation of angry youths who rebelled against their parents and the unfulfilled promise of the sixties. As with many self-destructive kids, Noah Levine's search for meaning led him first to punk rock, drugs, drinking, and dissatisfaction. But the search didn't end there. Having clearly seen the uselessness of drugs and violence, Noah looked for positive ways to channel his rebellion against what he saw as the lies of society. Fueled by his anger at so much injustice and suffering, Levine now uses that energy and the practice of Buddhism to awaken his natural wisdom and compassion.

While Levine comes to embrace the same spiritual tradition as his father, bestselling author Stephen Levine, he finds his most authentic expression in connecting the seemingly opposed worlds of punk and Buddhism. As Noah Levine delved deeper into Buddhism, he chose not to reject the punk scene, instead integrating the two worlds as a catalyst for transformation. Ultimately, this is an inspiring story about maturing, and how a hostile and lost generation is finally finding its footing. This provocative report takes us deep inside the punk scene and moves from anger, rebellion, and self-destruction, to health, service to others, and genuine spiritual growth.

In the 1990s, there was only one real punk rock band still standing. Rancid. Other so-called punk acts had bent the term so much they were unrecognisable as punk or had become a caricature of the expression. Or worse of themselves. Childhood friends Tim Armstrong and Matt Freeman formed Rancid in 1991. Heralding from the punk scene in Gilman Street, Berkeley, they were members of the ground-breaking outfit Operation Ivy. After Op Ivy's demise, the duo recruited Brett Reed on drums and by the release of their second LP in 1994, the enigmatic Lars Frederiksen on guitar and vocals. In 1994 came the inspirational, platinum-selling ...And Out Came The Wolves. The band were soon a fixture on MTV, radio and even Saturday Night Live. At this point, many would have disappeared into the stratosphere, but not Rancid. They worked tirelessly in the punk network, giving plenty back and keeping true to those crucial two elements of punk - liberation and unity. In 2021, they remain the most credible punk band on the planet. Rancid Tracks describes their nine studio albums, track by track, and covers compilations, stand-alone singles, splits, rarities, and unofficial releases.

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.

By January 1978, the Sex Pistols were the most talked about band on the planet. They also enjoyed the sobriquet of being the "scourge" of the British Establishment. The Pistols' anarchic antics had largely gone unnoticed in America, and it wasn't until Warner Bros secured the U.S. rights to distribute the band's debut album Never Mind The Bollocks in November 1977 that the American media sat up and took notice. Plans were soon underway to bring the Pistols over to America, but Warners hadn't counted on the band's manager, the irascible Malcolm McLaren. In purposely eschewing New York and Los Angeles in favor of off-the-rock'n'roll radar outposts such as Memphis, San Antonio and Baton Rouge, McLaren sowed the seeds for a countercultural clash that continues to resonate across America. No Feelings, No Future, No Fun: the Sex Pistols' '78 U.S. Tour covers the tour from varying perspectives-with many people sharing their experiences for the first time. The book also endeavours to separate fact from the many fallacies that still surround those twelve days of mayhem when the Sex Pistols wended their way across an unsuspecting USA.

Joy Division's career has often been shrouded by myths. But the truth is surprisingly simple: over a period of several months, Joy Division transformed themselves from run-of-the-mill punk wannabes into the creators of one of the most atmospheric, disturbing, and influential debut albums ever recorded. Chris Ott carefully picks apart fact from fiction to show how Unknown Pleasures came into being, and how it still resonates so strongly today.
EXCERPT
The urgent, alien thwack of Stephen Morris' processed snare drum as it bounced from the left to right channel was so arresting in 1979, one could have listened to that opening bar for hours trying to figure how on earth someone made such sounds. Like John Bonham's ludicrous, mansion-backed stomp at the start of "When The Levee Breaks"-only far less expensive-the crisp, trebly snare sound with which Martin Hannett would make his career announced Unknown Pleasures as a finessed, foreboding masterpiece. Peter Hook's compressed bass rides up front as "Disorder" comes together, but it's not until the hugely reverbed, minor note guitar line crashes through that you can understand the need for such a muted, analog treatment to Hook's line. Layering a few tracks together to create a six-string shriek, Hannett's equalization cuts the brunt of Sumner's fuller live sound down to an echoing squeal, revealing a desperation born of longing rather than rage. This is the way, step inside.

