34 top Punk & new wave acts, all drawn specially by Kev F Sutherland (of Beano and Marvel comics fame) with brand new articles about every act, giving you a comprehensive history of punk and new wave of the 1970s.
What acts have made it in?
You'll find The New York Dolls, Vivienne Westwood, The Sex Pistols, The Damned, Dr Feelgood, The Stranglers, The Clash, Patti Smith, The Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, The Runaways, John Peel, The Fall, Buzzcocks, Souixsie & The Banshees, Generation X, X Ray Spex, The Jam, The Undertones, The Slits, Stiff Little Fingers, Sham 69, The Rezillos, Jilted John, Plastic Bertrand, Devo, Elvis Costello, Ian Dury & The Blockheads, The Police, XTC, Squeeze, Joy Division, and The Pretenders. With honourable mentions, and pictures of, John Cooper Clarke, Wreckless Eric, Nick Lowe, The B52s, Boomtown Rats, Graham Parker & The Rumour, Joe Jackson, Klaus Nomi, Bill Grundy and The Motors.
Punk and New Wave
What was punk, and is it dead? Let's take those questions in reverse order. No it's not. And it's a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For the purposes of this book, punk was a genre of music and fashion that flourished in Britain and America at the end of the 1970s. New Wave was the collection of artists who came along in the wake of punk, mostly lasting longer in the business and having, arguably, a longer lasting effect.This book is unapologetically Anglo-centric. Not only because it's being written from the UK, by someone who lived through the musical revolutions of the late 70s, but because a very strong case can be made for the UK's punk bands being of greater variety and significance than their American counterparts. No-one's denying the importance of the bands who played CBGBs in New York, and a good few of them have made the cut here. And no-one would suggest punk would have come about without US predecessors like the New York Dolls and Iggy Pop. But, let's be honest, most record buyers in between the US coasts saw their way to the turn of the eighties happily listening to Journey, Heart and Aerosmith without the thought of piercing their nostrils with a safety pin or wearing a tampon as an earring. So, with apologies to the US acts who've not made this book (Television nearly did, The Knack were never going to!) we hope you'll like the 33-and-a-third acts who are in here.
