"No Machos or Pop Stars presents an extensive social history of the entanglement between punk rock and art college radicalism in the Northern English city of Leeds in the 1970s and 1980s. This relationship, at times critical and other times contesting, paved the way for the punk rock genre to become self-aware about the larger societal structures in which it was caught. Gavin Butt considers the ways that art school made it possible to hear the critique of ideology in music and, perhaps somewhat against the odds, paved the way for it becoming a popular sound in British and international youth culture. The book follows bands like Gang of Four, Scritti Politti, and Soft Cell to tell a different genealogy of art and music based on an exploration of the limits and possibilities of art education, especially in response to the challenges of making art after the avant-garde. Based on extensive original interviews with band members, the book pinpoints a crisis of state-funded English art education and disillusionment with the avant-garde as twin conditions for post-punk's emergence in the city"-- Provided by publisher
