Rip It Up and Start Again : Postpunk 1978-1984

Any thoughts on this new book by Simon Reynolds? The NY Times had a "less than glowing" article in today's NY Times Book Review.

The Washington Post in their capsule review gave it a pretty good review. They said that hardcore fans will appreciate it more.

I thought it was a very good read, although I'm not sure it would make a believer out of anyone who comes to it cold and didn't like at least some of the music first. It also tended toward capsule band histories a bit more than I thought it would, although granted it is hard to draw out any broad analyses from such a disparate "scene".

the Boston Phoenix also gave it a pretty good review

I'm making my way through it right now. It seems pretty damn thorough. I kind of dig the capsulation so to speek. If there is a band I don't really care about I just skip it (but I really haven't done much of that).

Just finished reading it and I thought it was about as good an overview as likely could be done - took me back to high school & college when it seemed like anything could be coming next musically. It's a shame it had to fizzle out eventually.

The only quibbles I would have with it are:

Magazine, XTC, OMD and the Teardrop Explodes are really unfairly marginalized - namedropped a few times but that's about it. Soft Boys/Hitchcock are never mentioned at all.

Bowie & Eno get referenced often, but I think there could've been room for an entire chapter on the other pre-punks who ended up making classic & important postpunk albums - Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, Marianne Faithfull, King Crimson, etc.

Overall, though, I thought it was really good. And kudos to Reynolds for arguing in favor of Gary Numan's importance, who I still think was the most unfairly slimed musician of the entire era.



Post Edited (04-10-06 22:19)

Brad -- you might want to check out the UK edition. It has a chapter on Devoto/Magazine (and Vic Godard). Also, in the British edition the Teardrops/Cope are covered -- although not in depth -- in a separate chapter ("Glory Boys: Liverpool, New Psychedelia and the Big Music"). The US edition compresses this chapter and lumps it together with Goth in "Dark Things and Glory Boys: The Return of Rock with Goth and the New Psychedelia."

Good to know. Thanks.