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MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS

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John Robb

Punk Rock Ruined My Life : And Other Stories

Manchester University Press

Hardback Book

£20.00

Cat Number

9781526191786

Release date
Expected 12 May '26

Release date: Expected 12 May '26

The irresistible story of a one-man cultural phenomenon. Minister for the Counterculture, Mancunian mainstay and alternative national treasure John Robb has lived a life in music. In this book he charts his adventures on the cultural frontline, chronicling the making of a DIY icon.

Robb’s quest began in his hometown of Blackpool – where punk was a battle against the odds – and went international when he toured the world with his band. The first person to interview Nirvana, he also discovered The Stone Roses for weekly newspaper Sounds and did early interviews with The Jesus and Mary Chain and The Manics, before moving on to legends such as Mark E. Smith, Nick Cave and Patti Smith.

Along the way, he became an on-screen commentator and author of bestselling books. Robb’s memoir tells of deep friendships with figures from Poly Styrene to Chris Packham. Packed with riotous stories, it provides an alternative account of British musical and cultural history and a triumphant blueprint for a punk rock life.

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Mike Pickering With Paul Morley

Manchester Must Dance : A Life Of Music, Madness And Moving On Up

Manchester University Press

Hardback Book

£20.00

Cat Number

9781526190567

Release date
Expected 28 Apr '26

Release date: Expected 28 Apr '26

From Manchester’s backstreets to global dancefloors – the untold story of a musical pioneer. Beginning on the night in November 1963 when his mum took him to see the Beatles live at Manchester’s ABC Cinema, Mike Pickering takes the reader through sixty years of clubs, clothes, gigs, record labels, football matches and politics. Pickering has lived through decades of rapid change in popular music.

As an influential DJ he introduced house music into the legendary Haçienda. He signed Happy Mondays and James to Factory Records before working with Kasabian, Gossip and Calvin Harris at Sony. His Mercury Prize-winning, multi-million-selling group M People transformed the music industry's attitude to dance music.

As he tells his remarkable story he introduces an array of friends and collaborators, many of whom would become important – and sometimes notorious – figures in music history. Manchester must dance is a revelatory insider’s account that moves from the cramped back streets of 1950s north Manchester on a journey deep into music, the city and the wider world. It features forewords from some of those Pickering inspired: Martin Fry, Johnny Marr, Noel Gallagher and Calvin Harris.

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Lambros Fatsis

Policing The Beats : Black Music, Racism And Criminal Injustice

Manchester University Press

Paperback Book

£14.99

Cat Number

9781526171412

Release date
Expected 3 Mar '26

Release date: Expected 3 Mar '26

A bold analysis that exposes the racist policing of Black music. The emergence of UK drill music made headline news, portraying it as a criminal enterprise instead of recognising it as an art form. This new rap subgenre, however, is neither the first nor the only Black music to be targeted this way.

Policing the beats rewinds the tape to demonstrate how music has been used as an instrument for policing Black people, from the era of colonial slavery to the present day, revealing the racist legal processes that make crimes out of rhymes. This original and readable book offers the first in-depth account of the policing of Black music in Britain, highlighting the relationship between politics, culture and criminal (in)justice and inviting music lovers, scholars and activists to tune in.

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Jamie Taylor

Studio Electrophonique : The Sheffield Space Age, From The Human League To Pulp

Manchester University Press

The amazing story of the home studio that helped launch some of Britain’s most beloved bands. The Sheffield space age began in 1961, when local mechanic Ken Patten won a tape-recording competition by recreating the sound of a rocket launch using a pencil and a bicycle pump. In the decades that followed, the makeshift home studio he constructed became the launch pad for a group of young musicians who would shape the futuristic sound of 1980s pop.

The Human League, Heaven 17, Pulp, ABC and others made their early recordings with Ken, whose DIY ethic was the perfect fit for a city facing industrial decline but teeming with ideas. Studio Electrophonique tells the story of a generation seeking new frontiers in music, using everything they could lay their hands on – from science fiction novels to glam rock, Dada art and cheap electronics – to get there. Drawing on original interviews with Jarvis Cocker, Martyn Ware, Mark White and others, it brings to light a world of humour, charm, creativity and unfounded yet undaunted self-belief.

