Randall Her short stories collections are amazing too, definitely go for it if you liked the novel (she’s got three translated in English, including « Things we lost in the fire » with one story featuring one of the characters from « Our Share of Night »)
BOOK THREAD
I finished it a while back, but Who Cares Anyway: Post-Punk San Francisco and the End of the Analog Age was a really entertaining read. I was familiar with some of the groups like Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, but it was cool to get the extra context.
A friend lent me a copy of Sing Backwards and Weep by Mark Lanegan from Screaming Trees but I haven't started it yet. Once my semester is over I'll get to read for fun a bit more instead of just for school.
Got a lil tired of reading about NYC in the 1970s and decided to jump back a century thereabouts. Started Lucy Sante's "Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York" about the city in the 1800s/early 1900s.
Orstralia - A Punk History 1974-1989
Just finished this and it was alright. Almost more like a catalog than a narrative. No band got more than a few pages and a bunch just a few paragraphs. It was pretty exhaustive, and the 1974-1981 section made me stop reading and look up bands every 10 pages. that's the good bit. The 1982-1989 section focuses almost exclusively on Oi, hardcore, and UK82 style bands. Mostly it is about nazi skinhead violence at shows and herion fucking everyone in the scene up. My favorite stuff like King Snake Roost, Lubricated Goat, feedtime, etc barely gets mentioned. grong Grong gets a couple of pages,which is nice. I think that is mainly from the Jello Biafra association ( he gets quoted a lot). The one band i had kind of forgotten about that i have been listening to a bit since reading about them is the Bored! Not all their stuff is killer, but the good stuff ( Mr Ten Percent, for example) is great.
Me, The Mob, and the Music by Tommy James ( of Shondells fame) is on deck.
Clif Orstralia - A Punk History 1974-1989
Read this last summer and these are pretty much my feelings as well. The 70s sections are really great, especially the Brisbane parts which gave some nice context. My own tastes definitely lean more toward the Aberrant and Red/Black Eye bands as well, so I was disappointed with the lack of material on that front. Cool to read a bit about Sick Things, but would have liked more than a mention of Fungus Brains. Still, worthwhile read. Debating checking out the 90s volume.
Just started Kier-La Janisse's House of Psychotic Women, which I've meant to read for years. Great so far.
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Tristan Clark did a second volume covering 1990-1999 that they were promoting when the first volume came out. For some reason it doesn't show up on the PM Press site.
ExpKind Tristan Clark did a second volume covering 1990-1999 that they were promoting when the first volume came out. For some reason it doesn't show up on the PM Press site.
the '90s edition ended up being self-published, i think it was initally conceived as one comprehensive edition, but PM Press couldn't print the whole thing so tristan split it in two -- '90s version here >> https://www.orstralia.com/product/orstralia-a-punk-history-1990-1999
i picked up the '90s copy cos i'm writing part of a novel set in 2002 so figured it'd be useful research, but it was a really good read on its own. as a way of looking at the era through the lens of punkers/ex-punkers lookin back on their youths it's pretty fascinating. we've come a long way! haha
we could do with some more book reviews here; https://bookreviews.boards.net/ just me and Prokash so far
5 days later
7 days later
I just finished the Redd Kross book and loved every bit of it! Today I started re-reading "Lexicon Devil". Gonna re-read "We Got The Neutron Bomb" next. Classics both. Working my way through a big stack of books on Dada and the Bauhaus at work.
7 days later
Anybody on here read this:
https://hatandbeard.com/products/i-feel-famous-punk-diaries-1977-1981
very curious. Just listened to a nice chat with the author.
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[https://books.google.com/books/about/Jelly_Roll_Blues.html?id=3SfQEAAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description](https://)
just finished this. really interesting. at times it is throwing so much info I had to put down to digest. basic focus is how folk/blues is collected through an already biased filter, regardless of good intentions. Alos, a cool little history of filthy blues and folk using Jelly Roll Morton's Library of Congress recordings with Lomax as a central focal point
Hozac's An Ideal For Living book about ep's is next. I have a backlog of Hozac books i need to get through so starting there
11th hour stubble there was an excerpt in the newest Maggot Brain issue. I liked what I saw.
Henry Cow book on Duke University Press is good.
"Jelly Roll Blues" was my favorite music book last year. Great, nuisanced stuff.
I Live Inside: Memoirs of a Babe in Toyland by Michelle Leon
Great read. One of those you can finish in a day if you have uninterrupted time. Liked it because it covered the early years and the band years but didn't get into "redemption arc" chapters at the end (Mark Lanegan, Jack Grisham and others' books).
A Julian Cope twofer edition of Head-On + Repossessed is probably up next.
The Ned Hayden book is another enjoyable "read in an evening" one.
11th hour stubble Read the excerpt in Maggot Brain then ordered the book. Haven't read it of course.
A friend gave me his extra copy of this while I was in Nashville. Almost half way through it and finding it really enjoyable. I used to get the Toxic Shock catalogs in the early 90’s and they were the first mail order I ever purchased from. When taking my maiden voyage across the states in the late 90s I stopped by the Toxic Ranch store in Tucson and Bill was very kind and helpful.
Toxic Ranch closed in the 2000s due to his wife’s medical problems. Every chapter begins with a journal entry from that time period, documenting their struggles during her hospitalization and rehabilitation. Then flashes back to the story of his life, their business, and his relationship with punk. It’s very sweet and inspiring with some great stories about the early punk scene.