Nothing like the memories parent hating children with anger management issues convinced they changed the world and made history, at least until the next group of kids came and screwed it up. Add in a fair amount of East Coast Bias bitching and you have the story of the LA Punk scene. An interesting tale with very interesting characters, but not a book made for reading in one long sitting. Actually the writing style - short chapters made up of interviews of people who were there and those in the know (with no in between narrative), each focusing on a particular piece of the story, with some linear flow from chapter to chapter (they kind of, but don't completely go in chronological order) - makes this book an ideal read 2 chapters, read something else, read some more later kind of book.
"We Got the Neutron Bomb" was written by Marc Spitz (late of Spin) and Brendan Mullen (who was part of the scene and owned one of the clubs some of the chapters take place in) wrote this, as among other things, a West Coast response to Legs McNeil's book "Please Kill Me" (one of the many hundreds in my to-read pile) giving those based in LA their time in the sun (in LA even the punk rockers get sun), covering bands such as X, The Germs, Black Flag, The Runaways and many others. It starts with the beginning of the movement, covering the original haunts and first bands through the progression into many splinter genres, such as Hardcore, New Wave, stuff neo-Nazis surfers liked and Rockabilly, and the eventual commercial success of some bands and the death of a movement.
The problem I sometimes have with books like this is half the time I find myself doing one of two things:
1 - underlining artist, albums and tracks and inevitably buying more CDs then I need
2 - cursing at the current speaker for being such a whiny, self-centered & self-important kvetch who doesn't realize that drunkenly getting on stage with 3 of his fellow high school dropouts in some dingy basement of a 5th rate club in a bad neighborhood of LA and playing mediocre music for the members of the next 6 bands who will be getting on stage does not make you a Genius. It more than likely makes you a semi-talented high school dropout with a drug problem.
I think the above reactions stem from my love of music, interest in Punk in particular (I think X is in my top-ten), my compulsion to keep buying CDs combined with my total inability to have a "This album changed my life" moment or a similar type of reaction to anything I listen to. I guess it all boils down to an "That song was great and I think you're super talented, but let's not get carried away here" attitude about music (and movies or TV for that manner).
An interesting accompaniment to this book is the What We Do Is Secret biopic that came out on DVD about a month ago. I watched as I was trying to finish the book. Certainly worth a Netflixing
Book can be found here
http://www.amazon.com/We-Got-Neutron-Bomb-L/dp/0609807749/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232508891&sr=1-1
5 down, 95 to go. Finished 01/10/2008.
This post was written listening to "The Essential Pebbles Collection - Volume Three European Garage"
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment