Authors:
Bob Collins & Ian Snowball
PRE
ORDER NOW!!
Shipping starts 15th Feb 2014
Price: £9.85 (+ £1.80 p&p)
First
300 copies will be numbered and signed by both authors.
1980.
Punk is Dead. At least in its original form. Many tried to keep it alive.
People took different paths – to Goth, to Crass, to Oi, to psychobilly. But
only in one insular corner of the South East of England did a small group of
people latch on to the heart of the issue.
Everyone
looks back on the over-produced sanitised sounds of the 80s with a mix of
embarrassment and incredulity that it was tolerated. Well tolerated, and indeed
embraced it was – by people who really should have known better. But not the
Medway people. They were onto it like a shot.
Unlike
others they focused on the sound of records. They couldn’t understand why
modern records didn’t have the same raw punch of early blues and beat records
from 20 years earlier. So they tried things, they tried playing live in the
studio, they tried using one microphone to record the whole band. They tried
using old equipment. And they made records – lots of records. And they never
really stopped, undaunted by how the rest of the world judged them, focussing
only on doing things properly. At the heart of this were The Milkshakes. Billy
Childish and Mickey Hampshire, locking themselves away till they got this thing
right. Immediately, others followed. The Prisoners, The Dentists, The Claim.
All followed very different musical paths, but all deeply immersed in the
Medway way of doing things.
Now
Billy Childish is a major cult figure, his music world renowned; inspiration to
Seattle grunge, the White Stripes, Blur and even Kylie. The Prisoners led
directly to acid jazz and a strain of the Manchester sound typified by the
Charlatans and Inspiral Carpets. Now for the first time in one book, the story
of Medway music is told. It’s not the greatest story ever told but it might be
the most significant piece of recent music history that you’ve never heard of,
a story that needs telling; the story of the bands, the fans, the venues that
made the Medway Towns a unique place at a unique time.
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