Just started Simon Reynolds' Rip Up and Start Again: Postpunk, 1978-1984. Liking it so far. Anyone else here read it?
i started it, and life got in the way - so i only made it 70-80 pages in. i liked it a lot, though, and it's on my get-back-to-it list. i also peeked ahead to the chapter about the fall, which only made me want to purchase mark e. smith's book. and any other book about the fall.
Yeah, I'm about 30 pages in, and I like it, but it's pretty freaking dense. Not dense as in academic (though, in true postpunk fashion, it is that), but dense as in music-nerd. It makes an interesting companion to
Our Band Could Be Your Life, though: after 1976-77, the UK went in an art-school/pop direction, whereas the US went into a more populist but noisier one.