Music

From the rollicking welcome of “A Festive Song” to the defiant battle cry of “Watchword of Labor,” Songs of Freedom accomplishes the difficult task of making contemporary music out of old revolutionary songs. Far from the archival preservation of embalmed corpses, the inspired performance of a rocking band turns the timeless lyrics of James Connolly into timely manifestos for today’s young rebels. As Connolly himself repeatedly urged, nothing can replace the power of music to raise the fighting spirit of the oppressed.

Giving expression to Connolly’s internationalism, musical influences ranging from traditional Irish airs to American rhythm and blues are combined here in refreshing creativity. As for the songs themselves, nine have lyrics by Connolly, three were written about Connolly, and one, “The Red Flag,” was chosen by Connolly to be in the original Songs of Freedom songbook of 1907, subsequently becoming a classic song of Labor. The instrumentation is acoustic: guitars, uilleann pipes, whistles, fiddle, accordion, and Irish harp, as well as drums and bass.

1. A Festive Song
2. Be Moderate
3. Human Freedom
4. Connolly Was There
5. A Rebel Song
6. Saoirse a Rúin
7. When Labor Calls
8. O Slaves of Toil
9. Shake Out Your Banners
10. The Irish Rebel
11. The Red Flag
12. Watchword of Labor
13. Where Is James Connolly?

What does democracy sound like when it's shouted through a distortion pedal?

In 1975, Spain emerged from the long shadow of Franco’s dictatorship, stumbling toward democracy amid uncertainty, unrest, and unhealed wounds. In the same moment, a raw, raucous, and radically irreverent cultural force exploded onto the scene: punk.

Spanish Punk: Screaming for Democracy in a Postdictatorial State is the first in-depth study to trace the uniquely political trajectory of punk in post-Franco Spain. Far from just a musical genre, Spanish punk became a rebellious cultural matrix—a defiant, DIY response to the contradictions of a state trying to reinvent itself. Through fanzines, lyrics, testimonies, and subcultural style, punks posed urgent questions: What kind of democracy was being built? Who was being left out? And how do you scream dissent in a newly “free” society?

Blending historical, philosophical, musicological, and textual analysis, this book shows how punk served as both a glue for oppositional movements and a generator of alternative political identities. It’s a long-overdue exploration of how cultural resistance helped shape a generation’s answer to dictatorship—and its uneasy aftermath.

“The Bars represent me finding my people. We were like a tribe. Together we are strong whereas before we felt weak and ostracized.”

Barred for Life is a photo documentary cataloging the legacy of Punk Rock pioneers Black Flag, through stories, interviews, and photographs of diehard fans who wear their iconic logo, The Bars, conspicuously tattooed upon their skin. Author Stewart Ebersole provides a personal narrative describing what made the existence of Punk Rock such an important facet of his and many other people’s lives, and the role that Black Flag’s actions and music played in soundtracking the ups and downs of living as cultural outsiders.

“The Bars say ‘I’m not one of them,’ and it also lets the right people know that I am one of them.”

Stark black-and-white portraits provide visual testimony to the thesis that Black Flag’s factual Punk-pioneering role and their hyper-distilled mythology are now more prevalent worldwide then when the band was in service. An extensive tour of North America and Western Europe documents dedicated fans bearing Bars-on-skin and other Black Flag iconography. Nearly four hundred “Barred” fans lined up, smiled/frowned for the camera, and issued their stories for the permanent record.

“It is the black flag of anarchism, and that is the opposite of the white flag of surrender.”

Barred for Life expands its own scope by presenting interviews with former Black Flag members and those close to the band. Interviews with alumni Dez Cadena, Ron Reyes, Kira Roessler, Keith Morris, and Chuck Dukowski, as well as photographers Glen E. Friedman and Ed Colver, and the man responsible for tattooing The Bars on more than a few Black Flag players, Rick Spellman, round out and spotlight aspects of Black Flag’s vicious live performances, forward-thinking work ethic, and indisputable reputation for acting as both champions and iconoclastic destroyers of the Punk Rock culture they helped to create.

“When I see The Bars I think ‘Black Flag the band,’ but they also represent an entire movement of people that are not going to conform. They are part of a culture of people that stand up for themselves.”

In 1905, representatives from dozens of radical labor groups came together in Chicago to form One Big Union—the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), known as the Wobblies. The union was a big presence in the labor movement, leading strikes, walkouts, and rallies across the nation. And everywhere its members went, they sang.

Their songs were sung in mining camps and textile mills, hobo jungles and flop houses, and anywhere workers might be recruited to the Wobblies’ cause. The songs were published in a pocketsize tome called the Little Red Songbook, which was so successful that it’s been published continuously since 1909. In The Big Red Songbook, the editors have gathered songs from over three dozen editions, plus additional songs, rare artwork, personal recollections, discographies, and more into one big all-embracing book.

IWW poets/composers strove to nurture revolutionary consciousness. Each piece, whether topical, hortatory, elegiac, or comic served to educate, agitate, and emancipate workers. A handful of Wobbly numbers have become classics, still sung by labor groups and folk singers. They include Joe Hill’s sardonic “The Preacher and the Slave” (sometimes known by its famous phrase “Pie in the Sky”) and Ralph Chaplin’s “Solidarity Forever.” Songs lost or found, sacred or irreverent, touted or neglected, serious or zany, singable or not, are here. The Wobblies and their friends have been singing for a century. May this comprehensive gathering simultaneously celebrate past battles and chart future goals.

In addition to the 250+ songs, writings are included from Archie Green, Franklin Rosemont, David Roediger, Salvatore Salerno, Judy Branfman, Richard Brazier, James Connell, Carlos Cortez, Bill Friedland, Virginia Martin, Harry McClintock, Fred Thompson, Adam Machado, and many more.

