A Proper Look at the Simon Reynolds Book Series
I've spent years going through boxes of mixtapes, demo CDs, and digital folders trying to keep track of who played where and when. The post-punk era is one of the most densely packed periods in modern music history, and honestly, it's a mess if you try to trace it without some kind of reference. That's where Rip It Up And Start Again Postpunk 1978 1984 comes in as a practical tool rather than just another coffee table book you pretend to read. Simon Reynolds' Rip It Up And Start Again is a two-volume set. The first covers 1977 to roughly 1980, and the second, which is the one most people are after, picks up around 1978 and runs through the mid-eighties. It's chronicled history written by someone who actually covered this stuff for NME and Melody Maker back when it mattered. The writing isn't academic. It's someone who was there, watching bands play to thirty people in draughty community centres, and now looking back with a bit of distance and a lot of notes. The books are dense. Each one runs around 500 pages with detailed band biographies, scene analysis, and enough discographical detail that you can cross-reference releases without needing five other books open. Reynolds doesn't gloss over the failures. He'll tell you about the bands that dissolved after a year, the one-hit wonders, the acts that imploded dramatically. That honesty makes it more useful than most music histories which tend to construct a neat lineage that never actually existed.
I've owned both volumes for about fifteen years. My copy of the second one has coffee stains, dog-eared pages in the sections on goth and industrial, and a sticky note in the chapter on the Fall that says something embarrassingly unhelpful like "he said that." It's a working document for me, not something I display.
How to Use This Without Getting Overwhelmed
The temptation with these books is to read them cover to cover like novels. That's possible, but it's also a waste if your goal is reference or targeted research. The structure is chronological but grouped loosely by scene and movement, which means you can jump into whatever area interests you without reading everything before it. Here's what actually works in practice: pick a specific band or scene you're interested in and read that section thoroughly before branching out. If you start with Joy Division, read through the material on them, then follow the citations to A Certain Ratio, Warsaw, and the broader Manchester scene. The cross-references between sections are where the real value sits. Reynolds connects things most people miss, like how the visual art side of punk fed directly into the fashion choices of post-punk outfits, or how the DIY ethic shifted from anarchist politics to practical necessity as the major labels started sniffing around. One thing beginners consistently get wrong is assuming post-punk is a single genre. It isn't. It's a loose constellation of approaches that shared a rejection of rock cliché more than any particular sound. The books make this clear, but it's easy to miss if you're skimming. Take the time to understand that each section is really about a different philosophy of what popular music could be.
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What the Books Get Right and Where They're Limited
The strength of this series is its refusal to create a canon. Reynolds includes bands that barely registered on charts or even club circuits, which gives you a sense of the actual density of activity during those years. The early eighties coverage in particular is valuable because that's the period most histories treat as a letdown after the initial explosion. Reynolds shows it as a period of genuine experimentation that produced everything from dub reggae influences in pop music to the earliest strands of what would become ambient and techno. The limitation is geographic. The focus is overwhelmingly British and American. If you're looking for coverage of the Germankrautrock aftermath or the Japanese post-punk scene, you're going to need other sources. I use David Keenan's actual sound as a complement for the UK side and Mark Fisher's work for the broader cultural analysis. Together they fill gaps that Reynolds, writing as a journalist rather than an academic, simply couldn't address in one volume. Another practical limitation: the discographies are thorough but not exhaustive. Some compilation releases and live bootlegs that would matter to a serious collector aren't listed. I learned this the hard way when I was trying to track down a specific 12-inch single by The Pop Group that Reynolds mentioned in passing but didn't give full matrix numbers for. I ended up spending three weeks on Discogs and emailing two record shop owners in Bristol before I found a copy. The workaround was simple eventually: use the book as a starting point and treat any discography entry as incomplete until verified against official label catalogs or first pressings. It adds about twenty percent more time to research but saves you from building your collection around incomplete data.
Getting a Copy
Both volumes are in print through Faber and Faber and various distributed book retailers. The paperback editions run around twenty to twenty-five pounds each depending on where you shop. Used copies circulate constantly on eBay and Amazon Marketplace, often in rougher shape but sometimes at half the price. I'd recommend buying new if you plan to use this as a reference tool since the paper quality and binding matter when you're flipping through sections repeatedly. My first copy, bought secondhand, had a spine that was already failing at theJoy Division chapter after two years of normal use. There is no legitimate digital edition from the publisher as of my last check, which is annoying if you travel frequently, but the physical books are substantial enough that reading them on screen defeats the purpose of having cross-referenced material you can flip between quickly.
Who This Is Actually For
If you're a casual listener who wants background on bands you already know, these books will overwhelm you with detail you don't need. If you're a musician researching influences, a DJ building a themed set, a writer working on anything related to this period, or someone trying to understand why certain sounds emerged when they did, these are essential. The writing is engaging without being pretentious, and Reynolds has the rare ability to explain why something mattered without declaring it important. The post-punk period produced a tremendous amount of recorded material that was immediately dismissed as commercial failure or niche curiosity. Reynolds documents that material with enough context that you can hear those connections now. That's the real utility here: understanding the ecology of a scene rather than just memorizing album titles and release dates.
