some of the reviews so far...
"Scintillating, spangled glam history.... the writing is lithe, deft, sequinned with light-catching insights and descriptions. Vitally, too, it unflinchingly confronts the era’s darkest side.... Shock and Awe thinks hard about this noize, as Slade would have it, but it also feels it... For anyone interested in pop and its possibilities, the book is full of thrills, a grown-up take on a
teenage dream." - Victoria Segal, The Sunday Times
"An engrossing intellectual history of glam rock, providing as much structure and coherence as the sprawling, protean genre will bear.... Encyclopedic, and idiosyncratic.... To the extent that one could accuse Reynolds of overreaching, it’s done in glam’s devil-may-care, raid-the-storeroom spirit. But if Shock and Awe takes occasional walks on the wilder side of cultural history, it always comes back to the music.... Tawdry, ridiculous, pretentious, and crass, glam produced some of the most sublime pop music of its era. Now it has a history worthy of it." - Chris O'Leary, Los Angeles Review of Books - full review
"Simon Reynolds' book :Shock And Awe... - which is a career highlight - shows you what can happen when the right writer attacks a fresh subject with finesse and dynamism. In a book that takes in The Heavy Metal Kids and Cockney Rebel as well as the more obvious candidates such as Bowie and Roxy Music (in fact Shock And Awe is better when it spends time on its subject's periphery), Reynolds uses his inquisitiveness and scattershot research mechanisms to produce a classic piece of academic pop criticism. In the past, Reynolds has often overemphasised the lines he has drawn between big cultural themes and seemingly unrelated pop music, yet in this book all his reference points come together perfectly. No one has written about glam rock with such dedication, enthusiasm and ingenuity, and by dint of that, Shock And Awe will become a classic text" - Dylan Jones, GQ
'Something great happens in Shock and Awe: the eight-year-old enthusiastic pop-lover that Reynolds once was combines with the 53-year-old deep thinker he now is. The results are frequently giddy and wonderful.' - Jude Rogers, The Observer - full review
"Scintillating, spangled glam history.... the writing is lithe, deft, sequinned with light-catching insights and descriptions. Vitally, too, it unflinchingly confronts the era’s darkest side.... Shock and Awe thinks hard about this noize, as Slade would have it, but it also feels it... For anyone interested in pop and its possibilities, the book is full of thrills, a grown-up take on a
teenage dream." - Victoria Segal, The Sunday Times
"An engrossing intellectual history of glam rock, providing as much structure and coherence as the sprawling, protean genre will bear.... Encyclopedic, and idiosyncratic.... To the extent that one could accuse Reynolds of overreaching, it’s done in glam’s devil-may-care, raid-the-storeroom spirit. But if Shock and Awe takes occasional walks on the wilder side of cultural history, it always comes back to the music.... Tawdry, ridiculous, pretentious, and crass, glam produced some of the most sublime pop music of its era. Now it has a history worthy of it." - Chris O'Leary, Los Angeles Review of Books - full review
"Simon Reynolds' book :Shock And Awe... - which is a career highlight - shows you what can happen when the right writer attacks a fresh subject with finesse and dynamism. In a book that takes in The Heavy Metal Kids and Cockney Rebel as well as the more obvious candidates such as Bowie and Roxy Music (in fact Shock And Awe is better when it spends time on its subject's periphery), Reynolds uses his inquisitiveness and scattershot research mechanisms to produce a classic piece of academic pop criticism. In the past, Reynolds has often overemphasised the lines he has drawn between big cultural themes and seemingly unrelated pop music, yet in this book all his reference points come together perfectly. No one has written about glam rock with such dedication, enthusiasm and ingenuity, and by dint of that, Shock And Awe will become a classic text" - Dylan Jones, GQ
"This study of the elaborate and the outrageous is written with windowpane clarity and great humour." - Andrew Harrison, The New Statesman, - full review
Book of the Day The Guardian - "This is a wonderful celebration of – and reckoning with – a generation of chancers, chameleons and lunatic geniuses who proved, as Adam Ant later claimed, that “ridicule is nothing to be scared of”." - Sukhdev Sandhu, The Guardian - full review
"Reynolds has written perhaps the most incisive commentary on Bowie’s career that has yet appeared. An essential account for the Record Collector reader" 4 stars/ **** - Jamie Atkins, Record Collector - full review
"A panoramic and appropriately dazzling history of glam" 9/10 - Uncut
"Impeccable journalism and intriguing thought processes. A fascinating read" 4 stars - Mark Blake, Mojo
“Superb look at the heady thrill of glam rock’s rich pageant” – Jonathan O’Brien, The Sunday Business Post
some of the S+A related pieces by me so far...
Killer Riffs - a historical survey of parody in pop - Pitchfork
"Is Politics the new glam rock?" - a Guardian Review piece about glam's premonitions of Trump / looking at the current political scene (Trump, Clinton, Obama, and Corbyn) through the lens of glam and the concept of political theatre (written before the Trump campaign imploded, when he was still a contender/threat - but overtaken by events by the time it ran). Update 11/9 RELEVANT AGAIN, HORRORHORROR
Lady Gaga as the 21st Century digi-glam superstar - a remixed and expanded and updated excerpt from S+A, in Vice
Dazed & Confused with Alex Denney
miscellaneous
Fordham University newsletter report on the talk / live-dialogue at Fordham with Asif Siddiqi
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Fordham University newsletter report on the talk / live-dialogue at Fordham with Asif Siddiqi
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Glamour, noun – 1.
(archaic) visual illusion, a magical haze in the air causing things to appear
different from how they really are (as in “cast the glamour”). Etymology: Scottish,
variant of Scottish gramayre, “magic,
enchantment, spell”.
Trumpery, noun - 1. worthless nonsense 2/ practices that are superficially or visually appealing but have little real value. 3. (archaic) tawdry finery. Etymology: Middle English (Scots), trumpery - deceit or fraud; from Middle French, tromper – to trick, as in trompe l’oeil.
Trumpery, noun - 1. worthless nonsense 2/ practices that are superficially or visually appealing but have little real value. 3. (archaic) tawdry finery. Etymology: Middle English (Scots), trumpery - deceit or fraud; from Middle French, tromper – to trick, as in trompe l’oeil.