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.

Dead Kennedys routinely top both critic and fan polls as the greatest punk band of their generation. Their debut full-length, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, in particular, is regularly voted among the top albums in the genre. Fresh Fruit offered a perfect hybrid of humor and polemic strapped to a musical chassis that was as tetchy and inventive as Jello Biafra’s withering broadsides. Those lyrics, cruel in their precision, were revelatory. But it wouldn’t have worked if the underlying sonics were not such an uproarious rush, the paraffin to Biafra’s naked flame.

Dead Kennedys’ continuing influence is an extraordinary achievement for a band that had practically zero radio play and only released records on independent labels. They not only existed outside of the mainstream but were, as V. Vale of Search and Destroy noted, the first band of their stature to turn on and attack the music industry itself. The DKs set so much in motion. They were integral to the formulation of an alternative network that allowed bands on the first rung of the ladder to tour outside of their own backyard. They were instrumental in supporting the concept of all-ages shows and spurned the advances of corporate rock promoters and industry lapdogs. They legitimized the notion of an American punk band touring internationally while disseminating the true horror of their native country’s foreign policies, effectively serving as anti-ambassadors on their travels.

The book uses dozens of first-hand interviews, photos, and original artwork to offer a new perspective on a group who would become mired in controversy almost from the get-go. It applauds the band’s key role in transforming punk rhetoric, both polemical and musical, into something genuinely threatening—and enormously funny. The author offers context in terms of both the global and local trajectory of punk and, while not flinching from the wildly differing takes individual band members have on the evolution of the band, attempts to be celebratory—if not uncritical.

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.

The product of decades of work and multiple self-published editions, Going Underground, written by 1980s scene veteran George Hurchalla, is the most comprehensive look yet at America’s nationwide underground punk scene.

Despite the mainstream press declarations that “punk died with Sid Vicious” or that “punk was reborn with Nirvana,” author Hurchalla followed the DIY spirit of punk underground, where it not only survived but thrived nationally as a self-sustaining grassroots movement rooted in seedy clubs, rented fire halls, Xeroxed zines, and indie record shops.

Rather than dwell solely on well-documented scenes from Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, DC, Hurchalla delves deep into the counterculture, rooting out stories from Chicago, Philadelphia, Austin, Cincinnati, Miami, and elsewhere. The author seamlessly mixes his personal experiences with the oral history of dozens of band members, promoters, artists, zinesters, and scenesters. Some of the countless bands covered include Articles of Faith, Big Boys, Necros, Hüsker Dü, Bad Brains, Government Issue, and Minutemen, as well as many of the essential zines of the time such as Big Takeover, Maximum RocknRoll, Flipside, and Forced Exposure.

Going Underground features over a hundred unique photos from Marie Kanger-Born of Chicago, Dixon Coulbourn of Austin, Brian Trudell of LA, Malcolm Riviera of DC, Justina Davies of New York, Ed Arnaud of Arizona, and many others, along with flyers from across the nation.

Music is fundamental to human existence, a cultural universal among all humans for all times. It is embedded in our evolution, encoded in our DNA, which is to say, essential to our survival. Academics in a variety of disciplines have considered this idea to devise explanations that Richard Manning, a lifelong journalist, finds hollow, arcane, incomplete, ivory-towered, and just plain wrong. He approaches the question from a wholly different angle, using his own guitar and banjo as instruments of discovery. In the process, he finds himself dancing in celebration of music rough and rowdy.

American roots music is not a product of an elite leisure class, as some academics contend, but of explosive creativity among slaves, hillbillies, field hands, drunks, slackers, and hucksters. Yet these people—poor, working people—built the foundations of jazz, gospel, blues, bluegrass, rock ’n’ roll, and country music, an unparalleled burst of invention. This is the counterfactual to the academics’ story. This is what tells us music is essential, but by pulling this thread, Manning takes us down a long, strange path, following music to deeper understandings of racism, slavery, inequality, meditation, addiction, the science of our brains, and ultimately to an enticing glimpse of pure religion.

Use this book to follow where his guitar leads. Ultimately it sings the American body, electric.

A RADICAL LABOR CLASSIC

Undoubtedly the most popular book in American labor history, the I.W.W.’s Little Red Song Book has been a staple item on picket lines and at other workers’ gatherings for generations, and has gone through numerous editions.

As a result of I.W.W. efforts to keep up with the times, however, recent versions of the songbook have omitted most of the old-time favorites, especially the raucous lyrics of the free-spirited hoboes who made up such a large portion of the union’s membership in its heyday. For example, recent versions have left out all but a few of the celebrated songs of Joe Hill, T-Bone Slim, Ralph Chaplin, and other pioneer bards of the One Big Union—and many of the few remaining older songs have been abridged or otherwise modified.

The steadily mounting interest in Wobbly history and culture warrants this facsimile edition of a classic Little Red Song Book from the union’s Golden Age. Reprinted here is the Nineteenth Edition, originally issued in 1923, the year the I.W.W. reached its peak membership.

Of the fifty-two songs in this book, the overwhelming majority have not been included in the I.W.W.’s own songbooks for many years. Here are such classics as Joe Hill’s “John Golden and the Lawrence Strike,” “We Will Sing One Song,” “Scissor Bill,” “The Tramp,” and others; T-Bone Slim’s “I’m Too Old to Be a Scab,” “Mysteries of a Hobo’s Life,” “I Wanna Free Miss Liberty,” and others; Ralph Chaplin’s “All Hell Can’t Stop Us,” “Up from Your Knees,” “May Day Song,” and more; and other songs by C.G. Allen, Richard Brazier, Pat Brennan, James Connolly, Laura Payne Emerson, and many others.

