Rip It Up & Start Again: Post Punk 1978-1984

I was a bit mislead by Simon Reynolds’s book on the post punk scene, Rip It Up and Start Again: Post Punk 1980-1980. I guess in retrospect most of the bands I help dearly from that era would be described as new wave or punk. I think this branch was much more experimental and theoretical in its composition of music, but I think there are more than a few bands that I gained an appreciation for eventually found their roots in the post punk genre: Wire, Mekons, New Order, Talking Heads, Bow Wow Wow, Gang of Four, Adam and the Ants, Echo and the Bunnymen, Nick Cave (from The Birthday Present) etc… If PIL is the band that started it, then that explains why it didn’t capture my attention. However, the other early musical influences are closer to my heart: The Velvet Underground, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Roxy music and Brian Eno. There is a lot of history about obscure British bands that never really made an impact here as well as lots of information on critically respected bands that I just didn’t get into like Devo and Pere Ubu. That being said the book is extensively research and has exhaustive interviews with many of the main bands of the era. Perhaps the quality of the research and the tangential interests of bands mentioned kept me going in the sections that were irrelevant to my musical interests.