information about Blissed Out

Blissed Out: The Raptures of Rock
by Simon Reynolds
published by Serpent's Tail, London, 1990

BLISSED OUT is a celebration of the "underground" music of the late '80s and early '90s. From hardcore noise to hip hop, acid rock to acid house, these cults contradict the widely-held view that "rock is dead" and that there is nothing left to do but play pick'n'mix with thirty years of pop history.



Artists and topics covered:

Miserabilism: Morrissey, Throwing Muses

Regressive Rock: C86, Luddite indie pop etc

Indecency: Good Songwriters Versus The Beastie Boys

Prince

Noise Rock: Big Black, Swans, Age of Chance etc

Wasted Youth: Butthole Surfers, Dinosaur Jr, etc

Nick Cave

The Death of Soul

Smooth Operators: Entryist pop (Hue and Cry etc)

Schemers Versus Dreamers: post-McLaren masterplan pop (Transvision Vamp etc)

Situationism and Pop: Sigue Sique Sputnik, Vermorels, World Domination Enterprises

Daydream Nationalists: Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore, My Bloody Valentine

Oceanic Rock: A.R.Kane, Cocteau Twins, Hugo Largo,

Heaven's End: Loop, The Young Gods, Ultra Vivid Scene, Pixies

Hip Hop's Minimal Self: LL Cool J, Schoolly D, Public Enemy

Euro Body Music: Front 242

Millenarian Metal: Metallica

Sampling: Hip hop, The Young Gods

House Music/Acid House/Where Now Lasts Longer: Jack The Tab (Genesis P. Orridge & Richard Norris)


PUBLISHING STATUS UPDATE:

Blissed Out: The Raptures of Rock is available once again 21 years after its original publication. It's one of the debut batch of reissues launching Backpages Classics, which is the e-book imprint of Rock's Back Pages.



Blissed Out returns in substantially expanded form with five bonus essays that track the development of underground music and artists such as Morrissey and My Bloody Valentine in the years following the book’s 1990 release. There's also an in-depth Afterword contextualising the rants 'n' raves therein as the byproduct of a unique historical phenomenon: the “space of possibility” known as the UK weekly music press.

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