Following hard on the explosion of British punk, in 1979 Gang of Four produced post-punk's smartest record, Entertainment! For the first time, a band wedded punk's angry energy to funk's propulsive beats�and used that music to put across lyrics that brought a heady mixture of Marxist theory and situationism to exposing the cultural politics of everyday life. But for an American college student from the suburbs�and, one expects, for many, many others, including British youth�Jon King's and Andy Gill's mumbled lyrics were often all but unintelligible. Political rock �n' roll is always something of an oxymoron: rock audiences by and large don't tune in to be lectured to. But what can it mean that a band that made pop songs as political theory actively resisted making that theory legible? Coming to terms with the impact of Entertainment! requires us to take the mondegreen�the misunderstood lyric�seriously. The old joke has it that the title of R.E.M.'s debut album should have been not Murmur, but Mumble: true, so far as it goes. But that's the title, too, of rock �n' roll's Greatest Hits compilation�and that strategic inarticulateness itself, which creates such an important role for the listener, has an important politics.

Following hard on the explosion of British punk, in 1979 Gang of Four produced post-punk's smartest record, Entertainment! For the first time, a band wedded punk's angry energy to funk's propulsive beats-and used that music to put across lyrics that brought a heady mixture of Marxist theory and situationism to exposing the cultural politics of everyday life. But for an American college student from the suburbs-and, one expects, for many, many others, including British youth-Jon King's and Andy Gill's mumbled lyrics were often all but unintelligible. Political rock 'n' roll is always something of an oxymoron: rock audiences by and large don't tune in to be lectured to. But what can it mean that a band that made pop songs as political theory actively resisted making that theory legible? Coming to terms with the impact of Entertainment! requires us to take the mondegreen-the misunderstood lyric-seriously. The old joke has it that the title of R.E.M.'s debut album should have been not Murmur, but Mumble: true, so far as it goes. But that's the title, too, of rock 'n' roll's Greatest Hits compilation-and that strategic inarticulateness itself, which creates such an important role for the listener, has an important politics.

This book, first published in 1987, tells the intriguing and culturally complex story of the art school influence on postwar British popular music. Following Romantic attitudes from life class to recording studio, it focuses on two key moments – the early 1960s, when art students like John Lennon and Eric Clapton begin to play their own versions of American rock and blues and inflected youth music with Bohemian dreams, and the late 1970s, when punk musicians emerged from design courses and fashion departments to disrupt what were, by then, art-rock routines. Sixties rock Bohemians and seventies pop Situationists were, in their different ways, trying to solve the art students’ perennial problem – how to make a living from their art. Art Into Pop shows how this problem has been shaped by the history of British art education, from its nineteenth-century origins to current arguments about ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ training. In their simultaneous pursuit of authenticity and artifice, art school musicians exemplify the postmodern condition, the collapse of any distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, the confusions of personal and commercial creativity. And so high pop theorists rub shoulders here with low pop practitioners, experimental musicians debate avant-garde ideas with corporate packagers, and artistic integrity becomes a matter of making oneself up.

Harlem of the West reveals a forgotten slice of San Francisco history and the African-American experience on the West Coast: the thriving jazz scene of the Fillmore in the 1940s and 1950s. With archival photographs and oral accounts from the residents and musicians who experienced it, this vividly illustrated tour will delight jazz fans and history aficionados.

In Gang of Five, bestselling author Nina J. Easton adds an important element to the history of American politics in the last thirty years. This is the story of the other, less well known segment of the baby-boom generation. These are young conservative activists who arrived on campus in the 1970s in rebellion against everything "sixties" and went on to overturn the political dynamics of the country in the 1980s and 1990s. They've been waging what Newt Gingrich called a "war without blood" for three decades. Gang of Five portrays the intertwining careers of five major figures: BILL KRISTOL, the Harvard-educated elitist and publisher of the Weekly Standard, is the liberal establishment's worst nightmare -- a witty, erudite Rightist who was a leading force behind the demise of the Clinton health care plan, the historic reform of welfare, and the decision of House Republicans to impeach the president. RALPH REED, the hardball politico who helped turn an organization called the College Republicans into a kind of communist cell of the Right, in the 1990s tried to give the Religious Right a softer face as leader of the Christian Coalition but was thwarted by his thirst for power and the narrow fundamentalism of his activist followers. CLINT BOLICK, a leading force in the spread of school choice programs and the anti-affirmative action strategist who sank Lani Guinier's appointment, is the idealist who seeks to convince civil rights leaders that his legal work on behalf of disadvantaged minorities is sincere and that liberal programs hurt the people they are meant to help. GROVER NORQUIST, the "market Leninist" who divides the world into "good" and "evil," is at the hub of Hillary Clinton's "vast right-wing conspiracy" and is the architect of a no-new-taxes pledge signed by all major Republican candidates in the 1990s. DAVID MCINTOSH, the policy wonk who took the movement's war on Washington to Congress as leader of the House Republican freshmen during the Gingrich Revolution, pushed his party toward confrontation with the White House and is now running for governor in Indiana. In contrast to earlier generations of conservatives, these leaders and their allies tasted success, first with Ronald Reagan's twin victories in the 1980s and then, in the 1990s, with the Republican capture of Congress. They play to win and have had a hand in every major insurrection from the Right over the past two decades -- from abortion politics to government shutdowns to political muckracking. No politician can ignore their agenda or escape the new hardball rules they've written for national politics.

The SUNDAY TIMES Top Ten Bestseller#1 Book of the Year, UNCUT#1 Book of the Year, ROUGH TRADEBook of the Year, MOJOOver the course of two albums and some legendary gigs, Joy Division became the most successful and exciting underground band of their generation. Then, on the brink of a tour to America, Ian Curtis took his own life.In This Searing Light, the Sun and Everything Else, Jon Savage has assembled three decades' worth of interviews with the principal players in the Joy Division story to create an intimate, candid and definitive account of the band. It is the story of how a group of young men can galvanise a generation of fans, artists and musicians with four chords and three-and-a-half minutes of music. And it is the story of how illness and inner demons can rob the world of a shamanic lead singer and visionary lyricist.

A washed-up, middle-aged British philosopher teams up with an incompetent, one-armed bank robber to plan the ultimate bank job.