September 2006

  • The Italian translation of Rip It Up and Start Again is published on October 15th by Isbn Edizioni.
  • Part 2 of my interview with Left of the Dial webzine is now up — link
  • Rip It Up and Start Again has made #23 in Blender's 'Best Rock Books of All Time' list (October issue)

April 2006

  • The Rip It Up and Start Again compilation is released May 15th on V2.
    The tracklist:
    • THE FALL — Fiery Jack
    • DEVO — Praying Hands
    • PULSALLAMA — The Devil Lives In My Husband's Body
    • CABERAT VOLTAIRE — Sluggin' For Jesus Part 1
    • JOSEF K — Sense of Guilt
    • SCRITTI POLITTI — PAs
    • THE SLITS — Spend Spend Spend
    • FATAL MICROBES — Violence Grows
    • ROBERT WYATT — Grass
    • SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES — Slowdive
    • THE RAINCOATS — Only Loved At Night
    • YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS — Choci Loni
    • THE HUMAN LEAGUE — Dancevision
    • THOMAS LEER — Tight As A Drum
    • THE ASSOCIATES — White Car In Germany
    • THE B-52s — Give Me Back My Man
    • JOHN COOPER CLARKE — Beasley Street
    • THE SPECIALS — Friday Night, Saturday Morning
    • HEAVEN 17 — I'm Your Money
    • THE BLUE ORCHIDS — Dumb Magician

  • Currently on newstands: the April issue of Spin (Yeah Yeah Yeahs on the cover) featuring my piece on New Pop.

  • A round-up of the recent interviews and Rip-related writings, some already linked at Blissblog, others not:

    • Interview with me at Left Of the Dial (part one of two installments) — link

    • Interview with me at Repellentzine — link

    • Village Voice on the Rip It Up launch party at NuBlu — link

    • The Emusic Dozen: Postpunk — link

    • Slate Book Club dialogue between me and Stephen Metcalf — link

    • Jukebox discussion between me and Andy Battaglia in Seattle Weekly — link

    • Me on some favourite postpunk tunes at Largehearted Boy — link

    • The Mo Pitkins panel is preserved for all eternity thanks to roving videographer Joly (of Better Badges/fanzine benefactor fame) — link

    • Upcoming: the podcast of my Fales Library/Downtown Show talk on the history of art-rock with special reference to NYC art/music synergy in the No Wave/Mutant Disco era, coming soon at the Penguin Podcast — link

    • Upcoming: a dialogue between myself and Jeff Chang, author of hip hop chronicle Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop, hosted by Beatrice lit-blog — link

    • Upcoming: an interview with me in Nerve webzine — link

    • Upcoming: radio interviews on St Louis’ show Juxtaposition Radio on KDHX (Wednesday, April 5th, 9:30 PM) and Los Angeles’ KPFK (date TBC). I will also be co-hosting a show on the Calgary, Canada radio station CJSW (date TBC).


February 2006

  • I will be hosting a Rip It Up and Start Again panel discussion in New York on February 28th. Venue is Mo Pitkin's House of Satisfaction, 34 Avenue A (between 2nd and 3rd streets), the time 7 PM, admission $8. The panelists include James Chance (Contortions, James White & The Blacks), Steven Daly (Orange Juice; Vanity Fair contributing editor, co-author of The Rock Snob’s Dictionary), and Vivien Goldman (postpunk musician/Flying Lizard, journalist for NME/ Melody Maker/Sounds, compiler of the female postpunk compilation Grlz: Women Ahead of Their Time, author). Discussion will range across the era and the musical spectrum with special focus on NYC’s downtown scene in the half decade following punk and the unique synergy between musicians, writers, and artists during the No Wave and Mutant Disco era, and also looking at the close relationship between the NYC and UK scenes at this time.

  • Details of the Rip It Up party in New York in mid-March:
    XLR8R and Nublu present
    Rip It Up and Start Again
    A Post-Punk Par-Tay to Celebrate the release of Simon Reynolds' new book

    Saturday March 11 2006

    KUDU - live performance at 1am

    DJ's
    Dan Selzer (Acute Records)
    Mike Simonetti (Troubleman Unlimited)
    Roy Dank (Pop Your Funk)

    Nublu, 62 Avenue C between 4th & 5th
    $10, Doors: 8:30pm

  • On March 28th I’ll be giving a talk on postpunk New York’s art/rock crossover at the Grey Gallery (100 Washington Square East New York, NY 10003). Admission free; more details about the time to come in the March news. The talk is associated with the fabulous Downtown Art Show exhibition documenting the 1974-1984 period of New York art, more information here and here. The exhibition, which is at the Grey Gallery and the nearby Fales Library, is running until April 1st so check it out if you haven’t yet. There is a related exhibition, Anarchy to Affluence: Design in New York, 1974–1984, running until April 2nd at Parsons: The New School of Design's (at Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries, 66 Fifth Avenue) and looking at the interiors, furniture, graphics, fashion, and illustration produced in New York in the same period.

  • I'll be DJing and being interviewed on New York radio station WNYU’s New Afternoon Show, which is presented by Daniel Blumin, s on Friday February 24th, 5pm until 6-30. Terrestial frequency 89.1FM and I believe it can also can be heard via the web (not sure if they archive their shows, though).

