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by Steven H. Gardner (Author)
From the perspective of pop music, the Seventies are too often 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. This is the story of that idea and what thousands of innovative and intriguing people were able to make from it. This is the second of what will eventually be four volumes. Volume One: Origins considers the origins of Seventies punk and new wave, and then tells the story, chapter by chapter, of each significant band in that period. Volume Two moves definitively into the stories of the bands that were critical to the punk boom of 1977. Still in progress, Volume Three will cover the metamorphosis of what was Punk into New Wave, and Volume Four will discuss the fracturing of New Wave into dozens of splinter offshoots.
