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by Steven H. Gardner (Author)
From the perspective of pop music, the Seventies are generally regarded as the weak sister to the Sixties. But those of us who followed the punk and new wave explosion of the last four years of the Seventies don't buy this assessment. Just because those late Seventies bands didn't get airplay and sell records like the Sixties bands, and in their later years didn't become the establishment as the members of the Sixties generation did, it doesn't mean the punk and new wave bands were any less artistically valid or less fun to listen to. If you could pull your ear away from consumer oriented rock bands of the era and were willing to exercise a little independence, you could hear exciting and boundary stretching music from a legion of groups from around the world, all of them inspired by an idea whose time had come. Another Tuneless Racket is the story of that idea and what thousands of innovative and intriguing people were able to make from it.
Volume One: Origins examined the bands that provided the foundation for what was to come. Volume Two: Punk focused on the bands that were the vanguard of punk in 1976 and 1977. This book, Volume Three: UK New Wave looks at where the music went in the British Isles in 1978 and 1979, years when the ideas inherent in punk took flight in many different and exciting directions and, surprisingly, often connected commercially. Another Tuneless Racket features big chapters on Generation X, Chelsea, Subway Sect, The Adverts, Tom Robinson Band, X-Ray Spex, The Lurkers, the Ruts, 999, The Slits, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Penetration, Sham 69, Rich Kids, Slaughter and the Dogs, The Members, The Soft Boys, Dead Fingers Talk, XTC, The Flys, The Records, The Only Ones, Nick Lowe, Yachts, Wreckless Eric, Lene Lovich, The Undertones, Stiff Little Fingers, The Skids, The Rezillos, Swell Maps, Gang Of Four, The Specials, The Beat, The Selecter, and a whole lot more. Another Tuneless Racket should prove to be one the most thorough histories of the period that you'll ever see.
