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Praise for Rip It Up and Start Again
“Reynolds does a remarkable job of weaving into a whole the nebulous anti-genre that spawned from punk’s first wave.”——Alternative Press |
| “Impressive . . . informative and engaging, readers will undoubtedly be searching through their old music collections to check out these seminal sounds with a new ear.” ——BPM |
| “Reynolds is right to see this period as neglected by history, despite its richness in terms of art and politics. Reynolds has often demonstrated his ability to crystallize issues and relevant episodes from the nameless flow of musical history, here as well he has succeeded in labeling a central and indeed underexposed moment in the history of pop and subcultures.” ——Diedrick Diederichsen, Bookforum |
| “The definitive chronicle of postpunk, perhaps rock’s last era of sustained creativity . . . Reynolds’s prose is clear-eyed, agile and just plain fun to read.” ——Mike Wolf, Time Out New York
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| Reynolds’ writing [is] a perfect alchemy of lightly worn erudition and focused enthusiasm —-Jessica Winter, Village Voice | |
Totally Wired
Postpunk Interviews and Overviews
Simon Reynolds
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| Paper | 6 x 9 | 464 pgs. | ISBN: 1-59376-286-0 | List: $16.95 |
Coming September 2010 |
About the book: With his critically acclaimed Rip It Up and Start Again, renowned music journalist Simon Reynolds applied a unique understanding to an entire generation of musicians working in the wake of punk rock. Spawning artists as singular as Talking Heads, Joy Division, The Specials, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Gang of Four, and Devo, postpunk achieved new relevance in the first decade of the twenty-first century through its profound influence on bands such as Radiohead, Franz Ferdinand, and Vampire Weekend.
With Totally Wired the conversation continues. The book features thirty-two interviews with postpunk’s most innovative personalities—such as Ari Up, Jah Wobble, David Byrne, and Lydia Lunch—alongside an “overview” section of further reflections from Reynolds on postpunk’s key icons and crucial scenes. Included among them are John Lydon and PIL, Ian Curtis and Joy Division, and art-school conceptualists and proto-postpunkers Brian Eno and Malcolm McLaren. Reynolds follows these exceptional, often eccentric characters from their beginnings through the highs and lows of postpunk’s heyday.
Crackling with argument and anecdote, Totally Wired paints a vivid portrait of individuals struggling against the odds to make their world as interesting as possible, in the process leaving a legacy of artistic ambition and provocation that reverberates to this day.
About the author: Simon Reynolds is the author of numerous books, including Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture, and Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Village Voice, Spin, and Slate, among other publications. Born in London, Reynolds now lives in Los Angeles.
From the book:
From Simon Reynolds’s interview with David Byrne:
REYNOLDS:
“The first wave of New York punk bands based around CBs and Max’s Kansas City were pretty steeped in rock romanticism and living on the edge. Patti Smith and Television were coming out of the sixties, and before that, the Beats—looking and living bohemian. Whereas the Talking Heads had a straighter-looking and more detached approach.”
BYRNE:
Some of the bands were really continuing the rock‘n’roll archetypes, sonically and with rebellious attitudes. The stage postures and the guitar pyrotechnics. I thought, ‘This isn’t saying anything new. It’s a sloppier version of the Rolling Stones.’ The gestures were not being thought about, they were just inherited. Like, ‘This is the attitude that comes with the rock-band territory, the clothes and the pose you need to take on.’ I just thought, ‘Let’s see if we can just throw all that out, start from square one and see what happens.’ Which would be walking on stage in your street clothes and singing with no affectation, in a kind of unromantic but passionate way. I thought having no image was a way of getting to ground zero. After a while I realized trying to have no image is, of course, having an image. You can’t escape from it. As soon as you step on a stage, it’s about artifice. So I thought, ‘I need to find other things to draw on that aren’t clichéd.’”
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