Outside the Lines: Lost photographs of punk and new wave's most iconic albums

Amazing

This is one totally cool and interesting coffee table book. Apart from seeing again some of the most iconic record sleeves it is even more interesting to see the genesis of how they came to be and I loved reading the anecdotes behind them. You can open it at random at any time and find something interesting about the photographers and artists. Extremely enjoyable and informative too.

I’ve been a music fan for over 45 years and, to be honest, punk was never my thing. Musically bereft, it was all a sad case of image before substance. “The Emperor’s new clothes”. The rush to punk strangled a lot of potentially good bands and musicians as they couldn’t get a contract, possibly because they could actually play and write. This is where this book steps right up to the plate. Image is everything and some great pictures are shown and explained in this book. Hardback bound and well printed, the run down on the photo shoots, the ideas behind the pictures and the ‘behind the scenes’ shots make for interesting reading. So, to sum up. If you’re punk fan, you’ll love it. If you’re a photography fan, you’ll love it. If you’re both, you’ll be in heaven. Luckily for me it didn’t come with a soundtrack CD [with an honourable mention for David Bowie who appears showing the Lodger session].

I am rather unfamiliar with the era and music covered by this fabulous and beautifully produced book, but chose to review out of curiosity. And I am so glad that I did. It has been a great exploration. It is handsomely put together, over about 220 pages, in wonderful design throughout. There are useful timelines, putting the albums in context with others, and the production quality of the pictures is superb. Perhaps my only gripe is that the album covers themselves could be a little bigger, but that's minor, as there is full-page artwork from the covers themselves on the page opposite the descriptions. A great book for any coffee table!

Physically, this is a really nice book. Printed on quality glossy paper, it is quite heavy, and has an attractive cover. At only eight inches square, it is a little on the small side for a photo book, particularly as it is focusing on photos designed to be viewed as twelve inch squares. There are always going to be arguments about the selection of albums covered in the book, both regarding their merits and their relevance to the purported subject matter. I suspect that the selection of albums covered here was determined by whether or not the author, Torcinovich, had access to the photographers. Therefore, we get The Yellow Magic Orchestra, Sheena and the Rokkets, The Tourists, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, The Plastics and Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. But we don't get The Clash (a book on punk photos without London Calling - unthinkable!), Television, Patti Smith, etc. etc. To summarise, it's a perfectlydecent book, probably too small physically, and it definitely is NOT "lost photographs of punk and new wave's most iconic albums" as the title claims. Firstly, the photos weren't lost, and secondly, the most iconic albums were not covered.

If you're a fan of New Wave 80s music you're probably gonna love this book. Great as a gift or a coffee table read. It's beautifully illustrated with iconic photographs and colourfully (yet tastefully) laid out. Informative and full of lots of great shots! The only thing to be aware of is that there is very little, if any, actual punk in it! I'm guessing - because I believe it's an American publication - that the American definition of punk is very different to a UK definition. However, just about every band I loved in the 80s is in there, including lots I'd forgotten about. A great read, beautifully designed.

Great offbeat book. The albums selected are entirely down to availability of photographers and their un-published work. Thus some historically key punk/new wave albums are not featured — but this is all fully explained inside and is actually what makes this take on the genre so offbeat and unusual. It’s a refreshing book on punk/new wave and you can tell it comes from another perspective, another culture. Matteo Torcinovich doesn’t segregate off the movement into its own little box but sees it as a wider artistic current with everyone influencing each other — thus there’s everything from Bowie to Bow Wow Wow circling the more canonical core of US and UK punk — and rightly so. The various texts also breathe a new kind of life, a personal rather than dry academic style of writing, yet full of uncovered facts and insights for aficionados. Get it!

High quality pictures abound in this book pictorially detailing the photo shoots of some classic and not so classic punk and New Wave from the mid 70s to early 80s. Each photo set comes with a page of writing detailing a bit about the artists and performers on the album sometimes with quotes from the artists and or the photographer. These are interesting but it is the pictures that carry the book and it is interesting to see what was chosen for the final cover and what was discarded. There could be arguments for who's in the book and who's been left out but over all its is a great book for those interested in music or photography in music. My only quibble is the choice of font colour and page colour, my eyesight is not great and black text on yellow pages I found difficult to read there are only about 10 pages of introduction like this and I can understand the thoughts behind it but a good looking page with unreadable or difficult to read text might as well be a blank page.

per chi ama la musica punk e non solo una raccolta di foto incredibile e interessante, un libro che spiega la musica di quegli anni e ti riporta indietro nel tempo.

Mediocre in comparison to other books of this genre.

Punk and New Wave history is so.... well... PUNK! Love the pcs! Very eye appeasing, informative and oh man... soooo interesting! Great buy!!

Bought this as a gift for a friend and they were absolutely in love with it. Can’t wait to get one for myself!!

Fantastic book of music artist images.