La vendetta delle Punk by Vivien Goldman

Like the Delta 5’s Bethan Peters says, “I don’t think we analyzed it too much it was grab it and use it.” These bands prided themselves on keeping the music loose and impulsive many had just barely begun to play.

As daughters of the Bowie/Roxy glam tradition, they’d seize their ideas from anywhere. One of the surprises is this story is how feminist punks created such long-lasting music out of such raw material. (And you thought they were just American idiots.) She includes stars like Blondie and Madonna, but also obscurities like the Spanish band Las Vulpes, who caused a national outrage when they played their song “Me Gusta Ser Una Zorra” (“I Like Being a Bitch” - an answer to Iggy’s “I Wanna Be Your Dog”) on TV. She meets artists like Jakarta’s Tika and the Dissidents, from the Indonesian scene that sprang up when Green Day played there in the Nineties. Goldman moves far outside the usual American and British punk narratives. Everybody knows Neneh Cherry for her Eighties Brit-rap bass-bombing hit “Buffalo Stance” - but did you know she started out singing for the Slits? (In one weird scene here, Goldman, Cherry and the Slits’ Ari Up sing back-up for reggae star Prince Far I.) She chases the spirit of feminist punk everywhere - even the pop charts.

She ventures all over the globe, chronicling bands from Colombia to Czechoslakia to Kashimir. She goes thrift-shopping with Patti Smith and sits on the Jamaican beach with Grace Jones. Goldman gives every chapter a Spotify playlist so you can listen along as you read - which is practically impossible not to do, since her excitement is so contagious.

La vendetta delle Punk by Vivien Goldman