S.O.B.'s Don't Be Swindle - Hardcover

by Mahon Murphy (Author), Noriko Manabe (Editor), Ran Zwigenberg (Author)

This book chronicles the Kyoto/Kansai 1980s hardcore punk scene through the album Don't Be Swindle by S.O.B., with a focus on Kyoto's main venues and the networks they created.

Apart from being the center of Japan's cultural heritage, Kyoto is home to one of Japan's leading avant-garde art and music scenes. The Kyoto University-affiliated venue Seibu Kodo has historically been the focus of this scene, creating an ethos and organizational core which hosted major international acts such as Frank Zappa and Talking Heads while pushing more local experimental and political acts. The hardcore punks in Kyoto, most of whom were high-school dropouts, borrowed the organizational structure and interacted with Seibu Kodo and its committees to create their own scene. By focusing on the seminal hardcore album Don't Be Swindle by S.O.B. and using rich archival material, this book explains the connections and entanglements of space and scene in 1980s punk.

Author Biography

Mahon Murphy is Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Law at Kyoto University, Japan, working mainly on the history of the First World War. He also teaches a history of Japanese Popular Culture.

Ran Zwigenberg is Associate Professor at the Department of Asian Studies at Pennsylvania State University, USA. His research focuses on modern Japanese and European history, with a specialization in memory and cultural history.