Ninety years ago these songs were sung with gusto in Wobbly halls and hobo jungles from Brooklyn to San Pedro. And they’re still fun to sing today!

Left of the Dial features interviews by musical journalist, folklorist, educator, and musician David Ensminger with leading figures of the punk underground: Ian MacKaye (Minor Threat/Fugazi), Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys), Dave Dictor (MDC), and many more. Ensminger probes the legacy of punk’s sometimes fuzzy political ideology, its ongoing DIY traditions, its rupture of cultural and social norms, its progressive media ecology, its transgenerational and transnational appeal, its pursuit of social justice, its hybrid musical nuances, and its sometimes ambivalent responses to queer identities, race relations, and its own history. Passionate, far-reaching, and fresh, these conversations illuminate punk’s oral history with candor and humor.

Rather than focus on discographies and rehashed gig memories, the interviews aim to unveil the secret history of punk and hardcore ideologies and values, as understood by the performers. In addition, Ensminger has culled key graphics from his massive punk flyer collection to celebrate the visual history of the bands represented. The book also features rare photographs shot by Houston-based photographer Ben DeSoto during the heyday of punk and hardcore, which capture the movement’s raw gusto, gritty physicality, and resilient determination.

Interviews include Peter Case (Nerves, Plimsouls), Captain Sensible (The Damned), Tony Kinman (The Dils), El Vez, Charlie Harper (UK Subs), The Deaf Club (an oral history of the landmark San Francisco club), Mike Palm (Agent Orange), Gregg Turner (Angry Samoans), Ian MacKaye (Minor Threat, Fugazi), Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys), Gary Floyd (Dicks, Sister Double Happiness), Mike Watt (Minutemen, fIREHOSE), Shawn Stern (Youth Brigade), Kira Roessler (Black Flag, Dos), Jack Grisham (TSOL), Keith Morris (Circle Jerks, Off!) Fred “Freak” Smith (Beefeater), U-Ron Bondage (Really Red), Vic Bondi (Articles of Faith), Lisa Fancher (Frontier Records), Dave Dictor (MDC), and Thomas Barnett (Strike Anywhere).

First published in 1982 as part of the Crass record album Christ: The Album, Penny Rimbaud’s The Last of the Hippies is a fiery anarchist polemic centered on the story of his friend, Phil Russell (aka Wally Hope), who was murdered by the State while incarcerated in a mental institution.

Wally Hope was a visionary and a freethinker, whose life had a profound influence on many in the culture of the UK underground and beyond. He was an important figure in what may loosely be described as the organization of the Windsor Free Festival from 1972 to 1974, as well providing the impetus for the embryonic Stonehenge Free Festival.

Wally was arrested and incarcerated in a mental institution after having been found in possession of a small amount of LSD. He was later released, and subsequently died. The official verdict was that Russell committed suicide, although Rimbaud uncovered strong evidence that he was murdered. Rimbaud’s anger over unanswered questions surrounding his friend’s death inspired him in 1977 to form the anarchist punk band Crass.

In the space of seven short years, from 1977 to their breakup in 1984, Crass almost single-handedly breathed life back into the then moribund peace and anarchist movements. The Last of the Hippies fast became the seminal text of what was then known as anarcho-punk and which later blossomed into the anti-globalization movement.

This revised edition comes complete with a new introduction in which Rimbaud questions some of the premises that he laid down in the original.

G.W. Sok co-founded of the internationally acclaimed independent Dutch music group The Ex in 1979. He became the singer and lyricist, more or less by coincidence, since he wrote the occasional poem and nobody else wanted to sing. At the same time he turned himself into a graphic designer of record sleeves, posters, and books. Together with The Ex he was awarded the Dutch Pop Prize of 1991. The band is well known for their energetic live performances, inventive music, and politically outspoken and thought-provoking lyrics. After 1,400 concerts in Holland and abroad, and 25 record albums later, G.W. Sok decided to leave the group at the end of 2008.

A Mix of Bricks & Valentines showcases the lyrics G.W. Sok wrote during his three-decade period of Ex-istence. More than 250 songs of agitprop lyrics, poetry, and rantings are included along with an introduction by the author discussing his development as a writer. A foreword by English journalist, author, and musician John Robb (the Membranes, Punk: An Oral History and Death to Trad Rock) puts the work of G.W. Sok into perspective.

A Mix of Bricks & Valentines is written with a sharp pen; provocative, creative, and witty, everything punk and art intended to be from the start. And yes, it can be quite loud at times, too.

Originally published in 1985, One Chord Wonders was the first full-length study of the glory years of British punk rock. The book argues that one of punk’s most significant political achievements was to expose the operations of power in the British entertainment industries as they were thrown into confusion by the sound and the fury of musicians and fans.

Through a detailed examination of the conditions under which punk emerged and then declined, Dave Laing develops a view of the music as both complex and contradictory. Special attention is paid to the relationship between punk and the music industry of the late 1970s, in particular the political economy of the independent record companies through which much of punk was distributed. The rise of punk is also linked to the febrile political atmosphere of Britain in the mid-1970s.

Using examples from a wide range of bands, individual chapters use the techniques of semiology to consider the radical approach to naming in punk (from Johnny Rotten to Poly Styrene), the instrumental and vocal sound of the music, and its visual images. Another section analyses the influence of British punk in Europe prior to the music’s division into “real punk” and “post-punk” genres.

The concluding chapter critically examines various theoretical explanations of the punk phenomenon, including the class origins of its protagonists and the influential view that punk represented the latest in a line of British youth “subcultures.” There is also a chronology of the punk era, plus discographies and a bibliography.

