NOISY ISLAND: A SHORT HISTORY OF IRISH POPULAR MUSIC

the long version

"Noisy Island: A Short History of Irish Popular Music is the first extended scholarly engagement with Irish popular music, a phenomenon which has provided the world with some of its most enduringly influential and spectacularly successful artists. Combining expertise in Irish Cultural History and Popular Music Studies, Gerry Smyth offers an authoritative and enjoyable introduction to this important (although invariably overlooked or misunderstood) aspect of modern Irish experience." "Beginning in the early 1960s, the book traces the emergence of a distinctive Irish response to international rock music, from the early beat groups through the varieties of blues-influenced styles of the late 1960s, and on to punk and its new wave aftermath."--Jacket.