Reynold's Rip it up - reviewed

Unfortunately the book is an annotated discography, so debate around it has tended to be about who's in/out. A boring discussion I agree but there is precious little else to engage with.

Perhaps you disagree Marcello - I'd be curious to attempt a discussion of Reynold's ideas if you want to position a starting point...

you provide a forum for the worst kind of amateurism?
if so it's doing a damned fine job.

maybe eno is not the force he was, but he's been at it for 30 years and he produced some amazing material -- more than anyone else in the book, as it goes.

Actually the book wasn't discussed in the other thread. The seminar & post-punk itself were discussed. Most people contributing where either thinking about buying the book or had just started reading it. It was pre-view...

This is a 550 page history - warrants discussion I would have thought. Why are you being so hostile/defensive ?

god, can this thread get any more pompous?

What it isn't though is a definitive analysis of the period or the genre. And this is a book sold as "one of the most inspired and inspiring books on popular music ever written" .

Listen, Beckett, your name's not down, you're not coming in.

You are neither reading nor listening.

marcello -- stop trying it.

if someone wants to start their own thread, rather than add on to the million-reply-strong existing one, why shouldnt they? i dont see the big deal. when did ILM become so terribly formal?

I thought the book was interesting if flawed. Reynolds takes every musicians comments at face value, whether he's chatting to some embittered old fool right now or copying it out of an old NME. But he writes well, far better than when he's indulging himself in t'internet, and even pre-empts the readers attempts to dismiss his frequent naivete. And if that makes it a Rough Guide for the young folk, good. He might even sell a few copies.

He doesn't seem to recognise that the New Pop was exactly the same as the old pop though, when skilful studio lags like Trevor Horn picked things up like it was 1976, only with better gear. And it was The Kids who went for it. They didn't give a shite what Morley and Penman or iD or The Face wrote, or else Blue Rondo a la Turk would have reached the top of the poppermost. (Someone will doubtless defend them right now, but that was yer early eighties club scene, fragmented in the extreme, and measured rather than hedonistic)

Whatever your views on Eno, for better or worse he's had a huge influence on commercial sound and can't be ignored.

i think its a pretty definitive book though, xtc got no mention and thats a bit shakey maybe. but every other relevant band did get a mention, no?

even the marcello carlin got a mention, i dont even know that band, which albums to check out?

(Haven't read it yet, BTW).

What does he say about XTC, then?

a) Post - punk was experimental, anti rock and became pro pop. Career of Scritti as emblematic.
But the borders of who is/isn't post-punk are all about stances towards pop - Yazoo are not here, despite being on Mute and springing from Depeche Mode - who are included ( because they are sufficiently dark?) I think Reynolds is very good on the fallacy of' pure-pop' - June Brides etc but softer on the anti-pop inherent in the new wave or post-punk debate.

Unfortunately the text is all about who is or isn't post-punk -- it's about a genre for god sakes. So you can't close off discussion about the decisions made. Why Nico but not Marianne Faithful? Why Talking Heads but not Blondie or Prince? Alternately why the Residents but not the Penguin Cafe Orchestra? Why My Life in the Bush of Ghosts but not Songs from Liquid Days? Billy Mackenzie but not Sylvester? Does the genre label simply patrol borders of allowable genius (white male, educated) and disallow female, black, gay, non-rock voices? Was it just boys with guitars all over again?

b) independent labels thought of themselves as something new and thought that they flourished
Having his cake Reynolds notes briefly that independent labels were nothing new, but ends his chapter on labels with Miller and Travis's self aggrandising comments on their success: "back then the records use to sell". "All of a sudden you had access". This was a "golden age" in Reynolds words.

But was it? And was it because of post-punk? Who sold? On Mute it was probably Yazoo,,, I think he's soft on how successfully the independents flourished. This debate would run and run through the 1980s - weren't Stock Aitken Waterman releasing their own records? Therefore indie? Ahhh but they were mainstream... But what about their Divine/Dead or Alive records... blah blah

The ideology of independent capitalism is interesting (echoes in the free-trade movement now for example). Artists being interested in business might have been new though.

In terms of thread length, you can change your settings to only display the last 20/50/100/whatever posts, this has made long threads a lot more viable.

And thanks for the tip about settings. It's all got very hi-tech! I was playing about earlier with it in RSS mode bit couldn't make head or tail...

Guy, as others have noted, are you saying it was Simon's job to write a history of all popular music from 79 to 84? Or are you suggesting that Prince and Sylvester were post-punk? Or do you think it would have added to the context if there was more discussion of music that was not considered by most to be post-punk? Re your "boys with guitars" comment, I haven't read the book yet, but I'm guessing that the Slits and Raincoats are in the book.

of course. as are lydia lunch, ikue mori, that 14 yr old bow wow wow singer. plenty. not just boys with guitars

post-punk as a period. IE literally after punk; and tackled the effects (or not) of punk across popular music

OR

post-punk as idea - in which case you are very historically acute in a Raymond Williams sort of way to when the idea emerged, who was included, who wasn't and why...

no, it's not.