Alas, I did not make it all the way through “Rip It Up And Start Again”—I obtained it through interlibrary loan and ran out of renewals and had to send it back. (Disappointingly few libraries own it.)

However, unlike too many rock journalism books I’ve read, I found this one to be well-researched and well-written, with the author standing out of the way for the most part and letting the bands tell the stories. I missed out on this era of music while it was happening but have been getting into post-punk lately; this book was a nice complement to listening to the actual music.

Reynolds takes a long, hard look at the “post-punk” music scene in Britain, Europe, and America, and likes what he sees. Growing up during this time period, I was lucky enough to have some friends with contacts outside my relatively bucolic town, who first exposed me to many of these groups (along with many of the punk groups that preceded them). Early MTV, with its dependence on UK and American “post-punk” groups for video content, along with the USA Networks’ Night Flight program, continued my exposure and both broadened and deepened my understanding of the world that generated this music.

Reynolds concentrates on the UK (where he lived and grew up to this music), with brief forays into the States. His coverage of what was happening in the States is the weakest part of the book, as it seems to skip around and be considerably less in depth than the UK material. As I, personally, liked the UK music better, however, I got a lot out of this book. I now have a much better understanding of connections between various groups and the history of individual groups than I had prior to reading the book.

Rip It Up and Start Again is well worth reading if you grew up in the late seventies and early eighties and wonder what was going on with music.