ONE CHORD WONDERS: Power and Meaning in Punk Rock Book

Punk was always better at creating meaning than music critics were at explaining it. Dave Laing had a decent crack at it anyway.

Originally published in 1985 and reissued by PM Press with a foreword from TV Smith of The Adverts, One Chord Wonders is one of the few pieces of punk scholarship that doesn't read like it was written by someone who discovered the genre through a Netflix doc. Laing digs into the semiotics, the economics, and the cultural mechanics of British punk with genuine analytical rigour, covering everything from the music press machinery to the actual sonic language of the genre. If you've ever argued about what punk means at a show or across a record store counter, this is the book that gives you the framework to do it properly. Heavy reading, worth every page.

Paperback. 224 pages. 6 x 9 inches. Published by PM Press, May 2015. ISBN: 9781629630335.