The blissblogger on post-punk

john eden

male pale and stale
I think I'm going to buy it on May 6th.

Lots of great reviews for it around the place... nice one, Simon...
 

boomnoise

♫
my copy turned up last week. had a quick flick through but not embarked upon it quite yet. it looks great though. really like the cover but the book is unfeasibly large - lots of white space around the text. good for scribbling notes but not for lugging around. i like the little ironic 'compact book' logo on the cover though.
 

jenks

thread death
have been up to macclesfield and back on the train and picked up my copy of rip it up on the way to the station - devoured a quarter of it by the time i returned home to the family, bored my friend in macc with excellence of blissblogger's book - made him promise to check it out. the reviews have all been uniformly good and unusually with good reason, it is so readable and makes me realise a)how much great music came out at the time and b)how much of it i had missed.
 

mms

sometimes
got it on saturday. i'm pretty much 2/3rds thru it, it's excellent of course, adds all the details you wanted to know etc, its hard to put down.
 

Woebot

Well-known member
I've got shedloads to say on this. I got the book about a month ago and have been poking my nose into it whenever I get the chance, currently at chapter 11 on London and Messthetics. However I swore to secrecy when I got my copy, and I'm uncertain as to exactly when I'm allowed to talk about it! The official release date is the 28th isn't it? I'm definitely going along to the talk as per to show support:

http://blissout.blogspot.com/2005_04_01_blissout_archive.html#111445805018619714

Also I have a cracking link to some awesome discographies which Simon has done, the "obscure" doc is a book in its own right. I would say that RIUASA is a truly colossal box of chocolates.....anyway lets hope this thread opens up with time.
 

francesco

Minerva Estassi
My copy arrived today. Everyone can download the two discographies from the www.faber.co.uk website (go to the RIUASA page). The second is really a new book, i will print it before reading it....
.... the book look amazing, and so the first two chapters. More on the book after reading it.
 

labrat

hot on the heels of love
indeed, those faber website discographies are good (the second one -great,it pre-empts any record boy ''but he's not mentioned the Androids of Mu's Blood Robots malarkey) but for a £17 book ...why wern't they in there?
that said i paid a tenner in (yuk) HMV.
 

steve-k

Active member
It's too bad the American version, which isn't coming out for quite awhile, will be much shorter(according to SR's blog). I guess I'll have to order the UK version.
 

mms

sometimes
labrat said:
indeed, those faber website discographies are good (the second one -great,it pre-empts any record boy ''but he's not mentioned the Androids of Mu's Blood Robots malarkey) but for a £17 book ...why wern't they in there?
that said i paid a tenner in (yuk) HMV.

yep £7.50 in amazon .
good that, for me anyway
 

francesco

Minerva Estassi
sapstra said:
As much as you might loathe the Clash and the Stranglers, i think they deserve a place in the book

Yes, but apart that the Clash "Sandinista" is briefly descripted in the second discography, and problems of space apart, Clash and Stranglers are mostly Punk or PunkRock or Rock, but not PostPunk (i really know very little about the Stranglers so sorry if i'm wrong about them!). Also you can find tons of books about the Clash and dozen about Punk, while the scope of Reynolds book seem to concentrate on the sonic and/or lyrics innovations of PostPunk groups, so no Oi! or HarcorePunk for example, there are anyway some books about those. Also if he could write deep about everything that happened beetween 1978-84 the book should have been 7.000 pages long, probably. I'm enjoyng it, I have just read the McLaren/Bow Wow Wow chapter.
 
Last edited:

don_quixote

Trent End
i havent reached the sst chapter yet (hell, i'm just starting a new term at uni so things are a bit hectic, but i cant help but read it), but i can't wait. i turned into a bit of an sst junkie after reading that azeraad book a couple of years ago.

i didnt even realise there would be a chapter on it after the introduction so youve suprised me right there.
 

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
What's most impressed me about the book so far is that the photo of the blissman makes him look so much like Matthew Ingram's older, more glamourous brother.

While the Clash were for much of the period reviewed still the best band on the planet, they were'nt a direct influence on post-punk (other than occasionally as something to react against), even when post-punk's participants still liked them.

The Stranglers were a prog band and I love them for it.

I'm really looking forward to reading this -- only got it yesterday -- cos it's basically mapping my youth.

But does it mention the Membranes? Or DigVisDrill? :)
 

Martin Dust

Techno Zen Master
Never trusted the Clash meself, always thought Joe was a complete fake...Mem's came from Blackpool didn't they? Wasn't that gobshite Jon Rob the singer? No mention of the second wave of punk bands - The Prams, Deaf Aids, Mau Maus etc...
 
Top