Marxism in Music

Reviews / Votes

The remarkable story of how the Redskins took revolutionary socialism into the pop charts gets the rigorous study it deserves * Keith Cameron, music journalist and author of 168 Songs of Hatred and Failure: A History of Manic Street Preachers * The Redskins put their music in the front line during a time of confrontation and class war. Gregor Gall explores the challenges they faced when mixing their revolutionary politics with shiny mid-80s pop. * Billy Bragg, singer, songwriter and activist * What would a Communist contra-culture look like? Gregor Gall suggests that it might look a bit like The Redskins. This is a compelling study of a band from the past who were looking to the future. Essential reading for anyone interested in how music could support progressive politics * Martin Cloonan, Director of the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies (TIAS), University of Turku, Finland * Going beyond the simplistic characterization of The Redskins as the cultural wing of the SWP, Gall reinterprets the politics of the band, examines its internal dynamics and brings out its particularities by comparing it with The Housemartins and Easterhouse. As the only in-depth analysis of one of the most controversial 'political' bands of the 1980s, this book is a significant contribution to the understanding of the complex relationship between music and politics during the Thatcher years * Jeremy Tranmer, Senior Lecturer, University of Lorraine, France * How does one write scholarship about a band that made the revolution seem possible? Many of have tried and fallen short. Gregor Gall's academically rigorous, insightful work offers the left a tool to better understand the cultural fronts of organising without diluting the danceable, visceral impact of the Redskins. This book will might have you dancing all the way to the Big Strike! * James Tracy, Chair, Labor and Community Studies Department, City College of San Francisco, USA *