Burning Britain – The History of UK Punk 1980 – 1984, Ian Glasper

PM Press, P.O. Box 23912, Oakland, CA 94623, Usa, www.pmpress.org

Finally I’m thru with this sucker, what a dull pain in the ass to read, we got the book in in early August 2014 and it took me until October 2015 to read it (of course meanwhile I was reading other books too…) it is just so boring and so lacking in content, a waste of time and it just never ends. Almost 450 pages, tight print and the layout gets so close to the edge that you can not hold it without covering up the print, few – mostly small – photos. The original book was published in 2004 and ten years later the repress steals me hours and hours of time. Now that I got this off my chest – lets have a look what makes me write this. After preface, forword and such there is twelve main chapters (The Southwest, The Midlands, The Northwest, The Northeast, The North and East Midlands, The East and South West, London, The South, Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland, The Labels) Portraits of almost 100 bands and five labels.

There is alot of bands everbody has heard of (UK Subs, G.B.H., Angelic Upstarts, etc.) and of course many that are not so popular. Lets not forget this was also the time of Oi, it can not get any worse…… Like the other book (Trapped in a Scene UK Hardcore) this is also a overdetailed reference book of the UK Punk scene from that years. And unfortunally most of the bands have nothing to say nor a message to their audience (or the author is not interested in featuring such things), but mainly wanted “to have a good laugh”, play music and try to make some money. Fair enough, but if you read that again and again and again, it gets long very fast. I would say this is good for the bookshelf as a reference book, or if you just pick out your favourite band(s), you get surly some of the information you ask for and that is great, there was certainly years of research involved in this – I just wish the outcome would have been different. Of course some of the bands storys where interesting to read, and here and there you get information that will be „news“, but all this is covered up in a sheer quantity that kills it all. I guess people like this sort of book or they dont. Paperback, 24,95 US $ (dolf)

Isbn 973-1-60486-748-0

[Trust # 175 December 2015]