Colegrave and Sullivan (The Beatles Anthology) deliver a brash and brilliant photo-essay of the most brash and obnoxious chapter in the history of music and culture long before the advent of crowd surfing. Framing its history between 1975 and 1979 (but covering the years before and after), this volume is a historiography of the music, attitude and dress as typified by Malcolm MacLaren and his manufactured Sex Pistols, uncomfortable commercial shifts in the music when anarchy became "a badge of conformity rather than an alternative way of living" and finally the latter days, which saw the dissolution of the Pistols. The authors trace punk rock from its earliest roots in the avant-garde and Warhol's Factory, and discuss every figure and legend from Iggy Pop and the MC5 to Siouxsie Sue and Johnny Rotten. This volume
is smartly designed, featuring hundreds of glossy black-and-white photographs and thousands of appraisals from the likes of Leee Childers, Nils Stevenson, as well as quotes from the film Please Kill Me
and Leggs McNeil, whose Punk Magazine
gave the wave its name. This is a gorgeous, hefty book—and readers may be inspired to break their coffee tables with it. (Mar.)
Forecast:While punk revelers won't be as nostalgic as Beatles fans, expect many closet sentimentals to clear the book shelves—though reissued and repackaged, punk is not yet dead.
