Sound Effects is a night of talks about music and subcultures, how sound affects us and how music changes the world. Hearing from writers, musicians, artists, superfans, photographers, filmmakers and everyday music lovers, we dive into personal stories, esoteric bands, fan communities, punk, pop, social change and much more. It’s organised and hosted by journalist and documentary filmmaker Jak Hutchcraft.
The final Sound Affects for the year has got a stellar night planned. Two book launches
PUNK: The Last Word and Mistletoe & Vinyl: The Story of the Christmas No.1
Chris Sullivan & Stephen Colegrave on their new book, Punk: The Last Word. It’s a chronicle that redefines punk not as a mere music genre or fashion statement, but as a free-thinking, egalitarian, DIY philosophy that continues to challenge societal norms and empower individuals to live authentically. Stephen Colegrave is a writer and the cofounder of Byline Times, Byline TV and Byline Festival. Chris Sullivan is a writer, promoter and DJ, who has been a key figure in underground style and music since the 1970s.
Marc Burrows – Author, culture journalist and comedian based in Bristol. At this event Marc will bring us a celebration of a uniquely British tradition: The Christmas number one. Where did it come from? Why are we the only country in the whole world that actually cares about it? And can it survive in 2025? Burrows, fresh from a critically lauded run at the Edinburgh Fringe with his show The Britpop Hour, celebrates the publication of his new book, Mistletoe & Vinyl: The Story of the Christmas No.1.
I was lucky enough to catch up with Stephen Colegrave to talk to him about his new book.
KK
Tell me about this journey to this fabulous book Punk The Last Word.
SC
Well, it’s a journey that Chris Sullivan and I started 25 years ago, actually. We met a really lovely chap called John Mitchinson, who at that time was managing director of Cassell and he just finished publishing the Beatles In Their Own Words. which has done really well. He had a concept of punk in their own words, so Chris and I sort of beavered away. We only had four months, and it was all a bit crazy. We had one month in New York and one month here, three months here and we just interviewed everybody we could find and put a book together. And then 25 years later, we got talking to Omnibus and we were sort of telling them about it and the rights had come free so we thought of just republishing it. But then we thought, hang on a sec, it’s 50 years later and it’s another perspective so let’s just do a completely new book, talk to lots of new people. We did use some of the interviews of people who unfortunately passed away but also go into a lot more depth because the book we did before was very much picture led. we wanted something which really had a lot more, a lot more words, I suppose. In fact, it’s got over 600 pages of words that has got some good pictures as well. But the thesis last time was, you know, let’s go back to Warhol’s factory and look for sort of the the sort of the first origins of punk and then follow punk through from early 70s in New York to coming over to particularly Lee Black Children’s, bringing the Heartbreakers over on the Anarchy Tour and coming into the UK. Then at the end of the book, we sort of ended all back up in the Mudd Club again after punk. So we took a little bit of the same arc but went back a bit further. We went back to some ancient Greeks and things like that, but also to underground theatre and similar things to that in New York.
KK
This is fascinating. The ancient Greeks thing. Nobody knew about that. So tell me more.
SC
Well, I mean, they weren’t singing punk songs. They weren’t singing sort of three chords or anything. But I think what we want to do was it’s not really a book for train spotter sort of music buffs. It’s a book that talks about the sort of the ethic, the punk, what it felt and smelt like and the sort of feeling behind punk. What we were saying was that actually there was a sort of punk feeling going right back to Diogenes, in his barrel and people like that. You obviously go back to the word punk, which is in Made for Measure. You can find it in Shakespeare. You can find, you know, the word punk being used in the sort of in beats of 40s and 50s; James Cagney calling somebody a punk and look at things like Dada which was very much sort of punk and it’s the way it works and things. So we wanted to sort of say, look, this wasn’t a new sort of way of thinking or a new way of having a countercultural movement or something that was sort of born off the streets. And to us, looking back on it after 50 years, the great thing about punk was that everybody was outsiders, whether you might be gay, you might be just very gangly, looking a bit like a giraffe, like Joey Ramone. You might have been the sort of people that actually didn’t really like sports jocks and, you know, had their own little world on the playground. It didn’t matter because punk allowed you to be part of something. And so we wanted to get that feeling over when we wrote this book. And yeah, that’s the sort of journey really.
We’ve had great fun with this new one. It’s taken us a couple of years rather than four months. It’s been even more research and everything, but it’s the same basic format that we’ve taken people’s own words, creating a story by editing those quotes, so it continues as a sort of story. Obviously, anyone that’s dead, what we’ve done is we’d put bits from other books in there as well and quoted them and put some great photographic plates in. So, it’s a little bit more of a tome than the last one.
We do say if you don’t like the book, you can always use it as a doorstop but so far, people seem to like it. It’s been great. fun writing it and we call it Punk the Last Word because we don’t think anyone’s going to write a longer book on punk. I think we’ve even beat John Savage on a number of words. So that’s where the name came from.
But, you know, seriously, we did want to write it for people who didn’t know anything about punk. So it should just be a rattling good story. And, you know, I spent a lot of my life outside Byline actually putting on shows of rock photography and talking to people and doing events and things, just really for a younger generation. I think what I find is that a lot of young people are very interested in a more analogue world like punk. You know, they’re using cameras with real film or Polaroids to show people real pictures. They’re buying vinyl or even audio cassettes. I think there’s a feeling and they’re taking holidays from social media. They want to try and recapture that world, you know, before we were beset by the internet. It was an interesting time because all that sort of prog rock and sort of overblown production with huge record companies bossing everyone around and the rest of it. Suddenly there was, a couple of kids from the street who were creating their own music, their own labels. And it is completely understandable that it came from New York and London, because both places in the 70s were atrocious places to live; they were falling apart. But they are the only places I believe in the world where, fashion and culture and music come from the street. It’s not imposed from above; it comes from the street. So, we just wanted to celebrate that in this book.
Date: Weds 3rd December 2025 7.30pm
Venue: East Street Tap, 74 East Street , Brighton, BN1 1HQ
Tickets: 01273 777505 hello@eaststreettap.pub
Ticket price: £5
