Book Launch | Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Legacy, From the Seventies to the Twenty-First Century by Simon Reynolds with Luc Sante

• Books & Literature
• Free
• Performing Arts

Following the musical innovations and cultural upheavals of the 1960s, rock music in the 1970s was in the doldrums: airwaves were dominated by mellow country-rock, earnest singer-songwriters, earth-toned hippie jam bands, and samey-sounding boogie outfits. Then flaring up against the drab denim-clad backdrop, there came glam: the first true teenage rampage of the new decade, a movement spearheaded by artists like David Bowie, Alice Cooper, T. Rex and Roxy Music, that reveled in artifice and spectacle.

For the first time, Shock and Awe offers an introduction to a period packed with amazing music and magnetic characters, but also an accessible and entertaining cultural history situating glam rock in its social and political context. Breaking with the long-haired liberation generation, seventies glam celebrated illusion and artifice over truth and sincerity; it shunned the natural, organic, and wholesome in favor of the constructed and artificial. With intelligent, thoughtful analysis and commentary, Simon Reynolds pursues fresh angles on the central figures of glam—who inspired new heights of stage persona and fandom, even inspiring concert audiences to dress like the star performer—as well as other major artists who caught the theatricality of 70s glimmer.