In Search of Tito’s Punks

'It’s a terrific read, equal parts travel memoir, rock’n’roll history, and bittersweet recollection of a country fractured and dismantled, seamlessly integrating past and present, politics and culture, and the alternating voices of the author and a variety of fascinating characters he meets on the way. Musicians and businessmen, artists and thugs, Bosnians, Serbs, Croats, and all the rest, thrown together and then torn apart, each with their own story to tell, by turns hilarious, inspiring, and tragic. Engaging, thoughtful, and shot through with a certain melancholy, much too sharp to be dismissed as mere nostalgia, for a time and place seeming lost forever. In Search of Tito’s Punks is one of the more interesting and original rock books to come along in some time.'

-- Simon Harvey, Ugly Things Magazine

'Barry Phillips has written a very important book here. It is important for understanding Yugo Punk, and has clear relevance [...] to the study of punk generally. More than that, by focusing on lived punk lives rather than on the politics, geopolitics, and the imagined primordial ancient hatreds that are held to define the Balkans, Phillips has made a significant contribution to Yugoslav and Balkan studies.

This is an excellent book, an eye-opener both for those interested in the Balkans, and those interested in punk. And beautifully realised in print, paper, and card by the Punk Scholars Network, who clearly take book production as craft very seriously. Very punky. A must-read.'

-- Mike Diboll, Toxic Grafity

'A mosaic of essays and interviews...one that provides the book with an air of accessibility.

The interviews offer interesting insight to the modes of spreading and disseminating punk ideas and music in Yugoslavia (primarily through the records bought in the West, but later on a basis of local social networks) and thus invite a more general reflection about the travel of ideas in a pre-globalized world and its main actors. [...] Phillips’s book can also be read as an attempt to include the history of Yugoslavia in the mental map of western left-wing imagery and as an expression of nostalgia, which is present not only in the narrators’ talks, but in the author’s essayist passages. Indeed, one of the most powerful among them is Phillips’s reminiscence of his meeting with Yugoslav veterans of the Spanish Civil War in 1996 [...] In Search of Tito’s Punks represents a very readable introduction to the topic, enriched by a multidisciplinary and intertextual approach that offers a great number of references to other cultural texts.'

-- Marta Harasimowicz, Punk & Post-Punk

'The book uses an ethnographic method, drawing on a series of meetings and discussions with gatekeepers within the former Yugoslavian punk movement during the Tito era to illustrate the influence of both the song ‘No Room for You’ and punk more generally... the detailed recollections of their social and personal circumstances of living in a country that allowed and encouraged their continued musical activity, both during Tito’s regime and after his death, deliver a powerful message to the reader. Additionally, these candid, in-depth interviews offer insight into how punk musicians are still tackling modern problems by drawing on the past.

In Search of Tito’s Punks will appeal to academics interested in the origins and dissemination of punk beyond the United States and the United Kingdom; the fall of socialist Yugoslavia; and anthropological Memory Studies.'

-- Christopher Spinks, Modern Language Re