POST-PUNK 101

A pretty excellent overview of what came to be known as "post-punk", including this insightful and 100% accurate explanation as to why it went pretty much unnoticed in the US:

"In our deeply pluralistic modern world, where virtually everything the last century whelped up is only a mouse click away, it’s difficult to recall that circa 1980, Rolling Stone (and other mainstream American journals) was still hoping that if they ignored new British music it might go away. So almost all of the astounding achievements of this movement passed virtually unnoticed by the contemporary American media, unless you were paying particularly close attention to college radio, poorly distributed fanzines, or the English music weeklies."

I remember Rolling Stone writing scathing reviews of Cure and Bunnymen albums back in the early 80s, while still clinging onto the dead-end idea that Jackson Browne, Stevie Nicks and the festering corpse of The Beatles would always be the future of ROCK & ROLL.  Now that history has been rewritten for the umpteenth time, all of the albums that were slagged off by RS back in the day now have 4 and 5 star reviews in their album guide.  Funny shit.

http://observer.com/2016/10/post-punk-101-what-is-post-punk/