La vendetta delle Punk by Vivien Goldman

The first thing that really struck me with the she-punks, when I was an isolated teenager just discovering the punk subculture, was that they were not conventionally attractive. I’ve read a few books about women in the punk subculture, and while they were commendable efforts, they didn’t really resonate with my experience of being a girl in the punk scene. And its meaning has only gotten stronger over the years. The bombastic sound, the angry vocal, the ironic, funky saxophone. From punk's Euro origins to its international reach, this is an exhilarating world tour. Tamar-Kali, whose name pays homage to a Hindu goddess, describes the influence of her Gullah ancestors on her music, while the late Poly Styrene's daughter reflects on why her Somali-Scots-Irish mother wrote the 1978 punk anthem 'Identity,' with the refrain 'Identity is the crisis you can't see.' Other strands feature artists from farther afield (including in Colombia and Indonesia) and genre-busting revolutionaries such as Grace Jones, who wasn't exclusively punk but clearly influenced the movement while absorbing its liberating audacity. A discussion of the Patti Smith song 'Free Money,' for example, opens with Goldman on a shopping spree with Smith. With her visceral style, Goldman blends interviews, history, and her personal experience as one of Britain's first female music writers in a book that reads like a vivid documentary of a genre defined by dismantling boundaries. In Revenge of the She-Punks, she probes four themes-identity, money, love, and protest-to explore what makes punk such a liberating art form for women.

As an industry insider and pioneering post-punk musician, Vivien Goldman's perspective on music journalism is unusually well-rounded.

La vendetta delle Punk by Vivien Goldman