In this glorious 2 DVD set, Britain’s finest living songwriters are captured live (on tour in Berkeley, CA), presenting two nights of their original songs, words, and inimitable performance.

Turning Silence into Song (Disc One) showcases a pair of career-spanning “greatest hits,“ with a suitable sprinkling of new and previously unreleased material. All introduced and contextualized with a large helping of trademark wit and dry irony.

The Liberty Tree (Disc Two) tells the story of Tom Paine’s extraordinary life, interweaving Paine’s own words, from his letters and the pamphlets which made him one of the most influential and dangerous writers of his age, with extracts from newspaper reports, diaries, letters, and other documents of the times. The songs of Robb Johnson and Leon Rosselson add another dimension to the story, reflecting Paine’s radical ideas and evaluating them in the context of the 21st century. This unique blend of words and music challenges received opinion in the same way Paine’s writings did.

Together, herein you’ll find over four hours of the finest contemporary songs, stories, humor, and observation from the greatest practitioners of the craft.

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.

Succinct and to the point, David Rovics demystifies the very different skills necessary to cultivate the arts of songwriting, guitar-playing and tour booking. In an era when the truly independent record label is virtually a thing of the past, Rovics explains how it’s possible to make a living as a recording artist without a label. At a time when the corporate record industry is suing music fans for sharing music, Rovics explains why the internet is good for independent artists, and how to utilize its potential. For those hoping to get a major record deal and become rich and famous, look elsewhere. But if you’re looking to make a living as an independent artist, this pamphlet is a must-read.

Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution: An Oral History is the very first comprehensive overview of the movement that defied both the music underground and the LGBT mainstream community—queercore.

Through exclusive interviews with protagonists like Bruce LaBruce, G.B. Jones, Jayne County, Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre, film director and author John Waters, Lynn Breedlove of Tribe 8, Jon Ginoli of Pansy Division, and many more, alongside a treasure trove of never-before-seen photographs and reprinted zines from the time, Queercore traces the history of a scene originally “fabricated” in the bedrooms and coffee shops of Toronto and San Francisco by a few young, queer punks to its emergence as a relevant and real revolution. Queercore gets a down-to-details firsthand account of the movement explored through the people that lived it—from punk’s early queer elements, to the moments Toronto kids decided they needed to create a scene that didn’t exist, to the infiltration of the mainstream by Pansy Division, and the emergence of riot grrrl as a sister movement—as well as the clothes, zines, art, film, and music that made this movement an exciting in-your-face middle finger to complacent gay and straight society. Queercore will stand as both a testament to radically gay politics and culture and an important reference for those who wish to better understand this explosive movement.

Punk activist collective Positive Force DC emerged in 1985, rising from the creative, politically-charged ferment of DC punk’s Revolution Summer. Born in a dynamic local scene sparked by Bad Brains, Minor Threat, and Rites of Spring, a handful of young activists also drew inspiration from UK anarcho-punks Crass and the original “Positive Force” band Seven Seconds to become one of the most long-lasting and influential exponents of punk politics.

This feature-length film by Robin Bell skillfully mixes rare archival footage (including electrifying live performances from Fugazi, Bikini Kill, Rites of Spring, Nation of Ulysses, Anti-Flag, and more) with new interviews of key PF activists including co-founder Mark Andersen (co-author of Dance of Days) and Jenny Toomey (Simple Machines, Tsunami) as well as supporters such as Ian MacKaye, Jello Biafra, Dave Grohl, Ted Leo, Riot Grrrl co-founders Allison Wolfe and Kathleen Hanna, and many more. Covering a span of 30 years, More Than a Witness documents PF’s Reagan-era origins, the creation of its communal house, FBI harassment, and the rise of a vibrant underground that burst into the mainstream amid controversy over both the means and the ends of the movement.

Through it all, Positive Force has persisted, remaining deeply rooted in their hometown, reaching out to those in need and building bridges between diverse communities, while regularly bringing punk protest to the front doors of the powers-that-be. Encompassing an ever-evolving cast of characters, the all-volunteer group has helped to nurture several generations of activists. In the best punk fashion, PF has applied creative DIY tactics and radical critiques to issues of homelessness, hunger, racism, corporate globalization, sexism, homophobia, war, gentrification, and animal/earth liberation, while struggling to constructively address conflicting dynamics and visions within the group itself.

The filmmakers’ portion of the proceeds from the sale of the DVD will benefit the We Are Family senior outreach network.

Run time: 69 minutes.

Extras:

Wake Up! A Profile of Positive Force DC (28 minutes, 1991, a film by David Weinstein) A powerful snapshot of Positive Force at its early 90’s peak, just before the eruption of Riot Grrrl and “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” with a special focus on the role of the PF communal house.

Green Hair, Grey Hair (28 minutes, 2008, a film by Katrina Taylor and Rachell Williams) Award-winning short documentary that spotlights the unlikely - but transformative - alliance between inner-city seniors and young punk rockers fostered by PF’s work with the “We Are Family” senior outreach network.

Punks, Votes, Riots (21 minutes, 2014, outtake from More Than a Witness)

Live at Positive Force (33 minutes) Bonus performances by Fugazi, Seven Seconds, Chumbawamba, Anti-Flag, Soulside, The Evens, and Beefeater.

Straight edge has persisted as a drug-free, hardcore punk subculture for 25 years. Its political legacy, however, remains ambiguous—often associated with self-righteous macho posturing and conservative puritanism. While certain elements of straight edge culture feed into such perceptions, the movement’s political history is far more complex.

Since straight edge’s origins in Washington, DC, in the early 1980s, it has been linked to radical thought and action by countless individuals, bands, and entire scenes worldwide. Sober Living for the Revolution traces this history.

