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Preview
  • The Second Summer of Love

  • How Dance Music Took Over the World
  • By: Alon Shulman
  • Narrated by: Alon Shulman
  • Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (44 ratings)

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The Second Summer of Love

By: Alon Shulman
Narrated by: Alon Shulman
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Summary

In 1987, four friends from London - Paul Oakenfold, Danny Rampling, Nicky Holloway and Johnny Walker - took a weeklong holiday to Ibiza. What they saw there and brought back home would give rise to a new global music and counterculture movement.

As the '80s drew to their close, with Thatcherism holding the nation tight in its grip, something funny was happening right across the jungle of Britain's nightlife scene. People were dressing down, not up, to go to clubs. And they were dancing right through the night armed seemingly with only bottles of water.

Ecstasy and acid house music had arrived on British shores, and a tribal battle for the moral future of the nation, between the youth and the establishment, had begun.

In The Second Summer of Love, author and dance music promoter Alon Shulman uses exclusive contributions from the world's biggest DJs, including Paul Oakenfold, Carl Cox, Fatboy Slim, Moby, Faithless, Mr C, Farley & Heller, Danny Rampling and many others to faithfully re-create the story of the summers of 1988 and 1989 and chart the birth and rise of Acid House, dance music and club culture right through to the modern day where dance music has become a culturally dominant global industry.

This is the first authentic account of what really happened in that glorious period - from the politics and the people to the music, the drugs, the fashion and the culture - told by people who were there, as they bring to life the creation of an underground scene which inadvertently altered the course of modern global youth culture forever.

©2019 Alon Shulman (P)2019 Audible, Ltd
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Critic reviews

"Brilliantly woven collection of aural histories...a damn fine read." (DJ Magazine)

"It's as if house music and rave culture tapped into this ancient predilection of humans to stay up all night dancing and staring into the fire, and just supercharged it with electricity and MDMA" (Moby)

"It opened my eyes and ears to a different spirit in music." (Fatboy Slim)

"What I was experiencing was right in front of my eyes, it was happening right now and I loved it." (Carl Cox)

What listeners say about The Second Summer of Love

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

what a journey

brilliant, great to listen after just finishing Carl Cox audio book, such a great story from a few major figures in the scene

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Over 30 years of memories come flooding back

An amazing insight into the genre of “ House “
Music and the journey that these pioneers took to create this global phenomenon .

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

An evocative history of dance music

The Second Summer of Love retells the history not of just one summer, 1988, but also the build up through the 1970s, early 1980s and especially 1987 onwards through each season of the year.

Bringing together DJ’s, performers, promoters, clubbers, and even the police. It gives a full picture of all the various strands of activity happening in Ibiza, Chicago, Berlin, Detroit, Manchester, Wigan, the M25 motorway, and of course London to come together in one massive Rave at Stonehenge.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Great Performance

The whole genre is a performance and this book did it proud.
I lived through this era but on the fringes of the scene.
Really interesting review.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Great Detail

lots of information to get your teeth in to, however the book seemed to be read at breakneck speed.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Great story but pay a professional to read it

Great story but needs a professional story teller to make it better, which is a shame as it’s a great book

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Annoying 

Not really the story you think you’re going to get. There’s some good stuff in the and some interesting people too.
Does not capture in my opinion all of the why’ and where’s of the movement

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

bad writing, bad reading

fascinating period of music history, told badly, and read appallingly

i never want to hear the word "says" again

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Awful

The worst audiobook I have ever listened to had to stop after a few chapters not for me.

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2 people found this helpful