The New Music

One of my favorite books about music is "The New Music" by Glenn A. Baker & Stuart Coupe. It was given to me by my dad in 2013, and I discovered artists like The Bottles, Angelic Upstarts, Flash & The Pan, Soo Catwoman, New Adventures, The Angels, DMZ, Cherry Vanilla, Chelsea, The Cortinas, Sector 27, The Motels, Sue Saad, Dyan Diamond, Kirsty MacColl, Cold Chisel, Bette Bright, John Foxx, Snakefinger, Madness, The Bodysnatchers, and The Breakers! 

It has always been a book I flip through and I'm amazed at how amazing the music scene was back then, specifically how diverse it was. This book discusses genres like punk, new wave, power pop, rockabilly, R&B, rock n' roll, heavy metal, electronic, ska, bluebeat, and mod.

It also talks about the  rise of labels like Stiff, Chiswick, Rough Trade, Beggars Banquet, Beserkley, Raw Lightning and many others. It features cover art which I always recall getting my attention because of how colorful the sleeves were.  

They not only discuss the music of today, but they also discuss the music of tomorrow. They feature new artists from England, Australia, America, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa.

When I was making the playlist for this showcase, I noticed that a lot of the artists that are mentioned in this book, are artists I own on vinyl. However, I remember finding out about them from record shopping. It does make me wonder if I knew their names from seeing them in this book, but I was really interested because I discovered it on my own from actually going to a record store.

The artists that were featured in this book, but I remember finding their albums at a record store include: The Cretones, Mink DeVille, The Fools, The Laughing Dogs, The Elevators, The Jags, Live Wire, The Kingbees, Dragon, The Boyzz, The Rockets, Shooting Star, Roy Loney & The Phantom Movers, Dwight Twilley, Ian Lloyd, and The Beat.

I think that a lot of music encyclopedias talk about older music instead of capturing the scene right as it happens. The New Music is a phenomenal book, because it not only discusses the new music of that time, it acknowledges the music that inspired it too. Many people think they're too cool to give others credit when they are inspired. There's nothing wrong with being inspired by someone and sharing that they inspire you because you get to share their work and everyone's work deserves to be noticed.