Bring the Noise

Simon Reynolds

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9780571252282
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Rock Music

An anthology of writings spanning Simon Reynolds's extraordinary career as a music writer, Bring the Noise weaves together interviews, reviews, essays, and features to create a critical history of the last twenty years of pop culture. Bring the Noise juxtaposes the voices of many of rock and rap's most provocative artists - Morrissey, Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, The Stone Roses, PJ Harvey, Radiohead, The Streets - with Reynolds's own passionate analysis. With all the energy and insight you would expect from the author of Rip It Up And Start Again, Bring the Noise tracks the alternately fraught and fertile relationship between white bohemia and black street music. The selections transmit the immediacy of their moment while offering a running commentary on the broader enduring questions of race and resistance, multiculturalism and division. From grunge to grime, from Madchester to the Dirty South, Bring the Noise chronicles hip hop and alternative rock's competing claims to be the cutting edge of innovation and the voice of opposition in an era of conservative backlash. Alert to both the vivid detail and the big picture, Simon Reynolds has shaped a compelling narrative that cuts across a thrillingly turbulent two-decade period of pop music.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• What’s Missing? The State of Pop (1985)
• The Redskins, live (1985)
• Zapp, live (1985)
• Younger than Yesterday: Indie-pop’s Cult of Innocence (1986)
• Nasty Boys: Rap (1986)
• Beat Happening: Beat Happening (1986)
• Backs to the Future: The Folk and Country Resurgence in Alternative Rock (1986)
• Hip Hop and House Singles Reviews (1987)
• Husker Du: Warehouse: Songs and Stories (1987)
• Mantronix, interview (1987)
• The Smiths: A Eulogy (1987)
• Public Enemy, interview (1987)
• LL Cool J, interview (1987)
• Dinosaur Jr, interview (1987)
• The Red Hot Chili Peppers, live (1988)
• Morrissey, interview (1988)
• The Pixies, interview (1988)
• Living Colour, interview (1988)
• Various Artists: Sub Pop 200 (1989)
• The Stone Roses, interview (1989)
• The Caring Colonialists: A Critique of ‘World Music’ (1989)
• Positivity: De La Soul, Soul II Soul, Deee-lite and New Age House (1990)
• Rap’s Reformation: Gangsta Rap versus Conscious Rap (1990)
• Madchester versus Dreampop: Happy Mondays and Ride (1990)
• Manic Street Preachers, interview (1991)
• Pavement, live (1991)
• Nirvana, live (1991)
• N-Joi/K-Klass/Bassheads/M-People, live (1991)
• RRRRRRush!: Hardcore Rave and London Pirate Radio (1992)
• Wasted Youth: Grunge and the Return of ‘Heavy’ (1992)
• Welcome to the Jungle? (1993)
• Let the Boys be Boys: Onyx interview/Gangsta Rap as Oi! (1993)
• State of Interdependence: Britain, America, and the ‘Special Relationship’ in Pop Music (1993)
• MTV: The Revolution Will Not be Televised (1993)
• PJ Harvey, interview (1993)
• It’s a Dogg’s Life: Dr Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg (1993)
• Against the Grain: Thinking about the Voice in Pop (1993)
• Pearl Jam vs Nirvana
• The Beastie Boys, interview (1994)
• Post-Rock (1994)
• Swingbeat and the New R&B (1994)
• Ragga (1994)
• The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, live (1995)
• Blur versus Oasis (1995)
• Pulp: Different Class (1995)
• R&B: The Sound of 1997 (1997)
• Roni Size/Reprazent: New Forms (1997)
• Feminine Pressure: 2-Step and UK Garage (1999)
• King and Queen of the Beats: Timbaland and Missy Elliott (1999)
• Hate Me Now: Puff Daddy and the Player Hater Syndrome (1999)
• For the Love of Money: Lil Wayne, Cash Money and New Orleans Rap (1999)
• Street Rap (1999)
• We Are Family: The Rise of the Rap Clan and the Hip Hop Dynasty (2000)
• Roots ’n’ Future: The Disappearing Voice of Reggae (2000)
• Euro: Trance Music and the People-Pleasing Power of ‘Cheese’ (2000)
• Miles Davis: Live-Evil/Black Beauty/In Concert/Dark Magus (1997)
• Pure Fusion: Multiculture versus Monoculture (2000)
• Radiohead versus Brit-rock/Thom Yorke, interview (2000/2001)
• 2-Step and R&B Critiqued (2000)
• Faves of 2000: Dancehall (2000)
• Historia Electronica: The Case for Electronic Dance Music Culture (2001)
• B-Boys on E: Hip Hop Discovers Ecstasy (2001)
• So Solid Crew: They Don’t Know (2002)
• The Streets: Original Pirate Material (2002)
• Who Says the British Can’t Rap? The UK’s New Wave of MCs confront American Hip Hop Isolationism (2002)
• Rave-Punk: The Genre Soon-to-be-Known-as Grime Emerges (2002)
• Rap Videos and the ‘One White Dude’ (2003)
• Dizzee Rascal: Boy in Da Corner (2003)
• Kanye West (2004)
• Lil Jon & The Eastside Boyz: Crunk Juice (2005)
• Mother Nature’s Sons: Animal Collective and Ariel Pink (2005)
• Against All Odds: 2005, Grime’s Make-Or-Break Year (2005
• 2005: The Year Black Pop and White Pop Stopped Talking (2006)
• Arctic Monkeys: Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not (2006)
• Green-Eyed Soul: Hot Chip and Scritti Politti (2006)
• Bring the Noise: A Listening List
• Index
• Acknowledgements
• Author’s Note
• By the Same Author
• About the Author
• Copyright