It includes contributions—in the form of in-depth interviews, essays, and manifestos—by numerous artists and activists connected to straight edge, from Ian MacKaye (Minor Threat/Fugazi) and Mark Andersen (Dance of Days/Positive Force DC) to Dennis Lyxzén (Refused/The (International) Noise Conspiracy) and Andy Hurley (Racetraitor/Fall Out Boy), from bands such as ManLiftingBanner and Point of No Return to feminist and queer initiatives, from radical collectives like CrimethInc. and Alpine Anarchist Productions to the Emancypunx project and many others dedicated as much to sober living as to the fight for a better world.

Black Flag were the pioneers of American Hardcore, and this is their blood-spattered story.

Formed in Hermosa Beach, California, in 1978, for eight brutal years they made and played brilliant, ugly, no-holds-barred music on a self-appointed touring circuit of America’s clubs, squats, and community halls. They fought with everybody: the police, the record industry and even their own fans. They toured overseas on pennies a day and did it in beat-up trucks and vans.

Spray Paint the Walls tells Black Flag’s story from the inside, drawing on exclusive interviews with the group’s members, their contemporaries, and the bands they inspired. It’s the story of Henry Rollins, and his journey from fan to iconic frontman. And it’s the story of Greg Ginn, who turned his electronics company into one of the world’s most influential independent record labels while leading Black Flag from punk’s three-chord frenzy into heavy metal and free-jazz. Featuring over 30 photos of the band from Glen E. Friedman, Edward Colver, and others.

Popular culture has woven itself into the social fabric of our lives, penetrating people’s homes and haunting their psyches through images and earworm hooks. Justice, at most levels, is something the average citizen may have little influence upon, leaving us feeling helpless and complacent. But pop music is a neglected arena where concrete change can occur—by exercising active and thoughtful choices to reject the low-hanging, omnipresent corporate fruit, we begin to rebalance the world, one engaged listener at a time.

Silenced by Sound: The Music Meritocracy Myth is a powerful exploration of the challenges facing art, music, and media in the digital era. With his fifth book, producer, activist, and author Ian Brennan delves deep into his personal story to address the inequity of distribution in the arts globally. Brennan challenges music industry tycoons by skillfully demonstrating that there are millions of talented people around the world far more gifted than the superstars for whom billions of dollars are spent to promote the delusion that they have been blessed with unique genius.

We are invited to accompany the author on his travels, finding and recording music from some of the world’s most marginalized peoples. In the breathtaking range of this book, our preconceived notions of art are challenged by musicians from South Sudan to Kosovo, as Brennan lucidly details his experiences recording music by the Tanzania Albinism Collective, the Zomba Prison Project, a “witch camp” in Ghana, the Vietnamese war veterans of Hanoi Masters, the Malawi Mouse Boys, the Canary Island whistlers, genocide survivors in both Cambodia and Rwanda, and more.

Silenced by Sound is defined by muscular, terse, and poetic verse, and a nonlinear format rife with how-to tips and anecdotes. The narrative is driven and made corporeal via the author’s ongoing field-recording chronicles, his memoir-like reveries, and the striking photographs that accompany these projects.

After reading it, you’ll never hear quite the same again.

Seventy-seven songs—with words and sheet music—of solidarity, revolt, humor, and revolution. Compiled from several generations in America, and from around the world, they were originally written in English, Danish, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and Yiddish.

From IWW anthems such as “The Preacher and the Slave” to Lenin’s favorite 1905 revolutionary anthem “Whirlwinds of Danger,” many works by the world’s greatest radical songwriters are anthologized herein: Edith Berkowitz, Bertolt Brecht, Ralph Chaplin, James Connolly, Havelock Ellis, Emily Fine, Arturo Giovannitti, Joe Hill, Langston Hughes, William Morris, James Oppenheim, Teresina Rowell, Anna Garlin Spencer, Maurice Sugar—and dozens more.

Old favorites and hidden gems, to once again energize and accompany picket lines, demonstrations, meetings, sit-ins, marches, and May Day parades.

Michelle Cruz Gonzales played drums and wrote lyrics in the influential 1990s female hardcore band Spitboy, and now she’s written a book—a punk rock herstory. Though not a riot grrl band, Spitboy blazed trails for women musicians in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, but it wasn’t easy. Misogyny, sexism, abusive fans, class and color blindness, and all-out racism were foes, especially for Gonzales, a Xicana and the only person of color in the band.

Unlike touring rock bands before them, the unapologetically feminist Spitboy preferred Scrabble games between shows rather than sex and drugs, and they were not the angry manhaters that many expected them to be. Serious about women’s issues and being the band that they themselves wanted to hear, a band that rocked as hard as men but sounded like women, Spitboy released several records and toured internationally. The memoir details these travels while chronicling Spitboy’s successes and failures, and for Gonzales, discovering her own identity along the way.

Fully illustrated with rare photos and flyers from the punk rock underground, this fast-paced, first-person recollection is populated by scenesters and musical allies from the time including Econochrist, Paxston Quiggly, Neurosis, Los Crudos, Aaron Cometbus, Pete the Roadie, Green Day, Fugazi, and Kamala and the Karnivores.

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.

“For my parents and grandparents, Jewish identity, in religion, culture and language, was a given. Not so for me. I’m not religious, not a Zionist, so in what consists my Jewishness? Is a love of chopped liver and a belief that chicken soup cures all ills enough? And does it matter? This is the story of my search for answers. It is an argument with myself, with song lyrics to embellish the argument.”