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Fearghus Roulston

Belfast Punk And The Troubles: An Oral History

Manchester University Press

This book is an oral history of the punk scene in Belfast from the mid-1970s to the mid-80s. It explores what it was like to be a punk in a city shaped by the violence of the Troubles, and how this differed from being a punk elsewhere. It also asks what it means to have been a punk – how punk unravels as a thread throughout the lives of the people interviewed, and what that unravelling means in the context of post-peace-process Northern Ireland.

In doing so, it suggests a critical understanding of sectarianism, subjectivity and memory politics in the North, and argues for the importance of placing punk within the segregated structures of everyday life described by the interviewees. Belfast punk and the Troubles is an intervention in Northern Irish historiography stressing the importance of history from below, and will be compelling reading for historians of Ireland and of punk, as well as those interested in innovative approaches to oral history. -- .

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Patrick Clarke

Bedsit Land : The Strange Worlds Of Soft Cell

Manchester University Press

A rich and revealing examination of the legendary pop duo Soft Cell. Soft Cell are not your average pop band. Marc Almond and Dave Ball may be best known for the string of hits they released in 1981, but the powerful first phase of their collaboration embraced a staggering array of sounds, influences and innovations that would change the face of music to come.

In Bedsit land, Patrick Clarke plunges into the archives and interviews more than sixty contributors, including the band members themselves, to follow Soft Cell through the many strange and sprawling worlds that shaped their extraordinary career. They lead him from the faded camp glamour of the British seaside to the dizzying thrills of the New York club scene. From transgressive student performance art to the sleaze and squalor of pre-gentrified Soho.

From the glitz of British showbiz to the drug-addled chaos of post-Franco Spain.

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DJ Paulette

Welcome To The Club: The Life And Lessons Of A Black Woman DJ

Manchester University Press

Hardback Book

£20.00
Usually ships within: 2-10 days

Cat Number

9781526166906

Release date
26 Jan '24

In Welcome to the club, Manchester legend DJ Paulette shares the highs, lows and lessons of a thirty-year music career, with help from some famous friends. One of the HaÃ§iendaâ€™s first female DJs, Paulette has scaled the heights of the music industry, playing to crowds of thousands all around the world, and descended to the lows of being unceremoniously benched by COVID-19, with no chance of furlough and little support from the government. Here she tells her story, offering a remarkable view of the music industry from a Black womanâ€™s perspective.

Behind the core values of peace, love, unity and respect, dance music is a world of exclusion, misogyny, racism and classism. But, as Paulette reveals, it is also a space bursting at the seams with powerful women. Part personal account, part call to arms, Welcome to the club exposes the exclusivity of the music industry while seeking to do justice to the often invisible women who keep the beat going.

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Andy Spinoza

Manchester Unspun : Pop, Property And Power In The Original Modern City

Manchester University Press

At the end of the 1970s, Manchester seemed to be sliding into the dustbin of history. Today the city is an international destination for culture and sport, and one of the fastest-growing urban regions in Europe. This book offers a first-hand account of what happened in between.

Arriving in Manchester as a wide-eyed student in 1979, Andy Spinoza went on to establish the arts magazine City Life before working for the Manchester Evening News and creating his own PR firm. In a forty-year career he has encountered a who's who of Manchester personalities, from cultural icons such as Tony Wilson to Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson and influential council leaders Sir Richard Leese and Sir Howard Bernstein. His remarkable account traces Manchester's gradual emergence from its post-industrial malaise, centring on the legendary nightclub the Hacienda and the cultural renaissance it inspired.

Manchester unspun begins in the gloom of a city still bearing the scars of the Second World War and ends among the shiny towers of an aspiring twenty-first-century metropolis. It is an insider's tale of deals done, government and corporate decision-making, nightclubs, music and entrepreneurs. -- .

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