Writer-photographer Pat Blashill is a very old mate. We've been friends since 1989, after working together on some stories in New York for Melody Maker - he did the artist portraits and I wrote up the interviews. One of them was Sun Ra, would you believe!
Before he moved to New York, Pat was involved in Austin's punk-and-after scene, documenting the mayhem in real-time with his camera. That pictorial trove fed into his first bookTexas Is The Reason. Now Blashill has written the definitive history on the Texas punk and postpunk scene. Someday All The Adults Will Die! For which I was glad to offer this ringing endorsement:
"Texas had America’s wildest, weirdest punk-and-after scene – a primal playpen of shock rock, instinctive Dada, psychedelic freakout, performance art, scream therapy and absurdist anti-politics. Austin native Pat Blashill was in the thick of it, photographing the messy madness as it unfolded. In Some Day All The Adults Will Die!, Blashill shepherds the ultra-vivid memories of his contemporaries and threads through his own hindsight insights, forming an essential document thick with the textures of a long-gone real-gone time. Hilarious and poignant, this is a story never before told – and an inspiration to future free-thinkers and trouble-makers."
Published by the University of Texas Press, Someday All the Adults Will Die! is available here.
A mate of mine - a Matt of mine, even - Matthew Worley has a new and excellent book out in a week's time: Zerox Machine: Punk, Post-Punk and Fanzines in Britain, 1976–88. Via Reaktion Books.
Here's what I was happy to offer by way of an endorsement:
"Intensely
researched, teeming with insights and fresh connections, Matthew Worley’s book
is the definitive study of punk and postpunk fanzine culture. If you want to
know why zines mattered - why zines got people so excited - this is where you
should start”
So definitive and encompassing is Zerox Machine that there is a chapter towards the end in which Monitor is covered, with quotes from myself and David Stubbs.
Release rationale:
Zerox Machine is an immersive journey through the vibrant history of British punk and its associated fanzines from 1976 to 1988. Drawing on an extensive range of previously unpublished materials sourced from private collections across the UK, Matthew Worley describes and analyses this transformative era, providing an intimate glimpse into the hopes and anxieties that shaped a generation.
Far more than a showcase of covers, this book examines the fanzines themselves, offering a rich tapestry of first-hand accounts, personal stories and subcultural reflections. Through meticulous research and insightful analysis, Matthew Worley captures the spirit and essence of British youth culture, not only shedding new light on a pivotal movement in music history but crafting a unique alternative history of Britain in the 1970s and ’80s.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Another recent book of note is Switched On: The Dawn of Electronic Sound by Latin American Women.
Published by Contingent Sounds out of Berlin and co-edited by Luis Alvarado of Buh Records, a Peruvian label that specialises in reissuing Latin American avant-garde and experimental music, this book represents a double decentering of the received narrative about electronic music history: it focuses on the Latin American contribution, and further focuses on the role of female pioneers such as Beatriz Ferreyra, Graciela Castillo, Hilda Dianda, Jacqueline Nova, Jocy de Oliveira, and Nelly Moretto, among many others.
Release rationale:
"The official history of 20th-century avant-garde electronic music has been predominantly narrated from the point of view of Anglo-American and Western European experiences and largely remained focused on its male protagonists. To destabilize this history, this editorial project presents a collection of perspectives, essays, interviews, archival photos, and work reviews centered on the early electronic music production by Latin American female creators, who were active from the 1960s to the 1980s. The book also brings us closer to the work of a new generation of researchers who have focused on offering a non-canonical reading of the history of music and technology in Latin America. The publication is the record of a new vision, an account of the condition of being a woman in the field of music technology at a time when this was a predominantly masculine domain....
"The texts that make up this publication are organized spatially and conceptually, rather than following a chronology. The selection of female composers profiled sheds light on a variety of relevant aspects: key musical contexts, experiments with technologies (such as tape, electronic synthesis, the first commercial synthesizers), diverse formats (i.e., radio art, electroacoustic pieces, installation, multimedia, theater, film, etc.), intertwined with themes, such as migration, memory, identity, collaboration, interdisciplinarity, social engagement, the acceptance of electronic music, etc. Moreover, the framework of this editorial project opened a space for intergenerational dialogue and a meeting of aesthetics, as many of the authors gathered as collaborators are composers and sound artists themselves....
Edited by: Luis Alvarado and Alejandra Cárdenas
Composers and sound artists featured in this historical account include:
I had a lovely time talking with Jeremy Gilbert and Tim Lawrence for their triffic music + politics podcast Love Is the Message. Our chat covered glam and punk and postpunk, themes of suburbia and boredom and the political economy of 1970s Britain. You can listen to the deftly-condensed and music-illustrated conversation at Apple or Spotify or Patreon
Torn Apartis an excellent exhibition of punk / New Wave / post-punk graphics - record covers, flyers, posters, advertisement, badges, zines, T-shirt, photographs - drawn from the collection of Andrew Krivine and curated by Michael Worthington. Torn Apart is now in its final days at the Pacific Design Center Gallery in Los Angeles and on the last night, Thursday this week, I'm giving a talk entitled A Different Kind of Tension: The Sound and the Look of New Wave. It's followed by a closing reception.
Date: Thursday 8th September
Time: 6pm
Admission: free
Address: PDC Design Gallery, 8687 Melrose Ave, West Hollywood, CA 90069
(In the absence of an AV projector, I was forced to perform the above album cover).
If you can't make the talk, then do pop by earlier in the week to look at the artwork - so many things I'd never seen before - and pick up the nifty free zine (see image at top of this blogpost) on offer in the foyer..
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