Like so many of those others in Britain of Jewish lineage, songwriter and award-winning folk singer Leon Rosselson is descended from antecedents who fled pogroms in eastern Europe. Pertinently, he questions what being a Jew means—is it adherence to Judaism as a religion, an ethnicity, a citizen of Israel, or someone who eats “chicken soup with knedlach”? He describes clearly and with historical insight how any concept of “Jewishness” can involve all of those things and more. In his own life, he has decided to pick and choose from this tradition and history and build on what he deems to be the progressive, humane, and universalist values of that Jewish background.

Rosselson is a strong supporter of Palestinian rights, seeing in the victimization of Palestinians by the state of Israel parallels with historical Jewish persecution. He concludes this short essay by stating: “I share with the growing number of Jews in the diaspora who place solidarity with the oppressed above demands of tribalism and with those in Israel who dare to stand against the powers that be.”

Working-Class Heroes is an organic melding of history, music, and politics that demonstrates with remarkably colorful evidence that workers everywhere will struggle to improve their conditions of life. And among them will be workers who share an insight: in order to better our lot, we must act collectively to change the world. This profusely illustrated treasury of song sheets, lyrics, photographs, histories, and biographical sketches explores the notion that our best hope lies in the capacity of ordinary working people to awaken to the need to emancipate ourselves and all of humanity.

Featuring over a dozen songwriters, from Joe Hill to Aunt Molly Jackson,Working-Class Heroes delivers a lyrical death blow to the falsehood that so-called political songs of the twentieth century were all written by intellectuals in New York. Many, like Ella May Wiggins, were murdered by the bosses. Others, like Sarah Ogan Gunning, watched their children starve to death and their husbands die of black lung, only to rise up singing against the system that caused so much misery.

Most of the songs collected here are from the early twentieth century, yet their striking relevance to current affairs invites us to explore the historical conditions that inspired their creation: systemic crisis, advancing fascism, and the threat of world war. In the face of violent terror, these working-class songwriters bravely stood up to fight oppression. Such courage is immortal, and the songs of such heroes can still lift our spirits, if we sing them today.

Featured in this twenty-song collection are Sarah Ogan Gunning, Ralph Chaplin, Woody Guthrie, Ella May Wiggins, Joe Hill, Paul Robeson, John Handcox, Aunt Molly Jackson, Jim Garland, Alfred Hayes, Joseph Brandon, and several anonymous proletarian songwriters whose names have been long forgotten, though their words will never die.

Straight edge—hardcore punk’s drug-free offshoot—has thrived as a subculture since the early 1980s. Its influence has reached far beyond musical genres and subcultural divides. Today it is more diverse and richly complex than ever, and in the past decade alcohol and drug use have become a much-discussed issue in radical politics, not least due to the hard work, dedication, and commitment to social and environmental justice found among straight-edge activists.

X: Straight Edge and Radical Sobriety is Gabriel Kuhn’s highly anticipated follow-up to his critically acclaimed Sober Living for the Revolution. In this impressive volume, Kuhn continues his reconnaissance of straight-edge culture and how it overlaps with radical politics. Extensively illustrated and combining original interviews and essays with manifestos and reprints from zines and pamphlets, X is a vital portrait of the wide spectrum of people who define straight-edge culture today.

In the sprawling scope of this book, the notion of straight edge as a bastion of white, middle-class, cis males is openly confronted and boldly challenged by dozens of contributors who span five continents. X takes a piercing look at religion, identity, feminism, aesthetics, harm reduction, and much more. It is both a call to action and an elaborate redefinition of straight edge and radical sobriety.

Promising to inspire discussion, reflection, and unearth hidden chapters of hardcore punk history, X: Straight Edge and Radical Sobriety is of crucial importance to anybody interested in the politics of punk and social transformation.

Black metal is a paradox. A noisy underground metal genre brimming with violence and virulence, it has captured the world’s imagination for its harsh yet flamboyant style and infamous history involving arson, blasphemy, and murder. Today black metal is nothing less than a cultural battleground between those who claim it for nationalist and racist ends, and those who say: Nazi black metal fvck off!

Black Metal Rainbows is a radical collection of writers, artists, activists, and visionaries, including Drew Daniel, Kim Kelly, Laina Dawes, Espi Kvlt, Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, Svein Egil Hatlevik, Eugene S. Robinson, Margaret Killjoy, and many more. Across essays and theory-fictions, artworks and comics, we say out loud: Long live black metal’s trve rainbow!

This unique volume envisions black metal as always already open, inclusive, and unlimited: a musical genre whose vital spirit of total antagonism rebels against the forces of political conservatism. Beyond its clichés of grimness, nihilism, reaction, and signature black/white corpse-paint sneer, black metal today is a vibrant and revolutionary paradigm. This book reveals its ludic, carnival worlds animated by spirits of joy and celebration, community and care, queerness and camp, LGBTQI+ identities and antifascist, antiracist, and left-wing politics, not to mention endless aesthetic experimentation and fabulousness. From the crypt to the cloud, Black Metal Rainbows unearths black metal’s sparkling core and illuminates its prismatic spectrum: deep within the black, far beyond grimness, and over a darkly glittering rainbow!

Grammy-winning music producer, Ian Brennan’s seventh book, Muse-Sick: a music manifesto in fifty-nine notes, acts as a primer on how mass production and commercialization have corrupted the arts. Broken down into a series of core points and actions plans, Muse-Sick is a concise and affordable pocket primer follow-up to Brennan’s two previous music missives, How Music Dies (or Lives): Field Recording and the Battle for Democracy in the arts and Silenced by Sound: The Music Meritocracy Myth.