  • I'll also be interviewed on the Athens, Georgia station WUGA, 91.7FM. The show is Just Off The Radar, presented by JoE Silva; it’s on March 4th at 9pm. The show can be heard live via the net and it will be archived for a week at www.justofftheradar.com

  • Rip It Up and Start Again is the Book of the Month in Lamacq’s Library, the regular rock-lit component of Steve Lamacq’s BBC 6 digital radio show (4 - 7pm Monday to Friday). There’s a bunch of stuff related to the book going on through February, including give-aways for listeners. More info

  • Look out for a piece by me on New Pop in the April issue of Spin, which hits the stands in early March.

  • Check out this interview with me by Wilson Neate for Perfect Sound Forever, part one, part two, and PSF are also reprinting here an article by me on postpunk London hitherto seen only by readers of Time Out (London).

  • Keep your eyes peeled for a Slate Book Club discussion between myself and Stephen Metcalf, most likely running sometime at the end of February or the start of March. More details at the blog.


January 2006

  • Rip It Up and Start Again featured prominently in the UK End of Year Lists:
    • New Musical Express’s Book of the Year
    • #2 Music Book in the Observer Music Monthly (ceding the Top Spot to John Peel and fair enough!)
    • #2 in Uncut (fiction and non-fiction list)
    • selected as a Book of the Year in Time Out ( fiction and non-fiction list)
    • selected as one of the best Pop Books of 2005 by the Sunday Times
    • selected as one of the best Music Books of the Year by The Times
    • a personal choice for Book of the Year by DJ Taylor in the Times Literary Supplement

  • Arriving in the nick of time—Rip It Up’s second print-run is almost sold out— the B-format version of the book will hit the shelves at the end of February. The book is the same as the original Royal Crown editions, but it’s more compact and portable. It’s also much cheaper, retailing at £9.99 (look for further discounts at some bookstores and online retailers such as Amazon.co.uk). The cover is basically the same as the original but has been tweaked slightly.

  • The B-format, originally scheduled for February 2nd, has been bumped back to synchronise with the March release of V2’s Rip It Up compilation. The tracklist is still being settled but includes artists like Fatal Microbes, Durutti Column, Thomas Leer, and John Cooper Clarke, and is generally slanted towards the more atmospheric, ethereal side of postpunk. Check here next month for a full tracklisting.

  • The American version of Rip It Up and Start Again is also being published at the end of February by Penguin, retailing at $16 (again, look for discounts from amazon.com and other on-line retailers). There will be various events organized around its release, including a panel discussion at Mo Pitkins in the East Village on February 28th (check here for details of the panelist line-up, address, and time) and a DJ party (details TBC). Check here next month for news of these events, radio interviews, and Rip-related interviews, dialogues, and articles appearing in print publications and online magazines.

  • Rip It Up will be published in a German translation through Hannibal Verlag. Look for publication in late 2006.

  • Rip It Up is coming out in a Japan translation, published by Shinko Music Entertainment, and due before the end of 2006.

  • Attention Portuguese-as-first-language readers: Brazilian publisher Conrad Livros is bringing out a collection of my writings, title TBA, and due most likely in early 2007. It will be the third in Conrad’s series of rockcrit anthologies, following a just-published slimmed-down version of Lester Bangs’ Psychotic Reactions and a Greil Marcus collection.

  • The Conrad collection will be the "radio mix" of my next book for Faber, a "concept anthology" drawing from 20 years of my writing. Title TBA, due for publication in April 2007.

  • Finally, about the long-awaited footnotes: basically, I realized it didn’t make sense to put them up here before the book was even out in America. But the first batch of notes-- chapters 1 to 14 of the UK edition--are approaching completion and will be going up on the site in the months immediately following the book’s US publication. The footnotes to the remaining thirteen chapters will go up sporadically over the ensuing year or so; at some point there will also be an appendix to the Esoteric Discography, covering things omitted.


November 2005

  • Rip It Up is being published in Italy by Saggiatore Gruppo Editoriale SpA/ISBN Division. Look for the Italian translation to appear in the autumn of 2006.


August 2005

  • In mid-August I'll be in Sao Paulo, Brasil, appearing as a "performer" in the Campari Rock Festival! On Thursday August 11th, there's a panel discussion about music writing and my books--the location is Indie Records, rua Inacio Pereira da Rocha, 622, and the event starts at 7 pm. And on Sunday August 14th I'll be deejaying at the festival's closing party, playing a non-beatmixed selection of postpunk + esoterica. Location is Lugar 166, in rua Helena, 166, and the event starts at 5pm and goes until midnight, with my set running 7-8:30 pm. I just hope my rider is as good as the MC5's and The Kills' ones.

  • Check here for further details about the forthcoming Rip It Up and Start Again compilation, due on V2 Records in February 2006. Its release will coincide with the US publication of Rip It Up on Viking Penguin, and with Faber publishing the B-format (more compact and portable than the current deluxe edition, and cheaper) version of the book in the UK.

  • The French translation of Rip It Up and Start Again is being published by Editions Allia--date TBC, most likely late 2006.

  • Check here for details of the book coming out in an Italian translation.


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