You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.24 AVERAGE
4.24 AVERAGE
More like 3.5 but rounding up. Loved the narrative style and thought the info was super interesting but it made me lose respect for the genre by the end.
tl;dr
Punk was a New York thing first and started with Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground and co-opted by the Brits.
Super gay -> neo-Nazis -> unsustainable drug fuel
Lou Reed is a dick
Iggy Pop sucks
Patti Smith rules
The circle was small
Drugs: the cause and solution to all punk’s problems
Kind of felt like a teenage tantrum the whole time
The Sex Pistols ruined everything?
Still not sure if Sid killed Nancy
Apparently the 80s weren’t worth talking about
tl;dr
Punk was a New York thing first and started with Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground and co-opted by the Brits.
Super gay -> neo-Nazis -> unsustainable drug fuel
Lou Reed is a dick
Iggy Pop sucks
Patti Smith rules
The circle was small
Drugs: the cause and solution to all punk’s problems
Kind of felt like a teenage tantrum the whole time
The Sex Pistols ruined everything?
Still not sure if Sid killed Nancy
Apparently the 80s weren’t worth talking about
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
informative
medium-paced
You will occasionally feel the need to shower while reading this book, but if you're at all interested in punk rock, NY in the 60s and 70s, or what it was really like to try to make a career as a musician at that time, it's a must read. It's easy to get lost (there's a guide to the characters at the back of the ebook, which helps), but if you let yourself get lost in it, it reads like a sordid, tragic novel.
Please Kill Me is a fantastic book. Compromised of interviews and testimonials from scene makers and band members alike, it fluidly moves and is unlike any book I have ever read. I highly recommend it.
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
fast-paced
dark
funny
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Very interesting and entertaining look at punk and how it developed, grew, and flamed out. I love oral histories because they always have contradicting versions of the same stories, and this is no exception. Highly recommended if you enjoy punk music and/or oral histories.
This was really great at times and pretty much totally boring at other times. I loved the stuff about Patti Smith as a NY poet and about the Ramones and how they came together. It was cool that they defined Punk as a broader movement than just music - it also included film, theater, and poetry. I loved the Blondie stories and the way they portrayed Johnny Rotten as sort of a wannabe in the beginning. But the stories were too long and repetitive, the cast of characters was not diverse enough, and, on that note, they focused way too much on Iggy Pop. I wish there was less Iggy (still some Iggy, just a lot less) and more stories about other important bands. The LA scene was almost totally ignored - not a single mention of X or Black Flag. And even the British scene got comparatively scant attention. Very little about The Clash, for example, even though they are the greatest band to come out of the movement, imo. It's not really a "history of Punk" it's more of a history of Legs's friends and the roots of Punk in NYC, Ann Arbor, and Detroit. I mean it was a cool book, but I started to want it to be over by the end.
Oh also, when they say "uncensored" - they mean it. Many of these people (ahem... Lou Reed) were truly horrible human beings.
Oh also, when they say "uncensored" - they mean it. Many of these people (ahem... Lou Reed) were truly horrible human beings.
emotional
funny
informative
fast-paced