NEWS — VIVIEN GOLDMAN

Date	Country	City	Location	Event	Event Link	Facebook	Time
05/09/19	Australia	Brisbane		Bigsound	Link		TBC
07/09/19	Australia	Melbourne		Writers Festival	Link		TBC
08/09/19	Australia	Melbroune		Festival of Jewish Arts and Music	Link		TBC
13/09/19	USA	Los Angeles	HI-FI Record Bar + Cafe		Link		TBC
14/09/19	USA	Los Angeles	Loyola Marymount University, Westchester Campus	Revenge of Grrrlson Film			TBC
22/09/19	USA	New York	Brooklyn	Literary Festival	Link		TBC
03/11/19	USA	Chicago	Stage 2, Columbia College	Festival of the Humanities	Link		TBC
09/11/19	Belgium	Kortrijk		Sonic City Festival	Link		TBC
10/11/19	Holland	Utrecht		Le Guess Who? Festival	Link		TBC
12/11/19	Germany	Cologne	Riddim/Cosmo		Link	Link	TBC

The Guardia Revenge of the She-Punks by Vivien Goldman; Dayglo: The Poly Styrene Story by Celeste Bell and Zoë Howe - review

The hoary old legends of rock journalism are seldom those who deserve a place in history. If pioneers such as Ellen Willis and Caroline Coon got half the glory of verbose stylists like Nick Kent and Lester Bangs, modern music criticism would be in healthier shape. Vivien Goldman lives among these overlooked heroes of the inkies era. From the mid-70s, she became Bob Marley’s first UK publicist, critic, musician, music video director and musical writer among other gigs (including occasional writing for the Guardian). Her work for NME, Melody Maker and Sounds in the 1970s and 80s offered sparkling and righteous reportage from a figure who lived cheek-to-cheek with London’s punk and reggae stars and never strayed from her ethos.

May 13, 2019

The Nation An Essential Primer on Punk’s Feminist History

Vivian Goldman’s latest book looks at the gutsy and rebellious female-fronted punk bands that changed the course of the genre.

No, no, John Lydon. Reflecting on the era he once seemed to embody as Johnny Rotten, Lydon told an interviewer for Newsweek in 2017, “The major aspect of punk was that girls learned to stand up and be the equivalent of boys. And that changed the world. All them girl bands stood on the stage and took it just like the blokes.”

Aug 19, 2019

NPR 'Revenge Of The She-Punks' Sets Out To Rectify A Gender Imbalance

Punk rock might be a relatively young genre, but the legend of its history has already become more or less solidified.

Ask what makes punk punk and you'll probably get a story that starts in 1970s London, or maybe New York; you'll get The Sex Pistols, The Ramones or The Clash; counterculture, anti-establishment and leather jackets.

Would you hear about bashing the wage gap? Shutting down slut-shaming? Or even Patti Smith? If not, veteran punk (and punk scholar) Vivien Goldman has news for you. In Revenge Of The She-Punks, Goldman sets out to rectify this gendered imbalance, tracing the formation, rise and global reach of punk rock and demonstrating women's central place within it. A self-proclaimed "feminist music history from Poly Styrene to Pussy Riot," the book doesn't just retell the story of punk with an added woman or two; it centers the relationships between gender and the genre, showing how, through the right lens, the story of punk is a story about women's ingenuity and power.

May 7, 2019

Rolling Stone Vivien Goldman’s Revelatory ‘Revenge of the She-Punks: A Feminist Music History from Poly Styrene to Pussy Riot’

Vivien Goldman was a pioneering London punk journalist in the 1970s, covering bands like the Slits and the Raincoats, dabbling in music with her indie dub records. Now a professor at NYU, Goldman tells a fascinating tale in Revenge of the She-Punks — as she calls it, “A Feminist Punk History from Poly Styrene to Pussy Riot.” It’s the freewheeling tale of how radical women who could barely play their instruments ended up changing the world. “Punk was exciting and it was doable,” the Raincoats’ Gina Birch tells Goldman. “I thought, this is the beginning of who I am.”

May 30, 2019

New York Events for Vivien Goldman’s “Revenge of the She-Punks”

Celebrate the New York launch of Vivien’s sixth book “Revenge of the She-Punks” - out now from University of Texas Press.

Viv is the pioneering female music journalist who was first published in the mid-1970s in the UK music weeklies, specializing in Afro-Caribbean and women’s punk music. Now she is an Adjunct Professor at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. In between, she was an early 1980s post-punk musician, recording with The Flying Lizards and members of The Slits, PiL and The Raincoats. Her much-acclaimed retrospective compilation, Resolutionary (Staubgold) paved the way for the recording of her first ever album, produced by Youth of Killing Joke, due out later this year.

