Nathaniel's review

[close]

blog this review

Copy/paste the text below into your blog. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/225406.Rip_It_Up_and_Start_Again_Post_Punk_1978_1984?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Rip It Up and Start Again: Post-Punk 1978-1984" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1183044523m/225406.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/225406.Rip_It_Up_and_Start_Again_Post_Punk_1978_1984?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Rip It Up and Start Again: Post-Punk 1978-1984</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/51552.Simon_Reynolds">Simon Reynolds</a><br/><br/> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6306821?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a> Covers basically every British rock band formed in the late 70s and early 80s, along with some influential American groups. The best part of the book is the first few chapters, which deal with the do-it-yourself movement and the political motivations of groups like the Gang of Four, the Pop Group, and Scritti Politti. It really captures the excitement and the exhaustion of any revolutionary movement, political or artistic: there's the thrill of bucking the system and doing something new, followed by the fall back to earth when the old structures start to reassert themselves or when ideology starts to trump all other considerations. Sure, anyone can start a band, and some of them can make great sounds without training or mass appeal. Sure, you can turn to music to express your anger at the world-there-is and your hope for the world-that-could-be. But social movements just plain don't last, and your grand visions and highfalutin' ideals will pretty much turn out to be for squat. Except for the whole "hey, check out all this cool music!" part. Note to self: check out some of these bands (Wire, Pere Ubu, The Slits, Young Marble Giants). <br/> <br/>The book itself? Oh, right, that. I found it pretty interesting, especially the parts about bands I've actually listened to, or at least heard of. After a while a lot of it runs together - there's so much information about so many groups that it becomes too much to process. It'd be excellent to have a soundtrack to all of it - there's a companion album out there, but only twenty tracks aren't gonna cut it when there's like a hundred bands talked about at any length and half of the interesting ones reinvented themselves every other week. <br/> <br/>So, to sum up: insipiring but ultimately exhausting. Now go record a single in your bathroom or overthrow capitalism or something, and get the hell off my lawn. <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/77034?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>