Faber Forty-Fives – serie

UK Post-Punk is a selection of five essays that represents Simon Reynolds's astute and thought-provoking commentary on the musical fallout of the punk explosion. Diversity is the watchword, with groups as stylistically varied as PiL, Joy Division and the Specials tackling the new musical terrain that had opened up. Often highly political - both overtly and through challenging the prevailing conservatism of the times - these groups were the soundtrack to the last days of socialism, national recession and the arrival of an aggressive new form of politics: Thatcherism.

Sex Pistols and Punk recounts the turbulent months at the beginning of the British punk revolution in 1976. Starting as four disparate teenagers thrown together by Svengali Malcom McLaren to sell trousers, the Sex Pistols quickly became both prism and mirror for a disaffected youth eager to smash the old guard and make the world in their own, Warholian image. From dodgy backroom gigs to major-label overtures, Sex Pistols and Punk charts the dramatic rise of one of Britain's most influential and controversial bands.

Faber Forty-Fives is a series of six short ebooks that between them tell the story of British pop music from the birth of psychedelia in the late sixties, through electric folk, glam, seventies rock and punk, to the eclecticism of post-punk in the late seventies and early eighties. Each book is drawn from a larger work on Faber's acclaimed music list.Rob Young's Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music is a seminal book on British music and cultural heritage, that spans the visionary classical and folk tradition from the nineteenth-century to the present day. 'A thoroughly enjoyable read and likely to remain the best-written overview for a long time.'GUARDIAN'A perfectly timed, perfectly pitched alternative history of English folk music . . . wide-ranging, insightful, authoritative, thoroughly entertaining.'NEW STATESMAN'A stunning achievement.'SIMON REYNOLDS'A masterpiece.' CAUGHT BY THE RIVER'Excellent . . . blissfully quotable.' NEW YORK TIMES'An authoritative account.' THE TIMES'Consistently absorbing.' INDEPENDENT'An impassioned and infectious rallying cry of a book.' SUNDAY TIMESIn this groundbreaking survey of more than a century of music making in the British Isles, Rob Young investigates how the idea of folk has been handed down and transformed by successive generations - song collectors, composers, Marxist revivalists, folk-rockers, psychedelic voyagers, free festival-goers, experimental pop stars and electronic innovators.In a sweeping panorama of Albion's soundscape that takes in the pioneer spirit of Cecil Sharp; the pastoral classicism of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Peter Warlock; the industrial folk revival of Ewan MacColl and A. L. Lloyd; the folk-rock of Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, Nick Drake, Shirley Collins, John Martyn and Pentangle; the bucolic psychedelia of The Incredible String Band, The Beatles and Pink Floyd; the acid folk of Comus, Forest, Mr Fox and Trees; The Wicker Man and occult folklore; the early Glastonbury and Stonehenge festivals; and the visionary pop of Kate Bush, Julian Cope and Talk Talk, Electric Eden maps out a native British musical voice that reflects the complex relationships between town and country, progress and nostalgia, radicalism and conservatism.An attempt to isolate the 'Britishness' of British music - a wild combination of pagan echoes, spiritual quest, imaginative time-travel, pastoral innocence and electrified creativity - Electric Eden will be treasured by anyone interested in the tangled story of Britain's folk music and Arcadian dreams.'A treat.' TIME OUT'Young is a fine writer.' MOJO'Young's immense narrative is both educative and gripping.' UNCUT'A multitudinous, fascinating and beautifully written account.' TLS

The New Music Journalism is legendary music journalist Nick Kent's memoir of 1973 and 1974, two years that saw him go from aspiring, suburban scribe to celebrity journalist and companion to the likes of Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones. From hanging out with Lester Bangs in the States to dating Chrissie Hynde, Kent recalls an astonishing cast of seventies figures. But as his fame grew, so did his dependency upon narcotics, and these two years recount also the manic highs and strung-out lows such an appetite can bring.

Roxy Music and Art-Rock Glamour is a detailed exploration of the origins of the glam scene in the early seventies. Fronted by the deeply charismatic Bryan Ferry - equal parts fifties crooner and stylish spaceman - and with the visionary Brian Eno on keyboards, Roxy Music melded high-art intentions with commercial savvy to redefine what we understand pop culture to mean, and in the course of so doing created some of the twentieth century's most adventurous music.