'Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984' by Simon Reynolds
A music journalist chronicles what happens after punk dies
By Donna Blumenfeld
Published: March 30th, 2006 | 5:41pm
Simon Reynolds is the perfect rock insider: a knowledgeable enthusiast with a flair for the narrative hook. The very fine Rip It Up and Start Again
Picking up the pieces after punk's messy degradation, imperishable personalities from the '70s continued to guide the evolution of rock music, most notably the luminous post-Low Bowie and synth-god Brian Eno, responsible for the production and promotion of many fresh acts. Even Malcolm McLaren is represented here, as a goofy postmodern Svengali who after the collapse of the Sex Pistols continues to engineer media realities through his ruthless manipulation of naive bands like Bow Wow Wow.
Reynolds' writing is strongest when spinning out the narrative threads connecting collaborators, scenesters, and visionaries over the whole span of the short but golden postpunk era. As a teenager growing up during this time, Reynolds lends Rip It Up an undercurrent of barely suppressed excitement, as well as a palpable investment in the fates of vulnerable creative types: a sense of tragedy comes out in his account of the decline and suicide of Joy Division's Ian Curtis, and disenchantment and outrage color the chapter on Devo's massive success and slow sellout through attrition.
All together the impression Reynolds conveys is of an era full of possibilities when the aura of negativity and druggy destructiveness that wore out the punk rockers was being interrogated by a new kind of savvy rebel. The creators of postpunk were aware both of the new current towards cultural conservatism in Britain and the United States and of the commercial ethic of music production that failed to truly challenge the status quo. Sloppy, gonzo, hyper-masculine rockism from the '70s was giving way to playful intellectualism and a DIY work ethic.
In their hunger for the new, actors in the postpunk scene joyfully appropriated disco, reggae, world music, dada, sci-fi, situationism, critical theory, conceptual art, and feminism. The result was an explosion of creativity and collaboration on the level of the British invasion of the '60s.
Penguin, List Price: $16.00, 432 pages
Comments
Please login to be able to comment on this article.
more