Human Punk
Page 41
In the years since its founding—and on a mere shoestring—PM Press has risen to the formidable challenge of publishing and distributing knowledge and entertainment for the struggles ahead. With over 300 releases to date, we have published an impressive and stimulating array of literature, art, music, politics, and culture. Using every available medium, we’ve succeeded in connecting those hungry for ideas and information to those putting them into practice.
Friends of PM allows you to directly help impact, amplify, and revitalize the discourse and actions of radical writers, filmmakers, and artists. It provides us with a stable foundation from which we can build upon our early successes and provides a much-needed subsidy for the materials that can’t necessarily pay their own way. You can help make that happen—and receive every new title automatically delivered to your door once a month—by joining as a Friend of PM Press. And, we’ll throw in a free T-shirt when you sign up.
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The Football Factory
John King
ISBN: 978-1-62963-116-5
296 pages
The Football Factory is driven by its two main characters—late-twenties warehouseman Tommy Johnson and retired ex-soldier Bill Farrell. Tommy is angry at his situation in life and those running the country. Outside of work, he is a lively, outspoken character, living for his time with a gang of football hooligans, the excitement of their fights and the comradeship he finds with his friends. He is a violent man, at the same time moral and intelligent.
Bill, meanwhile, is a former Second World War hero who helped liberate a concentration camp and married a survivor. He is a strong, principled character who sees the self-serving political and media classes for what they are. Tommy and Bill have shared feelings, but express their views in different ways. Born at another time, they could have been the other. As the book unfolds both come to their own crossroads and have important decisions to make.
The Football Factory is a book about modern-day pariahs, people reduced to the level of statistics by years of hypocritical, self-serving party politics. It is about the insulted, marginalised, unseen. Graphic and disturbing, at times very funny, The Football Factory is a rush of literary adrenalin.
“Only a phenomenally talented and empathetic writer working from within his own culture can achieve the power and authenticity this book pulses with. Buy, steal or borrow a copy now, because in a short time anyone who hasn’t read it won’t be worth talking to.”
—Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting
“King’s novel is not only an outstanding read, but also an important social document…. This book should be compulsory reading for all those who believe in the existence, or even the attainability, of a classless society.”
—Paul Howard, Sunday Tribune
“Bleak, thought-provoking and brutal, The Football Factory has all the hallmarks of a cult novel.”
—Dominic Bradbury, The Literary Review
The Colonel Pyat Quartet
Michael Moorcock
with introductions by Alan Wall
Byzantium Endures
ISBN: 978-1-60486-491-5
400 pages
The Laughter of Carthage
ISBN: 978-1-60486-492-2
448 pages
Jerusalem Commands
ISBN: 978-1-60486-493-9
448 pages
The Vengeance of Rome
ISBN: 978-1-60486-494-6
500 pages
Moorcock’s Pyat Quartet has been described as an authentic masterpiece of the 20th and 21st centuries. It’s the story of Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski, a cocaine addict, sexual adventurer, and obsessive anti-Semite whose epic journey from Leningrad to London connects him with scoundrels and heroes from Trotsky to Makhno, and whose career echoes that of the 20th century’s descent into Fascism and total war.
It is Michael Moorcock’s extraordinary achievement to convert the life of Maxim Pyatnitski into epic and often hilariously comic adventure. Sustained by his dreams and profligate inventions, his determination to turn his back on the realities of his own origins, Pyat runs from crisis to crisis, every ruse a further link in a vast chain of deceit, suppression, betrayal. Yet, in his deranged self-deception, his monumentally distorted vision, this thoroughly unreliable narrator becomes a lens for focusing, through the dimensions of wild farce and chilling terror, on an uneasy brand of truth.
Punk Rock: An Oral History
John Robb
with a foreword by Henry Rollins
ISBN: 978-1-60486-005-4
584 pages
With its own fashion, culture, and chaotic energy, punk rock boasted a do-it-yourself ethos that allowed anyone to take part. Vibrant and volatile, the punk scene left an extraordinary legacy of music and cultural change. John Robb talks to many of those who cultivated the movement, such as John Lydon, Lemmy, Siouxsie Sioux, Mick Jones, Chrissie Hynde, Malcolm McLaren, Henry Rollins, and Glen Matlock, weaving together their accounts to create a raw and unprecedented oral history of UK punk. All the main players are here: from The Clash to Crass, from The Sex Pistols to the Stranglers, from the UK Subs to Buzzcocks—over 150 interviews capture the excitement of the most thrilling wave of rock ’n’ roll pop culture ever. Ranging from its widely debated roots in the late 1960s to its enduring influence on the bands, fashion, and culture of today, this history brings to life the energy and the anarchy as no other book has done.
“Its unique brand of energy helps make it a riot all its own.”
—Harp magazine
“John Robb is a great writer … and he is supremely qualified in my opinion to talk about punk rock.”
