Reynolds does a good job of tackling such a colossal subject, citing hundreds of interviews, many of which he's conducted himself, and is adept at constructing linear timelines for each scene, town, and movement. Rip It Up is like a yearbook, allowing the personalities of the key players to speak for themselves in many cases--to either illustrate their brilliance or, in many cases, hoist themselves with their own petard (e.g., Malcolm McLaren: It's pretty funny to that it's the same man who created a band that sang about "no future" and then went on to attempt to assemble an empire of commercially viable art-pop groups). The objectivity that runs through parts of the book is strangely offset when Reynolds comes out and makes an opinionated declaration about a particular band or scene. It makes me feel as though his strength is in reportage, not cultural criticism. For example, at the end of the fantastic chapter about the 2-Tone movement, he states, "But the 2-Tone adventure stands as as one of the few examples in pop history of a revival that is not inferior to the music it's reviving. It may actually be better than the original sixties ska--more musically expansive, more resonant, and ultimately more defining of its own epoch." Whether or not this is the most demonstrably false assertion* I've ever read in modern rock criticism isn't important--it's the fact that up to that point, Reynolds seemed to be so objective.

A key quality of Rip It Up is that you can open it up to any chapter and simply begin--the same cannot be said for, say, Lipstick Traces. This makes for trusty subway reading, and also allows for a certain reference-book quality that I'm sure will come in handy for late-night drunken argument settling.

This isn't a new Lipstick Traces, or a new Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. To draw a parallel to a quote from his chapter about Pere Ubu, Devo, and the Akron music scene, there's a description of Pere Ubu frontman David Thomas drawing a line across the stage and saying "'This is the intellectual side of the band and that is the tank side'--'tank' as in warfare." In the world of rock history tomes, Reynolds' Rip It Up falls soundly between Greil Marcus' intellectualism and Lester Bangs' warfare.

*I have never claimed to be objective. And while I'm down here, I'm going to make two more nitpicks: 1)Why no love for our man Marty Thau? and 2)Why four whole pages devoted to Dexy's Midnight Runners?