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COMING SOON!
NO MORE HEROES
A COMPLETE HISTORY OF BRITISH
PUNK ROCK
FROM 1976 to 1980
BASED ON OVER 200 INTERVIEWS WITH THOSE IN THE TRENCHES.
INCLUDES EXTENSIVE DISCOGRAPHY, BIOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL NOTES IN AN
A-Z FORMAT.
THERE HAVE BEEN MANY BOOKS ON PUNK. AT LEAST FIVE WILL BE PUBLISHED IN 2006
ALONE. IS THERE ANYTHING LEFT TO BE SAID?
NO, NOT REALLY.
AH, BUT YES, THERE IS!. THIS BOOK WILL TRY TO DOCUMENT AS MANY OF THE
UNKNOWN, FORGOTTEN, ONE-OFF BANDS THAT WERE AS MUCH PART OF THE PUNK
MOVEMENT AS THE PISTOLS AND THE CLASH, WHOSE STORY IS NOW SO FAMILIAR I
COULD SWEAR THE TWO JONES LADS SEEM LIKE SECOND UNCLES.
SO THIS TIME ROUND IT'S HATS OFF TO THE HOMOSEXUALS, ALL HAIL THE MUD
HUTTERS AND SALUTATIONS TO THE SNIVELLING SHITS
.
NO MORE HEROES
A Complete History Of Punk From 1976-1980
Alex Ogg
Release Date: October 2006 Cherry Red Books
Punk rock: it’s a well-worn subject, but this new book extends the searchlight beyond the King’s Road, Roxy
and West London – though that crucial scene is by no means neglected. It also encompasses some of the
truly fantastic music (and sometimes truly less than fantastic records) that emerged in the wake of the Sex
Pistols. The idea has been to give the progenitors their due, but to listen to the reverberations around the
UK, from Exeter to Inverness. Participants (musicians, fanzine writers, observers) recount first-hand stories
of flea pit gigs, desperately financed singles and local rivalries – punk as it was understood and lived on
the ground. The enduring impact of punk belonged to the shires of Britain as well as the celebrated urban
gene pool of the capital, where it played out, with a mixture of indomitable personal courage and amoral
teenage mischief-making, amongst the alienated of shitsville UK. In the process punk is revealed as a
much broader church than other histories have depicted, an entry point for young men and women (and a
significant helping of old codgers) from differing backgrounds, with widely ranging sensibilities and
aspirations.
The book assesses each of the major ‘punk artists’, candidly, on their output, following their development to
the present day. There’s an effort to redress perceived wisdom about the value of those careers as the 70s
turned into the 80s, when many of the original punk bands actually made their best records. While many
names will be familiar others will not. Hence time is devoted to punk’s splintered personality post-1977.
From those bands that took it as an inviolate template, to those who embraced it as a rebirth for the original
spirit of rock ‘n’ roll to those, finally, who judged it the end of rock music and a jumping off point for
something completely new. There is no unifying view or theory behind these accounts, instead the book
serves as an attempt to capture the beautiful chaos engendered by competing voices as the walls came
tumbling down. The idea is to be inclusive and celebratory rather than cynical. Therefore opinions are
sought from outside the tight huddle of usual suspects and would-be elitists, drawing on bemused and
bewildered non-participants to events, as well as those who served in the trenches. There is no attempt to
locate the ‘meaning’ of punk, nor to run a slide rule over qualifications for its status. The author has instead,
in the majority of cases, let the protagonists make their own cases. Where possible the bands concerned
have exercised the right of reply, leading to a more balanced account of their own history. Some 200
interviews were completed in the course of researching the book, leading to a plethora of first-hand insights
and anecdotes.
A secondary aspect of the book is the comprehensive documentation of the releases, both contemporary
and retrospective, of the bands of the era. It’s an attempt to address the jungle of retrospective CDs and box
sets, the sheer volume of which indicates the continued fascination around this period in British musical
history.
Over 300 individual band/artist biographies
Use of several unpublished photos
Forewords by Captain Sensible and David Marx
Complete discographies featuring capsule reviews and source notes
