Totally Wired
Postpunk Interviews and Overviews
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- 11,99 €
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- 11,99 €
Publisher Description
With his critically acclaimed Rip It Up and Start Again, renowned music journalist Simon Reynolds applied a unique understanding to an entire generation of musicians working in the wake of punk rock. Spawning artists as singular as Talking Heads, Joy Division, The Specials, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Gang of Four, and Devo, postpunk achieved new relevance in the first decade of the twenty-first century through its profound influence on bands such as Radiohead, Franz Ferdinand, and Vampire Weekend.
With Totally Wired the conversation continues. The book features thirty-two interviews with postpunks most innovative personalities—such as Ari Up, Jah Wobble, David Byrne, and Lydia Lunch—alongside an overview” section of further reflections from Reynolds on postpunks key icons and crucial scenes. Included among them are John Lydon and PIL, Ian Curtis and Joy Division, and art-school conceptualists and proto-postpunkers Brian Eno and Malcolm McLaren. Reynolds follows these exceptional, often eccentric characters from their beginnings through the highs and lows of postpunks heyday.
Crackling with argument and anecdote, Totally Wired paints a vivid portrait of individuals struggling against the odds to make their world as interesting as possible, in the process leaving a legacy of artistic ambition and provocation that reverberates to this day.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 2006's Rip It Up and Start Again, Reynolds examined bands, like The Talking Heads, Siouxie and the Banshees, and Devo, who performed in the wake of punk rock. Calling his new volume a companion to his earlier work, Reynolds compiles interviews with David Byrne, Lydia Lunch, and 30 other "key figures... of the post-punk era." Interviews focus on each artist's journey through the era, and do indeed provide more richly detailed pictures of the people first introduced in Rip It Up, creating a "stronger sense of them as human agents with backstories and backgrounds; products of a place and a time, yet also self-created beings, fantasists and adventurers who pursued their dreams and sometimes, against the odds, realized them." Following that are a handful of rich "overviews" taken from previously published and unpublished reviews Reynolds wrote for Vibe, The New York Times and other publications, exhibiting his boundless enthusiasm and capping this musical era with a book that is as much a tribute as it is an epitaph.
