Simon Reynolds – Totally Wired (Book)

FromSimon Reynolds, the author of the bestselling post-punk history Rip It Up and Start Again comes a formidable companion book of conversations.

Totally Wired: Postpunk Interviews and Overviews features 32 interviews with the post-punk era’s most innovative musicians and colourful personalities including Ari Up, Jah Wobble, David Byrne and Edwyn Collins, it also includes conversations with the most influential of label bosses, managers, record producers, DJs and journalists – such as John Peel and Paul Morley.

Crackling with argument and anecdote, these conversations bring a rich human dimension to post-punk’s exceptional characters, from their earliest days to their glorious and sometimes disastrous musical adventures.

Along with the interviews, we get ‘overviews’: further reflections by Simon Reynolds on key icons and crucial scenes, including John Lydon and Public Image Ltd, Ian Curtis and Joy Division, and the lineage of glam grotesquerie running from Siouxsie and the Banshees to the New Romantics to Leigh Bowery.