Popular culture has woven itself into the social fabric of our lives, penetrating people’s homes and haunting their psyche through images and earworm hooks. Justice, at most levels, is something that the average citizen might have little influence upon leaving us feeling helpless and complacent. But pop music is a neglected arena where some change can concretely occur—by exercising active and thoughtful choices to reject the low-hanging, omnipresent commercialized and pre-packaged fruit, we begin to re-balance the world, one engaged listener at a time.

In fifty-nine concise and clear points, Brennan reveals how corporate media has constricted local culture and individual creativity, leading to a lack of diversity within “diversity.” Muse-Sick’s narrative portions are driven and made corporeal via the author’s ongoing field-recording chronicles with widely disparate groups, such as the Sheltered Workshop Singers. Marilena Umuhoza Delli’s striking photographs accompany and bring to life each tale.

As John Waters says: “I didn’t think it was possible to write a shocking book about music anymore. But Brennan has.”

THE STORIES BEHIND EVERY STUDIO TRACK FROM THE ONLY BAND THAT MATTERS.

Established in 1976 at the fore London’s punk rock insurgence, The Clash would outlast their peers while creating some of the most influential albums in rock ’n’ roll history. Author Martin Popoff dissects each of the Clash’s ninety-one studio tracks, examining the circumstances that led to their creation, the recording processes, the historical contexts and more. In addition, introductory essays set the scene for the band’s six studio releases (including the double LP London Calling and the triple Sandinista!) and feature sidebars detailing studios, release dates, personnel, and more. Illustrated with rare performance and offstage photography, along with images of 7-inch singles sleeves and gig posters, the resulting volume is a fitting tribute to the foursome whose staunch political stance and groundbreaking amalgam of punk, rockabilly, reggae, and hip-hop earned the title “The Only Band That Matters.”

This is the late 1970s and ’80s as explained through the urgent and still-relevant songs of the Clash, the Specials, the Au Pairs, the Style Council, the Pet Shop Boys, and nearly four hundred other bands and solo artists.

Each chapter presents a mixtape (or playlist) of songs related to an alarming feature of Thatcher’s Britain, followed by an analysis of the dialogue these artists created with the Thatcherite vision of British society. “Tell us the truth,” Sham 69 demanded, and pop music, however improbably, did. It’s a furious and sardonic account of dark times when pop music raised a dissenting fist against Thatcher’s fascist groove thing and made a glorious, boredom-smashing noise. Bookended with contributions by Dick Lucas and Boff Whalley as well as an annotated discography, The Fascist Groove Thing presents an original and polemical account of the era.

Formed in Wiltshire, England, in 1980, the Subhumans are rightly held in high regard as one of the best punk rock bands to ever hail from the UK.

Over the course of five timeless studio albums and just as many classic EPs, not to mention well over 1,000 gigs around the world, they have blended serious anarcho punk with a demented sense of humour and genuinely memorable tunes to create something quite unique and utterly compelling. For the first time ever, their whole story is told, straight from the recollections of every band member past and present, as well as a dizzying array of their closest friends and peers, with not a single stone left unturned. Bolstered with hundreds of flyers and exclusive photos, it’s the definitive account of the much-loved band.

Formed in Wiltshire, England, in 1980, the Subhumans are rightly held in high regard as one of the best punk rock bands to ever hail from the UK.

Over the course of five timeless studio albums and just as many classic EPs, not to mention well over 1,000 gigs around the world, they have blended serious anarcho punk with a demented sense of humour and genuinely memorable tunes to create something quite unique and utterly compelling. For the first time ever, their whole story is told, straight from the recollections of every band member past and present, as well as a dizzying array of their closest friends and peers, with not a single stone left unturned. Bolstered with hundreds of flyers and exclusive photos, it’s the definitive account of the much-loved band.

They were unlike any other band in the punk scene they called home.

NoMeansNo started in the basement of the family home of brothers Rob and John Wright in 1979. For the next three decades, they would add and then replace a guitar player, sign a record deal with Alternative Tentacles and tour the world. All along the way, they kept their integrity, saying "NO" to many mainstream opportunities. It was for this reason the band (intentionally) never became a household name, but earned the respect and love of thousands of fans around the world, including some who became big rock stars themselves. They were expertly skilled musicians playing a new kind of punk: intelligent, soulful, hilarious, and complex. They were also really nice Canadian dudes.

NoMeansNo: From Obscurity to Oblivion is the fully authorized oral and visual history of this highly influential and enigmatic band which has never been told before now. Author Jason Lamb obtained exclusive access to all four former members and interviewed hundreds of people in their orbit, from managers and roadies to fellow musicians, friends, and family members. The result is their complete story, from the band's inception in 1979 to their retirement in 2016, along with hundreds of photos, posters, and memorabilia, much of which has never been seen publicly before.

For established fans, this book serves as a "love letter" to their favorite group and provides many details previously unknown. For those curious about the story and influence of NoMeansNo, it reveals an eye-opening tale of how a punk band could be world class musicians while truly "doing it themselves." Their impact and importance cannot be overstated, and NoMeansNo: From Obscurity to Oblivion is the essential archive.

With appeal to more than just punk history obsessives, Orstralia offers an unprecedented snapshot of an underacknowledged segment of Australian life and history.

Far from punk’s more modish North Atlantic core in the late 1970s, discontented youth in Australia were enacting similar musical and cultural reckonings. Yet in spite of the Australia's purported “laid-back” national demeanour, punks there were routinely met with insult, fist, or the police baton.

More subterranean than the national scandal that was punk back in “homeland” Britain, Australia’s own bands nonetheless came to be heralded internationally. Orstralia represents the first definitive account of the country’s initial years, from progenitors the Saints and Radio Birdman in the mid-70s, through the emergence of hardcore in the 1980s, to the stylistic diffusion that accompanied transition to the 1990s.

