"Peerless post-punk chronicler Simon Reynolds rides in with a new history of the psychedelic dawn of noise rock, shoegaze and grunge, drawing on his Melody Maker journo years covering the scene as it unfolded. He’s at the Brew to talk dream states, pre-Internet fandoms and “the vaguest music ever to have been a hit” (h/t Eno) with a characteristically deft combination of personal observation and critical analysis."
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A event held at Strange Brew on Wednesday 17th June. The event starts at 18:00.
The definitive story of the slackers and shoegazers who reinvented rock.
Twenty years after his acclaimed postpunk best-seller, Rip It Up and Start Again, Simon Reynolds tells the tale of what happened next: the underground explosion of noisepop, shoegaze, slacker rock and grunge that reverberated through the late Eighties into the early Nineties.
Capturing the musical exhilaration of the era along with the alienation of youth during a period of ascendant conservative politics and glitzy mainstream pop, Still in a Dream celebrates a golden age of guitar reinvention, a second psychedelia of mind-blowing sounds pioneered by bands like My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth. In Britain, groups like Cocteau Twins and Slowdive escaped into shimmering dreamworlds while American underground rockers like Dinosaur Jr. and Pavement blended apathy and urgency into thrilling noise.
A propulsive and personal account from a journalist who covered this music in real time from the frontlines, Still in a Dream vividly recreates a period that was the last blast for the analogue culture of vinyl records and music papers, before the Internet changed everything.
Simon Reynolds will be in conversation with Darran McLaughlin at Strange Brew. Tickets cost £7 each and include £3 off the book. Presented by bookhaus.
Entry requirements: 18+
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