Totally Wired

December 6, 2010
In 2006's Rip It Up and Start Again, Reynolds examined bands, like The Talking Heads, Siouxie and the Banshees, and Devo, who performed in the wake of punk rock. Calling his new volume a companion to his earlier work, Reynolds compiles interviews with David Byrne, Lydia Lunch, and 30 other "key figures... of the post-punk era." Interviews focus on each artist's journey through the era, and do indeed provide more richly detailed pictures of the people first introduced in Rip It Up, creating a "stronger sense of them as human agents with backstories and backgrounds; products of a place and a time, yet also self-created beings, fantasists and adventurers who pursued their dreams and sometimes, against the odds, realized them." Following that are a handful of rich "overviews" taken from previously published and unpublished reviews Reynolds wrote for Vibe, The New York Times and other publications, exhibiting his boundless enthusiasm and capping this musical era with a book that is as much a tribute as it is an epitaph.