Alex Ogg

Alex Ogg is an author and journalist specialising in arts and popular music, especially punk, post-punk, hip-hop and independent/indie. His books include Independence Days, a comprehensive guide to the foundation of the independent principle in 70s/80s Britain, No More Heroes, an even larger cataloguing of the UK punk movement concentrating on some of the less celebrated artists, and The Hip Hop Years, which accompanied the acclaimed Channel 4 documentary strand. Other books include biographies of Radiohead, Def Jam founders Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons, the trivia book Top Ten (again accompanying a Channel 4 TV series) and an analysis of hip-hop lyrics. He has written introductions to books on the White Stripes and others and contributed to most major music encyclopaedias (Guinness, Virgin, AMG, Rough Guides, etc) Alex has also written for numerous newspapers (The Times, Herald), magazines (Classic Rock, Record Collector, Big Takeover) and websites (The Quietus, Rocksbackpages) as well as compiling more than 100 sleevenotes. These include his extended essay for Pillows & Prayers, a box set that in 2008 won the Mojo Back Catalogue Award. He is a consultant for two publishing houses and takes great pride in the fact that in 2009 he was asked to write an introductory essay for the Worth Classics edition of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. He is also the editor of the new academic journal Punk & Post-Punk, to be launched by Intellect in 2011.