Rip It Up and Start Again is the first book-length exploration of the wildly adventurous music created in the years after punk. Renowned music journalist Simon Reynolds celebrates the futurist spirit of such bands as Joy Division, Gang of Four, Talking Heads, and Devo, which resulted in endless innovations in music, lyrics, performance, and style and continued into the early eighties with the video-savvy synth- pop of groups such as Human League, Depeche Mode, and Soft Cell, whose success coincided with the rise of MTV. Full of insight and anecdote and populated by charismatic characters, Rip It Up re-creates the idealism, urgency, and excitement of one of the most important and challenging periods in the history of popular music.

Manchester, 1976, Tony Wilson is an ambitious but frustrated local TV news reporter looking for a way to make his mark. After witnessing a life-changing concert by an unknown band called the Sex Pistols, he persuades his station to televise one of their performances. Soon Manchester's punk groups are clamouring for him to manage them. Riding the wave of a musical revolution, Wilson and his friends create the legendary Factory Records label and The Hacienda club, and bands like Joy Division, New Order, and the Happy Mondays emerge to change the industry forever. 24 Hour Party People is now a United Artists (MGM) movie that will be releasing in August 2002.

A day-by-day, eyewitness account of the underground music scene. Over three years/900 bands/3,300 recordings Includes bonus CD featuring U2, R.E.M., the Cure, and over 20 more!