Rip It Up and Start Again is the first book-length exploration of the wildly adventurous music created in the years after punk. Renowned music journalist Simon Reynolds celebrates the futurist spirit of such bands as Joy Division, Gang of Four, Talking Heads, and Devo, which resulted in endless innovations in music, lyrics, performance, and style and continued into the early eighties with the video-savvy synth-pop of groups such as Human League, Depeche Mode, and Soft Cell, whose success coincided with the rise of MTV. Full of insight and anecdotes and populated by charismatic characters, Rip It Up and Start Again re-creates the idealism, urgency, and excitement of one of the most important and challenging periods in the history of popular music.

LONGLISTED FOR THE CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE LONGLISTED FOR THE HWA NON-FICTION CROWN 'A moving, powerful and highly innovative sidelight on the fall of Communism in East Germany through punk style and music. This is a complete original' HWA Non-Fiction Crown Judges 'A thrilling and essential social history that details the rebellious youth movement that helped change the world' Rolling Stone 'A riveting and inspiring history of punk's hard-fought struggle in East Germany' New York Times 'Wildly entertaining' Vogue THE SECRET HISTORY OF PUNKS IN EAST GERMANY It began with a handful of East Berlin teens who heard the Sex Pistols on a British military radio broadcast to troops in West Berlin, and it ended with the collapse of the East German dictatorship. Punk rock was a life-changing discovery: in an authoritarian state where the future was preordained, punk, with its rejection of society and DIY approach to building a new one, planted the seeds for revolution. As these kids began to form bands, they also became more visible, and security forces - including the dreaded secret police, the Stasi - targeted them. They were spied on by friends and family; they were expelled from schools and fired from jobs; they were beaten by police and imprisoned. But instead of conforming, the punks fought back, playing an indispensable role in the underground movement that helped bring down the Berlin Wall. Rollicking, cinematic and thrillingly topical, this secret history brings to life the young men and women who successfully fought authoritarianism three chords at a time. Burning Down the Haus is a fiery testament to the irrepressible spirit of revolution. 'Original and inspiring . . . an important work of Cold War cultural history' Wall Street Journal

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?

This is a thoroughly researched study of the origins of the New York City punk scene, focusing on Television and their extraordinary debut record. Two kids in their early twenties walk down the Bowery on a spring afternoon, just as the proprietor of a club hangs a sign with the new name for his venue. The place will be called CBGB which, he tells them, stands for 'Country Bluegrass and Blues'. That's exactly the sort of stuff they play, they lie, somehow managing to get a gig out of him. After the first show their band, Television, lands a regular string of Sundays. By the end of the summer a scene has developed that includes Tom Verlaine's new love interest, a poet-turned-rock chanteuse named Patti Smith. American punk rock is born. Bryan Waterman peels back the layers of the origin myth and, assembling a rich historical archive, situates Marquee Moon in a broader cultural history of SoHo and the East Village. As Waterman traces the downtown scene's influences, public image, and reputation via a range of print, film, and audio recordings we come to recognize the real historical surprises that the documentary evidence still has to yield. "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 60 titles and is acclaimed and loved by fans, musicians and scholars alike. It was only a matter of time before a clever publisher realized that there is an audience for whom "Exile on Main Street" or "Electric Ladyland" are as significant and worthy of study as "The Catcher in the Rye" or "Middlemarch...The" series, which now comprises 29 titles with more in the works, is freewheeling and eclectic, ranging from minute rock-geek analysis to idiosyncratic personal celebration - "The New York Times Book Review", 2006. This is a brilliant series...each one a word of real love - NME (UK). For more information on the series and on individual titles in the series, check out our blog.

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.

