Once in a while, you hit the stage in your musical education when you really want to know what distinguishes one journo-speak sub-genre from the other. It might 3AM when you are hit with the aching desire to know the difference between let's say, southern bounce vs crunk vs ATL muzik (or No Wave vs Manchester misery or Ohio proto punk). Those seeking to find the dirty on rap need only look to the interweb (or the New Yorker) to get some answers, but for post punk aficionados, they (we?) haven't been so lucky—until now.
As part of his ongoing journalism grind, UK scribe Simon Reynolds has done his homework and broken down the much chatted about double P game. And what's better, he put what he found in a book so you KNOW it has to be true.
In the forthcoming (in the US at least) Rip It Up and Start Again: UK Postpunk 1978-1984, Reynolds goes beyond name checking folks like Pere Ubu, the Raincoats, the Slits, DNA and Orange Juice, he manages to put them all in a socio-political and musical context that elegantly and unromantically argues how exciting and yes, significant their collective musical oeuvre was.
The best part, however, is how the author goes beyond biography to deliver some next level insights without ever treading in Marcus-ian waters. There's no yammering about "grand gestures" and "semiotics" and "the revolution of everyday life". Instead, Reynolds digs into something much more interesting—the question of why in the world these artists started playing music that sounded the way it did (Devo: "we wanted to make outerspace caveman music"). The hits don't stop there, Reynolds continually criss-crosses across the Atlantic to cover the fringes of the UK and US scenes in a super thorough yet easily readable fashion.
They say history is often written by the victors, but in this case, we all wiin. Dust off your copies of the Modern Dance and check for this to drop in early February, with an NYC launch event to follow soon thereafter.
