John Robb: Do You Believe In The Power Of Rock N Roll?

Date Friday 22 Mar 2024

Doors 7:30 pm Show starts: 8:00 pm

Advance price £12.00

Door price £14.00

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Edge Street Live presents:
John Robb – Do You Believe In The Power Of Rock N Roll

John Robb talks about a life in music, his best selling Art of Darkness book, being the first person to interview Nirvana, inventing the word britpop and adventures on the post punk frontline…

John Robb is a many-faceted creature.

Not just a well known face from TV but also a best selling author, musician, journalist, presenter and pundit, music website boss, publisher, festival boss, Eco warrior and vegan behemoth and talking head singer from post-punk mainstays The Membranes. John Robb is all these things and more.

His recently released book ‘The Art Of Darkness – the History Of Goth’ is a worldwide pop culture best seller and his soon to be launched ground-breaking new scheme – the Green Britain Academy, is set to train up people in thousands of Eco jobs whilst Borders Blurred is a gaming and music agency with a twist.

He grew up in Blackpool before punk rock came along and saved his life and he formed the Membranes – the highly influential post punk band whose current albums keep pushing forward with added choirs and textures and are critically acclaimed.

He was one of the leading post punk fanzine writers in the UK with ‘Rox’ before he went on to write for the rock press with Sounds in the 80s and was the first person to interview Nirvana, coined the expression Britpop and was instrumental in kick starting and documenting the Madchester scene with his writing.

His music and culture website louderthanwar.com is currently the 5th most read music and culture site in the UK and at the front of diverse modern culture. He is a constant on TV and radio commenting on music, culture and politics and one of the UK’s leading in conversation hosts who has his own successful youtube channel and his own books and music festival
in Manchester every year called Louder Than Words.

He has written many books like best sellers like ‘Punk Rock – an Oral History’ and ‘The Stone Roses and the Resurrection of British Pop’, and in 2021 a book about the leading Eco energy boss Dale Vince from Ecotricity called ‘Manifesto’. 2023 also sees the release of a new book with Alan McGee as well as his own autobiography and a collected works of journalism.

SPECIAL GUEST – DAVE SIMPSON

In the second half of the show, John will interview a special guest – Dave Simpson.

Dave is primarily a writer for the Guardian about music, and prior to that wrote for magazines such as Melody Maker and i-D. As an author, his books include The Fallen – Life In And Out Of Britain’s Most Insane Group, a Sunday Times “music book of the year” for which he tracked down dozens of former members of Mark E. Smith’s band, the Fall. Along with shorter biographies of the Stone Roses and the Sex Pistols, he also wrote The Last Champions – Leeds United and the Year That Football Changed Forever. The book sought out the members of Howard Wilkinson’s Leeds United side which achieved promotion and then the old First Division title in 1991-92, the last team to do so before the onset of the Premier League.

While still at school, Dave’s life was changed by attending the Futurama festival in Leeds in 1979, his first gig, which allowed him to see the cream of post-punk – the likes of Public Image Ltd., Joy Division, Cabaret Voltaire and OMD – inside a transformative few hours. Similarly, his politics were forged by life in the north under Margaret Thatcher and political post-punk bands such as Au Pairs and Gang of Four.

Over the years, he has written on subjects from the crisis in live music to singer Nico’s time in Manchester, while Interviewees have ranged from Coldplay to Suzi Quatro, Lulu to Simple Minds, Bryan Ferry to “Mad” Frankie Fraser, the notorious underworld henchman who made a pretty decent dance record in the 90s. Dave plays drums, is a season ticket holder at Elland Road and is constantly endeavouring to have the colour red banned from anywhere in the house.

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