As the Sex Pistols were breaking up, Britain was entering a new era. Punk’s filth and fury had burned brightly and briefly; soon a new underground offered a more sustained and constructive challenge. As future-focused, independently released singles appeared in the wake of the Sex Pistols, there were high hopes in magazines like NME and the DIY fanzine media spawned by punk. Post-Punk, Politics and Pleasure in Britain explores how post-punk’s politics developed into the 1980s. Illustrating that the movement’s monochrome gloom was illuminated by residual flickers of countercultural utopianism, it situates post-punk in the ideological crossfire of a key political struggle of the era: a battle over pleasure and freedom between emerging Thatcherism and libertarian, feminist and countercultural movements dating back to the post-war New Left. Case studies on bands including Gang of Four, The Fall and the Slits and labels like Rough Trade move sensitively between close reading, historical context and analysis of who made post-punk and how it was produced and mediated. The book examines, too, how the struggles of post-punk resonate down to the present.

What were the conditions of possibility for art and music-making before the era of neoliberal capitalism? What role did punk play in turning artists to experiment with popular music in the late 1970s and early 1980s? And why does the art and music of these times seem so newly pertinent to our political present, despite the seeming remoteness of its historical moment? Focusing upon the production of post-punk art, film, music, and publishing, this book offers new perspectives on an overlooked period of cultural activity, and probes the lessons that might be learnt from history for artists and musicians working under 21st century conditions of austerity. Contemporary reflections by those who shaped avant-garde and contestatory culture in the UK, US, Brazil and Poland in the 1970s and 1980s. Alongside these are contributions by contemporary artists, curators and scholars that provide critical perspectives on post-punk then, and its generative relation to the aesthetics and politics of cultural production today.

The most comprehensive guide available to UK punk, new wave and post-punk music, this compendium provides an A-Z listing of relevant artists together with discographies, personnel details and, for most entries, comments on the music. Also includes discographies of many of the key record labels of the era and details of the many revevant compilation albums. Profusely illustrated throughout with B & W and colour photographs (some previusly unpublished).

A landmark history of post-punk, the basis of the documentary film directed by Nikolaos Katranis 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 synth-pop 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 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.

This book is your gateway to the pop-rock-y, disco-esque, electronic and mod-tastic movement that was (and is) New Wave. What makes New Wave... New Wave? It's the catchall name of punk's poppy offshoot, born in the 70s, simultaneously in the United States and United Kingdom. But how would you describe New Wave's context in the zeitgeist of the time, or explain how this new electro-rock made people feel? Well, that's precisely what DJ and author Steve Wide explains in this handy book. In these pages, Steve explains the social and music industry climates of the 70s and 80s, unpacking the influence of the punk genre on NYC-based groups like the Velvet Underground and New York Dolls. There's also a timeline on the usage of the term New Wave - for a long chunk of the 70s it was used almost interchangeably with punk. There are breakdowns on the key record labels, DJs, producers, engineers and magazines - all of which stitched their own layer on the New Wave patchwork. There are deep dives into controversies, rivalries, and messy band breakups. And lastly, there's a dissection of how ripples of New Wave are still felt today, in recorded music and across wider pop culture. If you, or someone close to you, is obsessed with the minutiae of the New Wave movement, then this book is a must-have.

Is post-punk a genre? Where did it come from? And what does it mean?

UK Post-Punk is a selection of five essays that represents Simon Reynolds's astute and thought-provoking commentary on the musical fallout of the punk explosion. Diversity is the watchword, with groups as stylistically varied as PiL, Joy Division and the Specials tackling the new musical terrain that had opened up. Often highly political - both overtly and through challenging the prevailing conservatism of the times - these groups were the soundtrack to the last days of socialism, national recession and the arrival of an aggressive new form of politics: Thatcherism.