LONGLISTED FOR THE CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE 'A thrilling and essential social history that details the rebellious youth movement that helped change the world' Rolling Stone 'A riveting and inspiring history of punk's hard-fought struggle in East Germany' New York Times 'Wildly entertaining . . . A joy in the way it brings back punk's fury and high stakes' Vogue THE SECRET HISTORY OF PUNKS IN EAST GERMANY It began with a handful of East Berlin teens who heard the Sex Pistols on a British military radio broadcast to troops in West Berlin, and it ended with the collapse of the East German dictatorship. Punk rock was a life-changing discovery: in an authoritarian state where the future was preordained, punk, with its rejection of society and DIY approach to building a new one, planted the seeds for revolution. As these kids began to form bands, they also became more visible, and security forces - including the dreaded secret police, the Stasi - targeted them. They were spied on by friends and family; they were expelled from schools and fired from jobs; they were beaten by police and imprisoned. But instead of conforming, the punks fought back, playing an indispensable role in the underground movement that helped bring down the Berlin Wall. Rollicking, cinematic and thrillingly topical, this secret history brings to life the young men and women who successfully fought authoritarianism three chords at a time. Burning Down the Haus is a fiery testament to the irrepressible spirit of revolution. 'Original and inspiring . . . an important work of Cold War cultural history' Wall Street Journal

Without London band Wire, punk rock might never have developed beyond primitive three-chord thrash and cliched songs about tower blocks and dole queues. Arguably the first art-punks, the four musicians - Colin Newman on vocals and guitar, Graham Lewis on bass and vocals, Bruce Gilbert on guitar and Robert Gotobed (nee Grey) on drums - evolved fast from their groundbreaking 1977 debut album "Pink Flag", with its 21 short, sharp, minimalist bursts of noise and melody. They were catalysts in the shift from punk to post-punk, paving the way for the likes of Magazine, Gang of Four, Public Image Limited and Joy Division. Paul Lester's book will tell the story of this crucial transitional band, from their early days dodging hostile crowds at punk venues like the Roxy, through their attempts to inject some arthouse experimentation and Situationist subversion into an increasingly conservative punk scene, up to their split in 1981 and beyond their mid-80s return and their various solo projects.It will take you behind the scenes and feature interviews with the original members, following them up to the present, poised as they are to come back with a brand new album and filled with a renewed sense of vigour as one of the most important bands in the last thirty years.

""Lexicon Devil" is, pure and simple, the finest volume on punk to have seen the light of print. (Yes, folks: that includes "Please Kill Me.") Great book "--Richard Meltzer

Production has started on the documentary feature based on the book.

The bands that spearheaded the late 1970s punk scene in Australia--the Saints, Birthday Party, Radio Birdman, and the Go-Betweens--are among the most important of their time. Inner City Sound is the classic account of the explosive development of that scene. Original articles from fanzines and newspapers, together with almost 300 photographs, vividly portray the creative ferment of the period and the dozens of bands that sprang up in the wake of the pioneers. First published in late 1981, Inner City Sound soon fell out of print. It became a lost classic, so sought after that it has been bootlegged like the rare singles listed in its discography. This new edition contains 32 extra pages of articles, photos, and discographic data, which take the story through to 1985, when Nick Cave, the Go-Betweens, the Triffids, and others began to break through internationally.

Punk bands have produced an abundance of poetic texts, some crude, some elaborate, in the form of song lyrics. These lyrics are an ideal means by which to trace the developments and explain the conflicts and schisms that have shaped, and continue to shape, punk culture. They can be described as the community's collective 'poetic voice,' and they come in many different forms. Their themes range from romantic love to emotional distress to radical politics. Some songs are intended to entertain, some to express strong feelings, some to provoke, some to spread awareness, and some to foment unrest. Most have an element of confrontation, of kicking against the pricks. Socially and epistemologically, they play a central role in the scene's internal discourse, shaping communities and individual identities. The Poetry of Punk is an investigation into the Anglophone punk culture, specifically in the UK and the US, where punk originated in the mid-1970s, its focus being on the song lyrics written and performed by punk rock and hardcore artists.

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.