**" [An] endlessly fascinating and frankly addictive masterpiece of safety-pin journalism." -- Austin ChronicleAn oral history of the modern punk-revival's West Coast Birthplace**Outside of New York and London, California?s Bay Area claims the oldest continuous punk-rock scene in the world. Gimme Something Better brings this outrageous and influential punk scene to life, from the notorious final performance of the Sex Pistols, to Jello Biafra?s bid for may...

WINNER OF THE RALPH J. GLEASON AWARDINCLUDES FOREWORD BY JOHNNY MARRAward-winning, Sunday Times bestselling author Jon Savage's definitive history of punk, its progenitors, the Sex Pistols, and their time: the late 1970s.A pop-culture classic full of anecdote, insight and exclusive interviews, England's Dreaming tells the sensational story of the meteoric rise and rapid decline of the last great rock 'n' roll band and the cultural moment the...

Black Flag were the pioneers of American Hardcore, and this is their blood-spattered story.Formed in Hermosa Beach, California, in 1978, for eight brutal years they made and played brilliant, ugly, no-holds-barred music on a self-appointed touring circuit of America’s clubs, squats, and community halls. They fought with everybody: the police, the record industry and even their own fans. They toured overseas on pennies a day and did it in beat-up trucks and vans.Spray Pa...

"American Hardcore sets the record straight about the last great American subculture"-Paper magazineSteven Blush's "definitive treatment of Hardcore Punk" (Los Angeles Times) changed the way we look at Punk Rock. The Sony Picture Classicsdistributed documentary American Hardcore premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. This revised and expanded second edition contains hundreds of new bands, thirty new interviews, flyers, a new chapter ("Des...

When Nirvana first exploded onto the music scene in 1991 with the anthemic 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', few people could've predicted their subsequent global impact. No one knew then that Nevermind would become one of the seminal albums of the decade, selling over 30 million copies worldwide and spearheading a whole new 'grunge' movement. In so doing, the band's lead singer Kurt Cobain was transformed into one of music's most enduring and iconic figures.As drummer for the British group Capta...

'To see The Clash on the White Riot tour was like discovering how to be a rock star: you just did it yourself. You didn't wait for someone to come and discover you. That was the most important thing that came out of punk... We came home and we cut our hair and bought skinny trousers. It was year zero. That was the moment for me' Billy BraggPunk Rock is a book like no other. It is an oral history of a radical movement which exploded in Seventies Britain. With its o...

Two kids in their early twenties walk down the Bowery on a spring afternoon, just as the proprietor of a club hangs an awning with the new name for his venue. The place will be called CBGB & OMFUG which, he tells them, stands for “Country Bluegrass and Blues & Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers.” That's exactly the sort of stuff they play, they lie, somehow managing to get a gig out of him. After the first show their band, Television, lands a regular string of Sundays. By the end of th...

"Collects some of [ Punk Planet's] best interviews from the past half-decade . . . serves as a reminder that punk is not just music but a movement." —The A.V. ClubUpdated with six more interviews and a new introduction, the expanded edition of We Owe You Nothing is the definitive book of conversations with the underground's greatest minds from the pages of Punk Planet. New interviews include talks with bands like The Gossip and Maritime, ...

Dead Kennedys routinely top both critic and fan polls as the greatest punk band of their generation. Their debut full-length, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, in particular, is regularly voted among the top albums in the genre. Fresh Fruit offered a perfect hybrid of humor and polemic strapped to a musical chassis that was as tetchy and inventive as Jello Biafra’s withering broadsides. Those lyrics, cruel in their precision, were revelatory. But it wouldn’t have worked...

The ultimate guide to one of the most revered periods and movements in American rock history.The 1980s are one of the most ridiculed and parodied epochs in popular music€ " what with all the skinny lapels, synthesizers, spandex, and Aqua Net. However, music fans in the know recognize that beneath the glossy veneer broiled a revolutionary movement of self-directed, anti-corporate, punk-influenced bands that created a nationwide network from the ground up, thanks to independently recorded re...

In contrast with many of their punk peers, Wire were enigmatic and cerebral, always keeping a distance from the crowd. Although Pink Flag appeared before the end of 1977, it was already a meta-commentary on the punk scene and was far more revolutionary musically than the rest of the competition. Few punk bands moved beyond pared-down rock 'n' roll and garage rock, football-terrace sing-alongs or shambolic pub rock and, if we're honest, only a handful of punk records hold up today ...

Following hard on the explosion of British punk, in 1979 Gang of Four produced post-punk's smartest record, Entertainment! For the first time, a band wedded punk's angry energy to funk's propulsive beats-and used that music to put across lyrics that brought a heady mixture of Marxist theory and situationism to exposing the cultural politics of everyday life.But for an American college student from the suburbs-and, one expects, for many, many others, including British youth...