Rip it up and start again : postpunk 1978-1984 / Simon Reynolds.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Reynolds, Simon, 1963-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rock music--1971-1980--History and criticism.

Rock music.

Rock music--1981-1990--History and criticism.

Punk rock music--History and criticism.

Punk rock music.

Physical Description:

xii, 416 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Penguin Books, 2006.

Summary:

Rip It Up and Start Again is the first book-length exploration of the wildly adventurous and wonderfully strange 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 synthpop 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 and maverick 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.

Contents:

I: Postpunk

Public image belongs to me: / John Lydon and PiL

Autonomy in the U.K. : DIY and the British independent-label movement

Tribal revival: the pop group and the Slits

Militant entertainment: Gang of Four: the Mekons, and the Leeds Scene

Uncontrollable urge: the Industrial Grotesquerie of Pere Ubu and Devo

Living for the future: Cabaret Voltaire, the Human League, and the Sheffield Scene

Just step sideways: The Fall, Joy Division, and the Manchester Scene

Industrial devolution: throbbing Gristle's music from the Death Factory

Contort yourself: No Wave New York

Art attack: Talking Heads, Wire, and Mission of Burma

Messthetics: The London Vanguard

Freak scene: Cabaret Noir and Theater of cruelty in Postpunk San Francisco

Careering: PiL and Postpunk's Peak and Fall

II: New pop and new rock

Ghost dance: 2-tone and the Ska Resurrection

Sex gang children: Malcolm McLaren, the Pied Piper of Pantomime Pop

Mutant Disco and Punk Funk: Crosstown Traffic in early eighties New York (and beyond)

Fun 'n' frenzy: Postcard Records and the Sound of Young Scotland

Electric dreams: Synthpop

Play to win: the pioneers of new pop

New gold dream 81-82-83-84: New Pop's Peak, the Second British Invasion of America, and the Rise of MTV

Dark things and Glory Boys: the return of Rock with Goth and the New Psychedelia

Raiding the twentieth century: ZTT, the Art of Noise, and Frankie goes to Hollywood.

Notes:

Originally published: Great Britain : Faber and Faber, 2005.

Includes index.

ISBN:

0143036726

OCLC:

61123149