Stranded: Australian Independent Music, 1976–1992

The definitive book on Australian punk and post-punk music, long unavailable, now reissued in a much-expanded new edition with 175 photos. STRANDED offers the inside story of the emergence of the Saints, the Birthday Party, the Laughing Clowns, the Go-Betweens, Nick Cave, the Moodists, the Scientists, and many more great Australian bands, told by a writer who witnessed it all first-hand.“Much misunderstood on its original release in 1996, Stranded is just as contentious and compulsive nearly a quarter-century on. One part stoned memoir, nine parts hard-boiled history, it walks the low road and back streets, charting along the way a near-forgotten period of Australian music from post-punk to grunge.”—ANDREW STAFFORD“The appeal of the book lies in seeing Walker juggle narrative and economic history, biography and autobiography, interview and prose . . . [as he] traces Australian music’s transition from a provincial cargo cult to a world power.”— THE SUNDAY AGE“What makes Walker’s book so useful is that he writes not only of the musicians, but also of the venues, the promoters, the record stores and the community radio stations that together carved out a space within culture where it could turn back on itself and become an art. The ethos of this art was ‘do it yourself’ and Walker’s book can be read as a field manual for doing it for yourself in any medium, not just music.”—McKENZIE WARK, THE AUSTRALIAN HIGHER EDUCATION“Part memoir, part scrapbook, part history, part gossip, all linked by Walker’s passionate, sardonic commentary.”— MARIE CLAIRE Read more