The Whole Story of The Famous Kinema Ballroom in Dunfermline (now in its 78th Year!)
 

Home

UK Web Archive


Please Support KinemaGigz


Local Cinemas & Theatres

Grace Graham's Kinema Autographs from 1965
Kinema Autographs

Fife's first ever music fanzine / punkzine published in Dunfermline 1977-1979 - Read them here.
Local Fanzine

Scottish Beat Groups Promotional Brochure from 1964
60s Scottish Bands

Visit Dunfermline - What's On in & around Dunfermline
Promoting Dunfermline


Local Promoter

Recommended PC Repairs & Windows Support
Local PC Doc

Dunfermline's Weekly Local Newspaper
Local Newspaper

What About Us: A Rocklopaedia of Britian's Other Recording Groups, 1962-1966
Recommended Book

Biographies of The Rezillos, The Scars, The Skids, Trax & The Valves and many, many more appear in this wonderful book by Alex Ogg
Recommended Book

'Are Ye Dancin'? (The story of Scotland’s dance halls, rock’n’roll and how yer Da met yer Maw)’
Recommended Book

Dunfermline's Wonderful Weather!


In Memory of Stuart Adamson

 

 

"Simply Indispensable!" - Ghoulz
'No More Heroes: A Complete History of UK Punk from 1976 to 1980'
Contains 341 biographies and  features these local outfits featured in KinemaGigz:
The Rezillos   /   The Scars   /   The Skids   /   Trax
   
The Valves
"The 4500 words on The Skids is worth the cover price alone!" - Ghoulz

 

Ghoulz' Review for KinemaGigz.com

  The book is quite simply indispensable if not entirely 'complete', though as Alex explains he has plenty more  where this came from.

  For me, the piece on the Skids is worth the cover price alone!

  ... and then there's the piece on The Rezillos.
  ... and The Scars.
  ... Oh and The Valves.
  ... Not forgetting The Fakes
  ... Spizz was fascinating
  ... Enjoyed The Zones too.
  ... I too loved The Freeze who supported Trax in Dunfermline & Kirkcaldy.
  ... I guess Killing Joke were just too late?

  That's all I've managed to read so far and writing this has taken some time because I keep dipping in  and reading another one!

  Congratulations on a great reference work I will enjoy until it disintegrates and I need another copy!
  Thanks again for immortalising Trax, Alex, you've made an old anorak very happy.

  © Ghoulz
  The Intellectual Property Rights of this review belong to Colin WK Gourlay. This review and it's Intellectual Property
  Rights may not be copied, distributed, published, licensed, used or reproduced in any way (save to the extent
  strictly necessary for, and for the purposes of, accessing and using this website) without the express written consent
  of Colin WK Gourlay.

Punk rock: it’s a well-worn subject, but this new book extends the searchlight beyond the King’s Road, Roxy and West London – though that crucial scene is by no means neglected. It also encompasses some of the truly fantastic music (and sometimes truly less than fantastic records) that emerged in the wake of the Sex Pistols. The idea has been to give the progenitors their due, but to listen to the reverberations around the UK, from Exeter to Inverness. Participants (musicians, fanzine writers, observers) recount first-hand stories of flea pit gigs, desperately financed singles and local rivalries – punk as it was understood and lived on the ground. The enduring impact of punk belonged to the shires of Britain as well as the celebrated urban gene pool of the capital, where it played out, with a mixture of indomitable personal courage and amoral teenage mischief-making, amongst the alienated of shitsville UK. In the process punk is revealed as a much broader church than other histories have depicted, an entry point for young men and women (and a significant helping of old codgers) from differing backgrounds, with widely ranging sensibilities and aspirations.

The book assesses each of the major ‘punk artists’, candidly, on their output, following their development to the present day.  There’s an effort to redress perceived wisdom about the value of those careers as the 70s turned into the 80s, when many of the original punk bands actually made their best records. While many names will be familiar others will not. Hence time is devoted to punk’s splintered personality post-1977. From those bands that took it as an inviolate template, to those who embraced it as a rebirth for the original spirit of rock ‘n’ roll to those, finally, who judged it the end of rock music and a jumping off point for something completely new. There is no unifying view or theory behind these accounts, instead the book serves as an attempt to capture the beautiful chaos engendered by competing voices as the walls came tumbling down. The idea is to be inclusive and celebratory rather than cynical. Therefore opinions are sought from outside the tight huddle of usual suspects and would-be elitists, drawing on bemused and bewildered non-participants to events, as well as those who served in the trenches. There is no attempt to locate the ‘meaning’ of punk, nor to run a slide rule over qualifications for its status. The author has instead, in the majority of cases, let the protagonists make their own cases. Where possible the bands concerned have exercised the right of reply, leading to a more balanced account of their own history. Some 200 interviews were completed in the course of researching the book, leading to a plethora of first-hand insights and anecdotes.

A secondary aspect of the book is the comprehensive documentation of the releases, both contemporary and retrospective, of the bands of the era. It’s an attempt to address the jungle of retrospective CDs and box sets, the sheer volume of which indicates the continued fascination around this period in British musical history.

Over 300 individual band/artist biographies
Use of several unpublished photos
Forewords by Captain Sensible and David Marx
Complete discographies featuring capsule reviews and source notes

Samples etc at the author's web site: www.alexogg.com

 


Over Two Million Verifiable Hits since launch in Sept 2006 = Average rate of more than Twenty Thousand Hits/Month

© Copyright Colin WK Gourlay 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 & 2017
All Rights Reserved