—Mick Jones, The Clash
“John Robb is as punk rock as The Clash.”
—Alan McGee
Burning Britain: The History of UK Punk 1980–1984
Ian Glasper
ISBN: 978-1-60486-748-0
416 pages
As the Seventies drew to a close and the media declared punk dead and buried, a whole new breed of band was emerging from the gutter. Harder and faster than their ’76–’77 predecessors, not to mention more aggressive and political, the likes of Discharge, the Exploited, and G.B.H. were to prove not only more relevant but arguably just as influential.
Several years in the making and featuring hundreds of new interviews and photographs, Burning Britain is the true story of the UK punk scene from 1980 to 1984 told for the first time by the bands and record labels that created it. Covering the country region by region, author Ian Glasper profiles legendary bands like Vice Squad, Angelic Upstarts, Blitz, Anti-Nowhere League, Cockney Rejects, and the UK Subs as well as the more obscure groups like Xtract, The Skroteez, and Soldier Dolls.
The grim reality of being a teenage punk rocker in Thatcher’s Britain resulted in some of the most primal and potent music ever committed to plastic. Burning Britain is the definitive overview of that previously overlooked era.
“Ian Glasper’s chatty, engaging history follows the regional lines along which UK punk’s ‘second wave’ scene divided, as well as talking about the record labels involved and what the main protagonists, from the Anti-Nowhere League to Vice Squad, are up to now.”
—Iain Aitch, Guardian
&n
bsp; “Glasper is thorough and democratic. He lets everyone speak, tell their own story, edits out the rambling and bullshit, and presents a fair picture of all the main bands from all over the UK and Ireland. Geographically divided up. It’s an encyclopaedic but down-to-earth reference book, full of detail and anecdotes.”
—Ged Babey, LouderThanWar.com
The Day the Country Died: A History of Anarcho Punk 1980–1984
Ian Glasper
ISBN: 978-1-60486-516-5
496 pages
The Day the Country Died features author, historian, and musician Ian Glasper (Burning Britain) exploring in minute detail the influential, esoteric, UK anarcho punk scene of the early Eighties. If the colorful ’80s punk bands captured in Burning Britain were loud, political, and uncompromising, those examined in The Day the Country Died were even more so, totally prepared to risk their liberty to communicate the ideals they believed in so passionately.
With Crass and Poison Girls opening the floodgates, the arrival of bands such as Zounds, Flux of Pink Indians, Conflict, Subhumans, Chumbawamba, Amebix, Rudimentary Peni, Antisect, Omega Tribe, and Icons of Filth heralded a brand new age of honesty and integrity in underground music. With a backdrop of Thatcher’s Britain, punk music became self-sufficient and considerably more aggressive, blending a DIY ethos with activism to create the perfectly bleak soundtrack to the zeitgeist of a discontented British youth.
It was a time when punk stopped being merely a radical fashion statement, and became a force for real social change; a genuine revolutionary movement, driven by some of the most challenging noises ever committed to tape. Anarchy, as regards punk rock, no longer meant “cash from chaos.” It meant “freedom, peace, and unity.” Anarcho punk took the rebellion inherent in punk from the beginning to a whole new level of personal awareness.
All the scene’s biggest names, and most of the smaller ones, are comprehensively covered with new, exclusive interviews and hundreds of previously unseen photographs.
Stealing All Transmissions: A Secret History of The Clash
Randal Doane
with a foreword by
Barry “The Baker” Auguste
ISBN: 978-1-62963-029-8
192 pages
Stealing All Transmissions is a love story. It’s the story of how The Clash fell in love with America, and how America loved them back. The romance began in full in 1977, when select rock journalists and deejays aided the band’s quest to depose the rock of indolence that dominated American airwaves. This history situates The Clash amid the cultural skirmishes of the 1970s and culminates with their September 1979 performance at the Palladium in New York City. This concert was broadcast live on WNEW, and it concluded with Paul Simonon treating his Fender bass like a woodcutter’s ax.
This performance produced one of the most exhilarating Clash bootleg recordings, and the photo of Simonon’s outburst which graced the cover of the London Calling LP was recently deemed the greatest rock’n’roll photograph of all time. That night marked one of the last opportunities for American audiences to see The Clash as a punk band, teetering between conviction and uncertainty, before they became a seriously brilliant rock group.
Stealing represents a distinctive take on the history of punk, for no other book gives proper attention to the forces of free-form radio, long-form rock journalism, or Clash bootleg recordings, many of which are now widely available on the web. This story, which takes its title from the 1981 single “Radio Clash,” includes original interviews with key figures from the New York punk scene. This secret history concludes with an analysis of how we listen to music today and its impact on the written word.
“Stealing is unlike anything else you’ve ever read about The Clash. The maneuvers by American radio DJs, music journalists, and record company execs are deftly woven into the band’s own story.”
—Barry “The Baker” Auguste, roadie for The Clash