Based on over 130 interviews, Orstralia documents the most renowned to the most fleeting and obscure acts the nation produced. Included are equally engrossing and shocking personal narratives befitting such a passionate and intemperate cultural form, as well as punk’s placement within broader Australian society at the time.

Formed in Wiltshire, England, in 1980, the Subhumans are rightly held in high regard as one of the best punk rock bands to ever hail from the UK.

Over the course of five timeless studio albums and just as many classic EPs, not to mention well over 1,000 gigs around the world, they have blended serious anarcho punk with a demented sense of humour and genuinely memorable tunes to create something quite unique and utterly compelling. For the first time ever, their whole story is told, straight from the recollections of every band member past and present, as well as a dizzying array of their closest friends and peers, with not a single stone left unturned. Bolstered with hundreds of flyers and exclusive photos, it’s the definitive account of the much-loved band.

When a former Green Day roadie reunites with the group, the result is a moral reckoning that eviscerates the music business, both underground and mainstream. It’s also a tender travelogue about finding common ground while exploring new roads with old friends. One need not be a fan of the band to enjoy this rollercoaster journey through Asia and its exploration of very different ideas of success.

Flesh and blood are what we are, flesh and blood is who we are, our cover is blown.

This Is a Message to Persons Unknown is the first book to explore the history of the legendary band Poison Girls, from their first gigs in Brighton, through their years of touring DIY venues across Britain and Europe, documenting their peerless collection of vinyl releases, the dissident campaigns the band supported, and the uncompromising political statements Poison Girls voiced on record, in print, and through their singular visual aesthetic. A band every bit as formative to anarcho-punk as Crass were, Poison Girls offered a passionate, heartfelt rebuttal to punk rock’s Year Zero protestations. While their musical roots predated punk, their songs blended punk’s ferocity, with a sense of wit, creative ingenuity, and emotional tenderness. Formed in 1977, with a line-up that spanned the generations, Poison Girls were fronted by the redoubtable Vi Subversa, a lyricist, songwriter, and singular vocalist. Armed with a message of anarchist self-reliance, Poison Girls confronted the misogyny and ageism of countercultures and opposition movements just as fiercely as that of the capitalist war state. Through the dark decade of Thatcherism, Poison Girls’ path of most resistance took the band in a very different direction to that pursued by Crass, with some unexpected and revealing results.

Combining original interviews with surviving band members with a participants’ history drawn from the pages of contemporary zines and papers, this comprehensive history of Poison Girls is richly illustrated with photos, posters, record sleeves, and ephemera drawn from the personal archives of band members, including numerous evocative images of the band at work and at play. This Is a Message to Persons Unknown presents the full story of an unparalleled group of radical musicians and artists who saw in punk the opportunity not just to rage against the machine but to create something new and extraordinary.

Flesh and blood are what we are, flesh and blood is who we are, our cover is blown.

This Is a Message to Persons Unknown is the first book to explore the history of the legendary band Poison Girls, from their first gigs in Brighton, through their years of touring DIY venues across Britain and Europe, documenting their peerless collection of vinyl releases, the dissident campaigns the band supported, and the uncompromising political statements Poison Girls voiced on record, in print, and through their singular visual aesthetic. A band every bit as formative to anarcho-punk as Crass were, Poison Girls offered a passionate, heartfelt rebuttal to punk rock’s Year Zero protestations. While their musical roots predated punk, their songs blended punk’s ferocity, with a sense of wit, creative ingenuity, and emotional tenderness. Formed in 1977, with a line-up that spanned the generations, Poison Girls were fronted by the redoubtable Vi Subversa, a lyricist, songwriter, and singular vocalist. Armed with a message of anarchist self-reliance, Poison Girls confronted the misogyny and ageism of countercultures and opposition movements just as fiercely as that of the capitalist war state. Through the dark decade of Thatcherism, Poison Girls’ path of most resistance took the band in a very different direction to that pursued by Crass, with some unexpected and revealing results.

Combining original interviews with surviving band members with a participants’ history drawn from the pages of contemporary zines and papers, this comprehensive history of Poison Girls is richly illustrated with photos, posters, record sleeves, and ephemera drawn from the personal archives of band members, including numerous evocative images of the band at work and at play. This Is a Message to Persons Unknown presents the full story of an unparalleled group of radical musicians and artists who saw in punk the opportunity not just to rage against the machine but to create something new and extraordinary.

Missing Music: Voices from Where the Dirt Roads End details Grammy-winning music producer and author Ian Brennan’s ongoing quest to provide musical platforms for underrepresented nations and populations around the world.

In a compact and quick-read format, Missing Music collects the latest narratives from Brennan’s field-recording treks. This edition features a greater emphasis on storytelling and an even greater abundance of photos from his wife, Italian-Rwandan photographer/filmmaker Marilena Umuhoza Delli.

Together, they meet the elderly shamans of the world’s most musical language, Taa, a tongue that sadly is dying, with fewer than 2,500 speakers left. The duo traveled the most remote roads of Botswana to find the formally nomadic people now relegated to small desert towns.

In Azerbaijan, Brennan and Delli ascended to the mountainous Iranian border to record centenarians in scattered villages of the Talysh minority, where the world’s oldest man reportedly reached the age of 168. The result is the only record ever released to feature the voices of singers over one-hundred years of age.

Among other tales, Brennan also updates the saga of the Sheltered Workshop Singers following COVID, including the tragic deterioration of his sister, Jane.

Arising from the more than forty records that Brennan has produced over the past decade from underrepresented nations such as Comoros, Djibouti, Romania, South Sudan, Suriname, and Cambodia, Missing Music serves as the newest suite in the multiverse symphony of the world’s most ignored corners—the places where countries expire and the “forgotten” live.