Please come and say hello to Vivien and hear her read, speak and even sing, at one of these three imminent, very different “Revenge of the She-Punks” gatherings this month:

Sunday May 12th: McNally Jackson, 3.00 pm – featuring a dialog with journalist Jenn Pelly. McNally Jackson, 52 Prince St, NYC 10012

Friday May 24th: Rough Trade, 7.00 pm – featuring a couple of Vivien’s songs performed with pioneering Afro-Punk bass player Felice Rosser of the band, Faith. Rough Trade, 64 N 9th St, Brooklyn, NY 11249

Wednesday May 29th: Sonos store, 7.00 pm - Vivien DJs songs from the “Revenge of the She Punks” book and discusses their significance. Sonos store, 101 Greene Street, NYC, 10012

“Revenge Of The She-Punks” Sets Out To Rectify A Gender Imbalance

Marissa Lorusso reviewing for NPR:

Punk rock might be a relatively young genre, but the legend of its history has already become more or less solidified.

Would you hear about bashing the wage gap? Shutting down slut-shaming? Or even Patti Smith? If not, veteran punk (and punk scholar) Vivien Goldman has news for you. In “Revenge Of The She-Punks”, Goldman sets out to rectify this gendered imbalance, tracing the formation, rise and global reach of punk rock and demonstrating women's central place within it. A self-proclaimed "feminist music history from Poly Styrene to Pussy Riot," the book doesn't just retell the story of punk with an added woman or two; it centers the relationships between gender and the genre, showing how, through the right lens, the story of punk is a story about women's ingenuity and power.

In the manifesto that opens She-Punks - sorry, that's the "Womanifesto" - Goldman places the book's origins in 1976. She was fresh out of college and working as a journalist at the British rock publication Sounds when she saw, for the first time in her life, a woman onstage playing rock music. It led her to publish her first article about women in rock. By the '90s, Goldman says, this type of article had become "a predictable annual staple of rock magazines," fueled by lifeless cliches - but at the time, it was an exhilarating angle and, as this book attests, fertile ground for her lifelong dedication to the topic. Read the whole review.

PITCHFORK

No One's More Punk than Vivien Goldman

Over her five-decade career, the 61-year-old has been Bob Marley’s first UK publicist, an esteemed music journalist, French pirate radio DJ, reggae backing singer alongside Neneh Cherry and the Slits’ Ari Up, NYU’s visiting “punk professor,” Kid Creole’s biographer, and now the writer of a musical about his life, to name just the marquee gigs.

Pitchfork | July 14, 2016

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The Quietus

Punky Reggae Party Politics: Vivien Goldman interview

Ahead of her concert at Pop Kultur in Berlin this summer, the esteemed journalist and author talks to David Chiu about her recording career during the late 1970s and early 1980s that included working with The Flying Lizards, John Lydon and Robert Wyatt.

The Quietus | July 9, 2018

COMPLEX

The Best Music Documentaries on Netflix Right Now

ReMastered: Who Shot The Sheriff, 2018 | Director: Kief Davidson

Bob Marley as a dorm-room-poster, energy-drink-adorning icon is familiar to millions. But the story of Bob Marley, man caught in violent political crosswinds is less well-known. In 1976, there was an attempted assassination of Marley. This Netflix doc, the first in a series about music-related crimes, uses that incident as a jumping-off point to discuss Jamaican politics, gangs, colonialism, and how the attempt ended up, surprisingly and ironically, helping Marley to become an even more popular international superstar. Research and interviews with the singer's friends and family help make an incredibly complex situation understandable and compelling. Plus, any doc that has Vivien Goldman in it is awesome by default. —Shawn Setaro

Complex | November 16, 2018

Greil marcus

Real Life Rock Top 10

9. Vivien Goldman, “Private Armies,” from Resolutionary (Staubgold) – From 1979 to 1982 the music journalist made dub music in London and Paris. None of it is ordinary, but nothing really touches this six-minute cultural travelogue, one of her first tracks, about how you can no longer walk down your own, suddenly racialized street. With Vicky Aspinall of the Raincoats on violin, Keith Levene of PiL on bass and guitar, John Lydon producing, and Goldman singing in a voice that can’t quite believe what it’s describing, snakes slither through the rhythms, then turn into rhythms; you can see the notes bend.

Greil Marcus | September 29, 2016