Frontline writings from the music war

Coley was born in Manhattan in 1956. He has written extensively about underground culture since the mid-70s. His work for Forced Exposure and Spin made him legendary. This book shows it all started years earlier at NY Rocker and Take It! Since then he has published poetry, writen liner notes for hundreds of records, spewed for more ‘zines than anyone could ever remember and contributed to various anthologies. His previous book was «No Wave» with Thurston Moore.

C’est la guerre is a perfect snapshot, via letters and early articles, of a time of great changes in american music, that of the emergence of new kinds of wild rock, punk or noise, that would extend the explorations of free jazz or of great innovators like Captain Beefheart. Some of the articles included are about David Bowie, Robert Fripp, Fred Frith, Devo, Hüsker Dü, Suicide, Lydia Lunch, Jim Morrison, The Meat Puppets and the minutemen.

Foreword by mike watt. Cover drawn & silkscreened by Simon Bossé.
-Bilingual (English/French), translated by Marie Frankland (John-Glassco Translation Prize 2007).