Even though this book is very long and took me two months to finish, it doesn't feel overlong; in fact, I felt it glossed over certain people and labels (Mute gets a chapter all to itself towards the beginning, then is barely mentioned until the end when it's sold off; meanwhile 4AD and Factory all get multiple chapters).

That said, this is a very interesting book on a subject I really had never thought about prior to reading. I loved the music covered in the book, and had never considered the people who ran the labels it came out on. I thought the book might get bogged down in business specifics, being about labels and all, but the author smartly focuses on the individual label heads and their sort of "character arcs" rather than deals and money (though that shows up too, of course).

In many ways this reads as a sort of British version of Our Band Could Be Your Life. That book, one of my favorites, profiles 12 bands in the 80s American Indie scene, but since many of those artists either ran their own labels or were close to the label heads, it ends up covering the business side as well. This book definitely focuses on the business end, but there is plenty of info about the bands as well (and when Blast First shows up, it even covers the same bands as OBCBYL).

I'm not sure I could recommend this book if you weren't at least interested in some of the bands mentioned on the back cover of the book, since it is quite long, but this expansive history of independent record labels is definitely not as dry as it may seem at first glance. ( )

If you have any interest in British independent music 1975-2005 (with an emphasis on the 1980s); you feel an affinity with the independent labels of that era (Rough Trade, Factory, Postcard, 4AD etc.); and/or you enjoy well researched and readable books about popular music, then I would say you will find much to enjoy in Richard King's "How Soon Is Now? The Madmen & Mavericks Who Made Independent Music".

It is also a great companion book to Simon Reynolds' "Rip It Up and Start Again", and it is equally entertaining and informative.

As with all good books about music, it inspired me to go away and explore or revisit some of the key tracks from the era. For example, I'd completely forgotten about Colourbox despite loving their music when it was released - thirty years on they still sound wonderful. I was also very interested to read how a massive hit single effectively stopped their career in its tracks.

Looking back from the detached perspective of 2013, the indie labels of the 1980s, and the personalities that were associated with them, seem even more magical and remarkable. It was a remarkable era for popular music and this book is a compelling reminder of a glorious and important musical era. The book concludes in 2005 when, in a reverse of the rest of the music industry, many modern independent labels are prospering relative to the major labels. That said, if this book proves one thing, it's that it is very difficult to run a small and successful independent record label - and always has been. ( )