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After punk's arrival in 1976, many art students in the northern English city of Leeds traded their paintbrushes for guitars and synthesizers. In bands ranging from Gang of Four, Soft Cell, and Delta 5 to the Mekons, Scritti Politti, and Fad Gadget, these artists-turned-musicians challenged the limits of what was deemed possible in rock and pop music. Taking avant-garde ideas to the record-buying public, they created Situationist antirock and art punk, penned deconstructed pop ditties about Jacques Derrida, and took the aesthetics of collage and shock to dark, brooding electro-dance music. In No Machos or Pop Stars Gavin Butt tells the fascinating story of the post-punk scene in Leeds, showing how England's state-funded education policy brought together art students from different social classes to create a fertile ground for musical experimentation. Drawing on extensive interviews with band members, their associates, and teachers, Butt details the groups who wanted to dismantle both art world and music industry hierarchies by making it possible to dance to their art. Their stories reveal the subversive influence of art school in a regional music scene of lasting international significance.
List of contents
Preface: Class Acts ix
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction: The Art School Dance Goes On 1
Part I. Avant-Garde and Punk
1. Beginning at a Dead End 23
2. Anarchy at the Poly 56
Part II. Forming a Band
3. Punk Bohemians 75
4. Debating Society 105
5. Why Theory? 126
6. “No Machos or Pop-Stars Please” 146
7. Electric Shock 171
8. Rehearsals for the Mutant Disco 198
Epilogue: The Limits of Experiment—1981 and After 225
Notes 245
Discography 267
Bibliography 271
Index 283
About the author
Gavin Butt is Professor of Fine Art at Northumbria University, author of
Between You and Me: Queer Disclosures in the New York Art World, 1948–1963, also published by Duke University Press, and coeditor of
Post-Punk Then and Now.
Summary
Gavin Butt tells the story of the post-punk scene in the northern English city of Leeds, showing how bands ranging from Gang of Four, Soft Cell, and Delta 5 to Mekons, Scritti Politti, and Fad Gadget drew on their university art school education to push the boundaries of pop music.
