we never could have predicted Belfast’s centrality to the broader pop narrative of the decade

Dave Laing you are greatly missed. If there is a God, I hope you enjoy the fact that this book is dedicated to your memory and influence.

The sheer excitement ushered in by the democratisation and affordability of the tape recorder cannot, and should not, be under-estimated

Neither Trump or Biden are conspicuously deploying popular music’s (now long-standing) role as a persuader

Irish popular music historiography has come a long way from ‘showbands versus beat groups’

the US is perched on a narrow precipice terrifyingly similar to that of Northern Ireland in the closing years of the 1960s.

for all of these women calling out a normal society for being anything but was a risky strategy

This book has been written with the non-academic reader very much in mind.

This was exactly the violent theatre of primal hedonism the youth of Belfast craved

... the film offers some of the most novel and forward looking images of popular music in performance.

Maps are the ultimate visualisation of the ways we place ourselves in time and space.

The most important aspect in this mix was, undoubtedly, original archival research and the prioritisation of analysis of public record.