Monday, October 19, 2009

Exit Wounds

Around 18 months ago, I began sketching ideas for a book devoted to Punk's transition into post-punk; an area itself extremely wide given its dovetailing with industrial music, art-rock, synth-pop and so on during the early '80s. However, since then the idea's simply been smouldering away at a standstill due to my not knowing exactly which direction to push it in after my own account/introduction. The only thing I was clear about was not dwelling on its becoming increasingly sanitised pop music (think: New Romantics) and, instead, focusing rather more on its sprawling into the '80s underground (exceptions aside, no less)...

Whatever, mulling over this during more recent weeks has led me to return to the premise of interviewing a large and diverse number of people who were either involved (whether musicians, writers or label owners, etc.) or simply were old enough to both experience it and be inspired by it (akin to myself). Although it will be mostly based on what was happening in the UK, I hope to also include some impressions by others from elsewhere.

I am in the throes of arranging interviews at the moment, but I'd also welcome, at this stage, anybody simply contacting me with accounts of their own experiences surrounding Punk becoming, I feel, far more progressive around the same time people such as Rotten and Devoto left their first groups.

If you feel that you have something to share, please contact me. Thanks.