Late Century Dream
In a world of Spotify, piracy and downloads at the click of a button, it can be hard to remember a time when music was disseminated through word of mouth, a hastily photocopied zine or a hand-drawn poster.
New Black Dog Publishing book Late Century Dream – Movements in the US Indie Music Underground looks to celebrate that simpler time for our friends across the pond, providing a wealth of brilliant imagery and insights from the late 20th century.
Taking the DIY aesthetic as its starting point, the designs, which were created in-house at the publisher, were sensitively and arduously considered, with every title and page number painstakingly hand-drawn.
The monochrome presentation accompanies some brilliant archive and unseen imagery of bands including The Accused, The Gits, Butthole Surfers, JFA, REM, Big Boys and Meat Puppets, to name but a few.
The tome is divided into six key sections for different city, state and label-based scenes around the US, united in their staunchly DIY standpoint.
Writers include Pavel Godfrey, Louis Patterson and Noel Gardner, and there are also interviews with the likes of Pain Teens’ Bliss Blood, Placebo Records’ Tony Victor and Sun City Girls’ Richard Bishop.
There’s some gorgeous examples of posters and zines from the period, which helped push the parties, gigs and releases that emerged from Athens, Georgia’s art school-derived post-punk scene; the left-field alternative and punk hotbed of Arizona or Austin, Texas’ post-psychedelic rock happenings.
Of course, Seattle gets a look in, but the book proves that the birthplace of grunge was about a lot more than a little ol’ band called Nirvana.
Late Century Dream-Movements in the US Indie Music is published by Black Dog Publishing priced £19.95
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